Jonathan Ive On Apple Design...

Jonathan Ive On Apple Design

Jonathan Ive is the lead designer at Apple and as a fellow designer, I have always been fascinating with listening to him talk about design. In this video segment from the movie, Objectified Jonathan Ive talks about making the unibody structure for the MacBooks.

Four Keys To Apple's Success from the Wall Street Journal

Four Keys To Apple's Success

from the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal published a story today about Creg Joswiak, who is part of the Apple product marketing team and has been with Apple for 20 years. Greg Joswiak is pictured below, and he is the Vice President of iPod, iPhone and iOS Product Marketing.

In a recent speech Creg Joswiak told the audience at the Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge what he thought the top four secrets were behind Apple's amazing success:

Focus: It means saying no, not saying yes. We do very few things at Apple. We do $100 Billion in revenue per year with very few products. There are only so many grade A players. If you spread yourself out over too many things, none of them will be great.

Simplicity: Make complex things simple. A lot of people think it means take something simple and leave it at its core essence. But it isn’t that. When you start to build something, it quickly becomes really complex. But that is when a lot of people stop. If you really know your product and the problems, then you can take something that is complex and then make it simple.

Courage: Courage drives a lot of decisions in business. Don’t hang on to ideas from the past even if they have been successful for you. You don’t build a product just because everyone else has one.

Best: If you can’t enter the market and try and be the best in it, don’t enter it. You need that differentiation. At Apple if we can’t be the best then we are not interested in it.

2012 Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4 in Matte Black

2012 Lamborghini Aventador

LP700-4 in Matte Black

My pal Kaveh is pictured below in the all-new Matte Black Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4, which looks like the next Batmobile. The Lamborghini Aventador is the successor to the Lamborghini Murcielago, and the Aventador has a 6.5 Liter V-12 that cranks out 700 Horsepower and 509 pound-feet of torque. The magnificent monster accelerates from 0-62 miles per hour in 2.9 seconds, so it is like a rocket-ship.

iClip Clipboard Manager for Mac

iClip

Clipboard Manager for Mac

I am so excited to share this great news with you. iClip was an amazing clipboard manager that was very successful for years, then the developer unfortunately abandoned it. This frustrated many users.

The great news, is that my pal Steve, who owns and runs Irradiated Software, purchased the code, and completely rebuilt the code and optimized it for Lion. Irradiated Software re-introduced iClip earlier this week. I have had a chance to evaluate it, and I am happy to report it is amazing!!!

Steve managed to keep all the original features and in the screenshot below, we see how it works. Essentially anything you copy to your clipboard, with a keyboard shortcut or from a drop down menu, will be recorded and save into iClip. This includes all images, text, URL's, etc. You notice in the photo below that there are multiple copied content modules on the right side of the screen. As you copy items and content to your clipboard, iClip places the latest at the top. and keeps them in reverse chronological order.

The end-user can go back in time and paste any content into the active application, which is amazingly useful. Also, if you have content you regularly like to paste, you can create a special clipboards that will paste them. For instance, if you have travel instructions for how to get to your home or office, you can add them to iClip, and past them whenever you want.

You can learn much more by visiting www.IrradiatedSoftware.com.

Why You Need Clipboard Management

Do you copy & paste much?

Have you often copied something but when you tried to paste it you realized that you copied over it?

Do you ever want to copy multiple items before pasting them somewhere?

If you’re like most Mac users then the answer to these questions is a loud “yes!”

What you need is a supercharged clipboard that enables you to copy several times before you ever have to paste anything and that’s where iClip comes in.

Where the built-in Mac clipboard can only copy one thing at a time, iClip automatically stores a history of up to 99 things you’ve copied.

You can copy…copy…copy then paste…paste…paste at your convenience. Can you see how useful iClip will be in your workflow?

If you value your time, you owe it to yourself to be the next Mac user to start saving time and become more productive with iClip.

Lexus Dealership Using iPad's In Service Department...

Lexus Dealership

Using iPad's In Service Department

I was recently at a Lexus Dealership, in the service department, and I noticed the service advisors are all now using iPad in special cases.

Basically this Lexus dealership switched over from paper forms to iPad for all the Lexus service advisors in the service department. So when a Lexus owner arrives and they are greeted by the Lexus service advisor who inputs the license plate number and all the info on the car populates on the iPad screen. The service advisor then inputs all the information for what needs to be done.

The most interesting thing is how the Lexus service advisors hold the iPad. The iPads are in special neoprene cases that not only protect the iPad, but also allow the iPad case to fit on the users hand like a glove. Basically, the end user sticks their hand in the square hold as seen below. I asked a Lexus service advisor what he thought about the system and he said he loved it. He said it makes things work so much better.

iPads abound in the Lexus service center. I just happened to notice that even customers who were waiting in the customer lounge had iPads at the Lexus dealership. This really goes to show how popular the iPad has become.

Rare Photos of Steve Jobs with Bill Gates

Rare Photos of Steve Jobs with Bill Gates

This first photo of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as taken more than a quarter-centery ago in 1985, which was only one year after the original Apple Mac was released for sale.

In 1995 Steve Jobs was interview by Robert Cringely, and Steve Jobs famously said "The problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products."

In Walter Isaacson's book which was published recently Steve Jobs said "Bill Gates is basically unimaginative." Steve Jobs reportedly said "Bill Gates never invented anything. He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."

Steve Jobs: One Last Thing PBS Documentary

Steve Jobs PBS Documentary

One Last Thing

Microsoft's Vision Of The Future

Microsoft's Vision Of The FutureAs Of 2011
I am always fascinated with people's ideas of the future. Years ago I was the lead imagineer for SAP. The challenge I has with SAP is they wanted me to do stuff like what you are seeing in this video. Basically SAP wanted me to make mach-ups of what the future might look like.
The challenge I had as a designer, is I felt like it was a waste of time, if I didn't actually develop the product from the design reference. In other words, if I invested the time to figure out where things should go, I wanted to follow-up by actually engineering the real products, which is why I decided to leave SAP and go full speed ahead with BulletTrain.
As you will see in the months and years to come, my team at BulletTrain and I are working on not only imagineering the future, but bringing these amazing products to life. I think there is merit to some of Microsoft's ideas in this video, but I think it will actually look much different, and methinks BulletTrain will help bring it to you. I think Corning's idea of the future is more realistic.

1980s Apple Vision of the future and Videos

Apple's Vision Of The FutureFrom 1997?
This video is interesting, in particular, we see a stylus-driven Apple tablet prototype, which would be a precursor for the iPad, and as you notice, it even includes a built-in video camera. We also see the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, which is what leads me to believe the video was mislabeled as being from the 1980s, and I believe it was made in 1997, and not the eighties.


1980s Apple Videos
It's amazing looking back–at how bad these 1980s Apple Videos were. The almost seem like IBM commercials from the 1980s. This first next Computer Chronicles video interview/presentation of the first Macintosh portable, from 1989, with Stuart Cheifet almost seems like a Saturday Night Live skit.





In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, and the year before, Apple introduced the Apple Lisa Desktop which was the first computer to use a mouse. Here is a video overview. It is ironic that this computer was referred to at one time as being "User-Friendly." This is fascinatingly boring ;-) It really is amazing how far computers have come in the last quarter-century!!!



The dude who gives this presentation has the funniest, most pretentious fake accent. He kind of sounds like Johnathan Higgins III (John Hillerman) from Magnum P.I. Kind of like a fake British accent :-(
I actually remember going to see the Apple Lisa when it first came out in 1983, and thinking it was terrible.

Jonathan Ive On Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field...

Jonathan Ive On Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field

Quote from Walter Isaacson Authorized Biography of Steve Jobs

Jonathan Ive is the lead designer at Apple and he is responsible for creating many of the game changing Apple products. Jonathan Ive began his career at Apple in 1992. He became the head of Design for Apple in 1997. Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs was just released and it has some very interesting quotes in it.

In Walter Isaacson's new authorized autobiography of Steve Jobs, Apple's lead designer, Jonathan Ive spoke about Steve Jobs taking credit for other peoples ideas and Ive said:

"He (Steve Jobs) will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say, 'That's no good. That's not very good. I like that one.' And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea. I pay maniacal attention to where an idea comes from, and I even keep notebooks filled with my ideas. So it hurts when he (Steve Jobs) takes credit for one of my designs.

In this first video Steve Jobs cites Pablo Picasso as saying: "Good artist copy. Great artists steal" to which I would like to respond with an IF-THEN Statement by pointing out:

"If good artists copy, and great artists steal, then real artists create." –Jake Ehrlich

Original MultiColor iMac....

Original Multi-Color iMac

She Comes In Colors Everywhere

She's Like A Rainbow

Apple designer, Jonathan Ive is picture below in 1998 posing in front of his original all-in-one iMac which was clearly inspired by the first generation Mac from 1984.

Steve Jobs Shows Off The First iMac

Paris Apple Expo: September 17, 1998

Bill Gates Jumps Over Chair

Bill Gates Jumps Over Chair