Rowdy Entrepreneurs and Insecure Dinosaurs by Karamuftuoglu Murat;

Author:Karamuftuoglu, Murat; [Karamuftuoglu, Murat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1172378
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing Limited
Published: 2013-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

Apple Aesthetics

Apple is in many ways the antidote of Microsoft when it comes to innovation. Apple products are regarded by many as being both functional and beautiful. The key to the success of Apple is the stringent design principle it persistently and firmly keeps in place, namely, ‘keep it minimal’. This minimalist principle permeates everything Apple produces from the more recent iPod and iPhone to its traditional line of computer hardware and software, including the graphical user interface (GUI) that runs on its computers.

True, Apple sometimes pushes the minimalist principle too far, which causes sub-optimal designs and usability problems, such as the lack of the delete key on some of its line of laptops, or the single button mouse, which at one point it tried to make a norm. But, all in all, the aesthetic appeal of Apple always seems to win the hearts of the consumers at the end of the day. The success of Apple innovations seem to rest in large part on the emphasis it lays on the beautiful and the aesthetic. Take the case of the iPhone, one of the many gambles Apple has made, which paid back beautifully.

The iPhone replaces the commonplace interaction patterns of pushing buttons and circling through screen menus found on computer interfaces by touching, tapping, pinching and flicking. The gesture based interaction with the controls of the phone and multitude of applications that run on it increases the aesthetic pleasure one gets out of the interaction, as it is more directly related to natural bodily gestures than pointing and selecting with a mouse.

The increased feeling of ‘direct manipulation’ deepens the user’s experience of immersion in the medium, and provides a beautiful embodied interaction, arguably, at the expense of some loss in functionality. This is exactly where Apple has gambled. Obviously, the monolithic screen that replaces the keyboard and buttons crammed in other PDAs and smart phones is not as easy to use when it comes to writing emails more than a few sentences long.

What was said about the iPad by a blogger could easily have been said for iPhone too: ‘Something like iPad would have gotten destroyed in a spec review.’ However, the aesthetic pleasure that derives from the natural bodily interaction with the device, for most people, seems to more than compensate for its limited usability in writing longer messages. Apple took the risk and reaped the rewards.

But it has not always been happy risk-taking for Apple. There are many Apple products that did not win. They usually won the hearts of the users; they were all beautiful products by design. When they failed, it was usually due to the forbidding price tag to performance ratio. Either it was too expensive for most people, or the performance you got for your money would not justify the expense for those who could afford it. Jobs nevertheless always seemed to go with beauty in the face of such economic inconveniences. The case in point is the Power Mac G4 Cube sold between 2000 and 2001.

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