Inside Apple's Industrial Design
TechnologyReview has an interesting article looking into Apple's design process with a focus on Steve Jobs who is said to have established the company's focus on industrial design.
The article interviews Mark Rolston, senior vice president of creative at Frog Design, who has worked with Apple as a design partner.
"Jobs wanted to elevate Apple by using design." Jobs, he says, not only cared personally about design but saw that it could be a way to differentiate his company's products from the PCs of the day, which often looked little evolved from hobbyist boxes.
Unlike design work for a company such as Packard Bell where the casedesign comes together at the last moment, Apple has a significant interest in product design throughout the process. Apple is said to take "an amazing interest in material selection and how things are manufactured" to the point where they are constantly looking for new design processes and willing to retool a factory to accomplish their goals.
Brunner estimates that today Apple spends 15 to 20 percent of its industrial-design time on concept--far more than most other computer companies--and the rest on implementation
Apple also keeps design teams small to try to minimize feature creep and a maintain a minimalist design.
"They're a small team that takes a very, very hands-on approach," adds Rolston. "We do a lot of similar products for other companies--say, Sony. But the process of approval, and collaboration generally--for everything from shape to engineering--involves tons of people, taking up to 50 percent of the time, watering it down." What makes Apple Apple and not Sony, says Rolston, is clarity of voice and vision.
Popular Stories
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
Apple plans to release an all-new super thin iPhone this year, debuting it alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. We've seen pictures of dummy models, cases, and renders with the design, but Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy today showed off newer dummy models that give us a better idea of just how thin the "iPhone 17 Air" will be.
The iPhone 17 Air is expected to be ...
If you missed the video showing dummy models of Apple's all-new super thin iPhone 17 Air that's expected later this year, Sonny Dickson this morning shared some further images of the device in close alignment with the other dummy models in the iPhone 17 lineup, indicating just how thin it is likely to be in comparison.
The iPhone 17 Air is expected to be around 5.5mm thick – with a thicker ...
A developer has demonstrated Windows 11 ARM running on an M2 iPad Air using emulation, which has become much easier since the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulations came into effect.
As spotted by Windows Latest, NTDev shared an instance of the emulation on social media and posted a video on YouTube (embedded below) demonstrating it in action. The achievement relies on new EU regulatory...
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup.
If you skipped the iPhone...
Apple seeded the third beta of iOS 18.5 to developers today, and so far the software update includes only a few minor changes.
The changes are in the Mail and Settings apps.
In the Mail app, you can now easily turn off contact photos directly within the app, by tapping on the circle with three dots in the top-right corner.
In the Settings app, AppleCare+ coverage information is more...
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices.
Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of April 2025:
Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...