July 20, 2022 • 46 mins
Upon the return of Steve Jobs to Apple, Jony Ive found his role transformed. Given more freedom and authority to have innovative designs find their way into products, Ive and Jobs set out to restore Apple's reputation in the industry.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and how the tech are You? So? On Monday, I
published an episode about Johnny I've's journey to Apple and I've,
(00:26):
if you don't know, is a designer famous for his
influence at Apple. He had a hand in the look
and aesthetic at the company for twenty years, and recently
he and Apple have cut ties. So we're going to
continue his story in this episode. But this is really
not just an episode about Johnny I've and his influence.
It's really an episode that's about Apple in its transition
(00:51):
from a company that was in serious trouble to one
that became a tastemaker. Like this is the period in
which Apple itself underwent a massive transformation. So while I
is going to take a crucial part of that story,
it's going to require us to talk about some other
(01:12):
stuff too. Now where we left off, I was in
a really delicate position. He had recently been promoted to
Apple's director of Industrial Design. This was just five years
after he had joined Apple. He joined Apple as a designer,
the ninth member of the design team. Five years later,
(01:32):
the outgoing director of industrial design recommended I've for the job.
So this was a really remarkable journey. I mean, that's
a short amount of time to go from entering in
as a basic member of a team to becoming the
leader of that team. I've came into Apple in the
early nineties, which was a period where co founder Steve
(01:53):
Jobs was effectively banished from Apple. I talked about that
in the last episode, and you know, Jobs at or
he had been pushed to the side. In the mid eighties,
he left Apple and founded a different computer company called
Next Big End, Little E, Big X, Big T. This
company would end up designing computers meant for the educational sector,
(02:16):
at least primarily, but the computers were really expensive and
they had a fairly limited suite of software. Because you know,
software developers aren't likely to dedicate the time and resources
to make stuff for a platform that doesn't have a
very large install base. It just doesn't make sense. You're
never going to make back the investment you made in
(02:37):
order to make the thing in the first place. So
it would just make more sense as a developer to
create software for computers that a lot of people use,
instead of an upstart company that's trying to muscle its
way into a pre existing market. And over at Apple,
things had become pretty rocky, in no small part due
to the chaos going on with the team that was
(02:57):
responsible for building the next generation of the Macintosh operating system.
That whole project had ballooned out of control with feature
creep and internal struggles within the team, and so the
then CEO Gil Emilio moved to acquire the Next Computer Company,
and the idea was that while Next wasn't getting much
(03:20):
traction in the market, it's operating system was really good
and it could serve as the next generation of the
mac operating system, and the internal build of the next
mac os at Apple could be set aside for the
time being. Maybe it could be rescued and fixed. But
Emilio felt that in the state that it was in
(03:42):
within Apple, it just wasn't going to be ready for
the market, so he decided to acquire Next and use
that operating system instead. So Apple acquires Next, and then
Steve Jobs came back to Apple, initially as an advisor,
but within short order he became the interim CEO. And
then eventually the permanent CEO, and Jobs was not happy. Actually,
(04:07):
if you read up on various stories of Apple's history,
there are a lot of tales about Jobs not being happy,
and part of that was the fact that Jobs, as
standards were at the tippy tippy top, and when products
failed to meet his standards, he got mad. Jobs had
come back to Apple and hated what he saw. Apple
(04:29):
was producing so many different models of Macintosh computers because
the previous leaders thought the way to address the issues
Apple had was to expand the product line by making
a ton of different Macintosh models. But it got to
the point where the company's own sales team had trouble
explaining why one model would be more suitable for a
(04:53):
specific customer over any other model. If your sales team
can't say, oh, based upon your needs, this what you
should get, then you know you're in trouble. So the
message was buddled, the products were confusing, and Jobs was enraged,
and he wasn't shy about voicing his opinions. Now, i've
(05:15):
as the head of industrial design, was really concerned for
his team. Jobs was particularly angry about the direction of
Apple's design team. He said that he felt the quote
unquote sex had been taken out of the products that
they no longer had the appearance of something people wanted
to interact with, and word got around that Jobs was
(05:35):
planning on looking outside Apple to find someone in design
to come in and realign the company and to lead
that team, meaning I would be out of a job.
So I've talked with his team, and they even discussed
the possibility of creating their own design firm if the
whole department should find itself sacked. But I've advised his
(05:56):
colleagues to wait and see what Jobs would do, and
the team created a kind of showcase within the design department.
So I've knew it was just a matter of time
before Jobs would make his way to the design department
and see exactly how things had gone totally wrong, at
least in Jobs's mind. And I've wanted to showcase the
(06:17):
work his team had created with designs that the company
had not accepted. These are these were ideas that no
one else in Apple had approved, So they put on
display a lot of the more radical designs that had
failed to find their way through Apple's bureaucratic process. And
sure enough, when Jobs did come down and take a
(06:37):
look at the design department. He was impressed by what
he saw. The things that he was looking at from
the team, they weren't at all representative of the actual
products the Jobs had found so boring and uninspired. According
to Trip Michael, the author of After Steve, a book
that I used extensively in my research here, Jobs turned
(06:59):
to I've and essentially he said, you haven't been very effective,
have you. I am paraphrasing because Jobs could use a
lot of what uh Mr Spock would call colorful metaphors
in his language. What Jobs meant was that I've and
his team were astounding designers. They were creating amazing work,
(07:21):
but they weren't adept at getting that work accepted by
leadership at Apple. And that's, you know, a big component
of being a department head. It's not enough to be
an effective manager. A leader has to have vision and
a way to communicate that vision to others and get
buy in to get them to support that vision. So
a leader has to be able to convince other people
(07:42):
to try new things, or at the very least come
to the table and negotiate a way forward. I've was
unquestionably a great designer, but it might have been that
he was not yet a great leader, at least in
that sense. But then Jobs also felt that the previous
regime at Apple was rife within competence, and so while
(08:04):
Jobs gave I've a little bit of a hard time,
it was clear that he placed almost all the blame
on Apple's previous leadership, that the company had become so
weighed down by people afraid to take risks, or more
interested in competing directly against the ensconced PC market rather
than creating a compelling alternative, that they were incapable of
(08:26):
listening to I've and his team, and so really the
fault was on them more than it was on i've.
And the good news was that Jobs saw this and
felt that the design team was doing great work, that
they were brilliant and innovative. So Jobs knew that the
department was the right group of people to make his
vision of what Apple could be into a reality, and
(08:48):
this began the working relationship that would develop into a
fierce friendship between Jobs and I've. And it also meant
Jobs would end his search for a new head of design,
so i was safe in his job. Jobs and I've
bonded over a shared fascination with the form of products,
and and by form, I really actually mean a bunch
(09:11):
of different things, not just the physical shape, although that
is a huge part of it. I've was actually really
obsessed with materials. He would carefully go through each and
every sample of various materials to determine what was right
for any given project. He had in his mind specific
(09:31):
effects that the materials should pull off, whether it was
a shiny metal surface or a very smooth curve of
glass or a pebbled leather cover. And Jobs was very
much the same way. So the two spent ages talking
about different materials and what was possible with each one,
(09:51):
or what limitations existed with them, and how to find
a solution to meet those limitations or you know, in
most cases is with I've, if he found fault in
a material, he was far more likely to just reject
the material outright and find something better that met his expectations,
even if it meant scouring the entire world to find
what he wanted. And Jobs wasted no time. Once he
(10:14):
returned to the leadership role, he gave the Newton program
the Acts in n I talked about the Apple Newton
in the last episode that was a little less than
six years after the Apple Newton had debuted, and that
was an attempt to create a new product line, but
because of some real limitations with the hardware and more
(10:36):
more over, the software, it did not work. It was
a failure. But Steve Jobs didn't just acts products. He
acted entire layers of management. Jobs essentially laid off the
general managers overseeing the various business units within Apple. In fact,
he did that in a single day, like it was
(10:57):
an armageddon, where he laid off, you know, legions of
general managers, and that probably contributed to some people at
Apple using the phrase getting jobs as a way of
saying you got fired. Apple had created silos of departments,
so little feudal states, each with its own leader that
(11:17):
was largely cut off from the other departments, and Jobs
knocked those silos down. He essentially reorganized the entire company
into a more cohesive and collaborative operation. Now the teams
would still have leaders, you know, like I've was leader
of the designers for industrial design, and these would be
people who had deep expertise in whatever field it was
(11:39):
that they were representing. So they were people who could
manage others, but they also knew how to do the
stuff that the team was doing. You know that the
team they were managing was doing. Jobs said, One really
big mistake that he and Wozniak made way back in
the seventies was to bring in people who are really
adept at business, but they didn't know how computers worked,
(12:02):
and that that disconnect led to all sorts of trouble
down the line. And then Jobs gave I've a critical assignment.
Jobs knew that the company needed to launch a product
that would put it back in the minds of consumers.
They needed to capture the rebellious and innovative spirit of
the company in its early days. Jobs also saw how
(12:24):
the Internet was playing an increasingly important role in well everything,
and so he wanted Apple to create a desktop computer
with the express purpose of being a machine that would
work well with the Internet. Jobs also wanted to ditch
some traditional features found on most personal computers of the day.
(12:45):
For example, he didn't want this new computer to have
a floppy disk drive, something that was standard on other
machines at the time. He also wanted to ditch serial boards, which,
if you're not familiar, were used as a communication interface
with computers. They could connect with other peripherals right and
send information to and receive information from those peripherals. Jobs
(13:06):
instead wanted to incorporate USB technology in this new Apple computer,
and he also gave Ive's team one other directive. He
wanted the design for this computer to be quote joyful
end quote, and I've and his team would take on
that challenge. We're gonna take a quick break. When we
(13:28):
come back, we'll talk more about this project and how
it really helped turn things around for Apple. But first
these messages. So Johnny I've and his team got this
assignment from Steve Jobs, and they got to work. Uh,
(13:50):
they had the parameters and then pretty much a blank
canvas that they could use where they could create the
next generation of consumer Macintosh computers. It would be called
the iMac. And yeah, this was the beginning of Apple
using that lower case I in front of its various
product names. The iMac would be the first of those
(14:12):
those products, the first major one anyway. So the team
led by Johnny I've decided that the computer should be
innovative but not threatening. So I needed to look futuristic,
but it also needed to look accessible. It couldn't be
something where you're like, oh, that looks cool, but I
don't want to touch it. So one big point of
(14:33):
inspiration was the cartoon The Jetsons. You know, Meet George
Jetson and so on. Well, the Jetsons lived in a
world that was simultaneously futuristic and also anchored in the
aesthetic of the nineteen fifties. While the iMac wouldn't look
like it came straight out of the nineteen fifties, they
did have elements of the familiar along with the novel. Now,
(14:57):
the original iMac was not a flat screen computer like
later models would turn into. It was an all in
one computer that looked like a very colorful CRT monitor.
Before the iMac, the team had created a laptop prototype
that had translucent plastic built into the body of the computer,
(15:17):
and I've decided he wanted to incorporate that element into
the iMac design. I've presented his ideas to Jobs, and
Jobs rejected a lot of them, but one that Jobs
really liked was a sketch that I've showed him, and
I've described it as a computer that looks as though
it was about to jump off the desk and go
(15:39):
do something, and that really resonated with Jobs. So I've
returned to his team with Jobs as input, and they
refined that design. They began to move more in that
specific direction, and they created a model. The Jobs like
so much they would actually take that to other departments
in order to show it off to them. The team
chose a polycr abinate shell for the computer for a
(16:02):
couple of reasons. One, it's a very strong material, so
it's it's resilient, but also it can hold a tinted
color really effectively. It doesn't fade over time, at least
not rapidly, so so it would hold whatever color you
wanted to give it. And as for those colors, they
initially created computer shells that were either orange or purple,
(16:26):
or a bluish greenish color that would end up being
called Bondie blue. The process to make the shells was expensive,
both because of needing to make the polycarbonate translucent, and
also the process itself was sort of a customized one.
They couldn't rely on existing manufacturing processes. It all had
to be built from scratch in order to mass manufacture these. Now,
(16:50):
this meant that it would cost Apple sixty dollars per
unit per per computer case, just the case, not the internals,
and that was much more expensive than typical computer case was. However,
I was very happy to find out that Steve Jobs
wasn't really concerned about manufacturing costs because Steve Jobs saw
(17:10):
the need to bring customers back to Apple as well
as to attract new customers to the company, and he
thought it was going to be shortsighted to worry about
production costs and that this was really going to be
a swing for the fences kind of product. A we
need a home run, so we're gonna swing as hard
as we can. So because the case was translucent, I've
(17:34):
and his team worked with other departments to figure out
how the circuitry layout that would be in the computer
underneath would be visible and attractive. They wanted it to
look sophisticated and not messy, So this was another consideration
that really set Apple apart. It would also be the
foundation for the types of computer rigs that are are
(17:55):
very popular today. There are a lot of computer cases
out there that have trend his parent glass panels so
that you can see the interior right. You can see
the the fans and the various components, many of them
decked out with L E. D s and that's the
kind of rig that gamers prefer these days, and I
feel that we can thank Apple in particular, and specifically
(18:16):
Johnny I've and his team for setting us down that
kind of pathway. I feel like the iMac was sort
of an early example of that aesthetic that extends all
the way down to today. Obviously, the shapes are very
different today than the iMac was, but there are those
those elements I feel that have carried through. When it
(18:38):
came time to unveil the iMac, things nearly went pear shaped.
One of the components the Jobs really wanted in this
computer's design was a c D slot so that users
could just insert a compact disc into the slot. It
would go into the computer and then they could, you know,
load information from the c D. So he wanted it
(19:00):
to be a little slit in the computer and to
be as unobtrusive as possible. But when it came time
to actually unveil the design and Jobs looked at the
prototype that he was going to show off. He saw
that the iMac had a c D tray that would
extend out from the computer. You would put the CD
into the tray and then retract the c D tray
(19:23):
back into the computer and he was furious. But when
he was lashing out super angry that the thing he
wanted wasn't part of the iMac, he was told the
problem was the technology he wanted in the computer didn't
exist yet. No one had built a working version of
what he was envisioning, and that, you know, that was
(19:46):
the issue. Johnny. I've actually stepped up to talk Steve
Jobs down, Johnny. I've said, you know what you're thinking
of right now, that's the next one of these, that's
the next iMac. We can't do it yet, but ex
generation we will. However, we have to ship this version.
And remarkably, Johnny Ives approach really worked. It calmed down
(20:09):
Steve Jobs and he went on to rehearse what the
presentation that would unveil the iMac would become. And you
can actually watch that presentation online. This was done way
back in so if you do find a copy of
it that there are copies on YouTube. The video quality
is pretty bad, but it is late nineties and you
(20:30):
can watch as Jobs calls the iMac quote the excitement
of the Internet, the simplicity of Macintosh end quote. Jobs
then goes on to essentially slam the competition, saying that
consumer computers that are on the market are all slow
and ugly, that they have lousy displays, and if they
(20:52):
have any networking capability in them at all, it's pretty limited.
So he was really trying to set up how the
iMac would contrast with what he was claiming to be
the status quo. And the technical specs on the iMac were,
you know, they were impressive for the time, but you
would laugh at them now because Jobs talks about having
a ton of memory in this computer, which was thirty
(21:14):
two whole megabytes worth, and that the processor ran it
up blistering two three mega hurts. That processor was the
G three power PC processor, by the way, that's why
this computer is sometimes referred to as the iMac G three,
because that was the processor that powered it. But he
really wanted to focus on the impact of industrial design
(21:36):
of the computer, and that's really what we want to
talk about. Two. We don't want to I'm not going
to run down all the technical specs because that's not
really what these episodes are about. We're talking about the
aesthetic of Apple. So when Jobs revealed the iMac, the
crowd could only see the front of the machine. Initially
they could just see the face of the iMac right,
(21:57):
it looked like a sleek, rounded computer, so instead of
sharp corners, that had rounded corners. And while they could
only see one face of the computer initially, they went
ahead and went banana. And then Jobs brought in a
camera that could you know, the camera operators could circle
(22:17):
the iMac and the feed was sent live to movie
screens that were in the presentation hall, so everyone could
see the translucent plastic along the sides and the back
of the computer. Um and Jobs showed off how the
iMac had a handle as well in the back, like
along the top, and that was a design factor that
(22:39):
Johnny I've had suggested because he thought it looked cool.
It wasn't practical. People weren't going to be carrying around
their iMac computers everywhere, but it was something that just
made it look like you wanted to get your hands
on it. That was the whole point of it. So
this was not a practical component added into the design.
(23:01):
It was one at least not practical in the sense
of physically practical. It was practical in the sense of
marketing because it was another thing that made you want
to pick one of these things up and purchase it. Right.
So Jobs agreed to that design change, even though it
meant that the production costs of the case of the
computer would be even higher because it would require a
(23:22):
special approach to make this handle that's incorporated into the
case itself. Jobs would end up saying it looks like
it came from another planet, a good planet, one that
has better designers, which huge accolades for Johnny. I've right
saying that Johnny Ivan his team were better than all
(23:43):
the other designers on Earth. Now, the IMAX solved a
ton of issues. For one thing, the all in one
design meant that Apple could actually ship an iMac in
a single box that contained the computer, the keyboard, and
the mouse. More on the mouse in the second there
were no components to connect apart from the keyboard and
(24:03):
mouse to the computer, right, So you didn't have to
connect speakers to it, you didn't have to connect the
monitor to the tower. All of that was integrated. It
was one thing, So that really simplified the setup process Apple,
and to make sure that the customer wouldn't need to
install any software or do anything complicated, they wanted it
(24:24):
to work out of the box. Like this was the
beginning of that idea of it just works, although that
wasn't how Steve Jobs described it yet he would later
describe Apple products as it just works. That would become
one of kind of the mottos of the company. So
all you really had to do was take the iMac
out of the box, plug it in, turn it on,
(24:45):
you know, have the keyboard and mouse connected, and you
were good to go. They really simplified the process of
connecting to the Internet as well and doing so well
using a really attractively designed computer case. And it really
was a showcase for ives work and his team's work.
Their collaboration on each design element got the spotlight. And
(25:07):
like I said, the iMac was a watershed product for Apple.
The company had been in danger of bankruptcy due to
mismanagement of the previous regime, and Apple and Jobs both
needed a slam dunk hit or a grand slam hit
if you prefer, and the iMac delivered. Now, I did
mention the computer mouse that was one part of the
(25:29):
iMac that was not a slam dunk. The computer mouse
for the iMac was small and it was circular in shape,
not like egg shaped or oblong like your typical computer mouse,
but more like almost like a perfect circle, and it
also had a very short chord. So it was very
pretty to look at. It had the same translucent polycarbonate
(25:52):
plastic and had the same color features as the parent
iMac that it came with, But the mouse itself was
awkward to use. The size and the shape meant it
was a little challenging to keep things on track, because
if the mouse rotated even a little bit under your hand,
then it meant whenever you moved the mouse, the cursor
(26:13):
was going to go in the direction you had not
intended it to go on um and the cable length
also meant it could get a little hard to use
as well. It could, you know, limit you. And so
this particular mouse, which would gain the derogatory nickname the
hockey Buck, wasn't lauded like the iMac was. It was
(26:34):
very pretty, but it was not practical, and this would
not be the last time that I've and his team
would design something that would be criticized as emphasizing form
over function. But the iMac it became the fastest selling
computer in Apple's history. At that point. The company moved
eight hundred thousand units by the end of its first
(26:56):
year in existence. More importantly, it marked a reverse soul
of Apple's fortunes. So for two years, essentially the company
had been reporting massive losses. It had been operating in
the red, but the IMAX popularity gave Apple a profitable
quarter in early and then it was off to the races.
(27:18):
The company that so many people had shrugged off as
having lost its way appeared to be not just back
on track, but leagues ahead of the competition. And it
was largely thanks to Ive's design team that tam was
already hard at work on another product, one similar in
many ways to the iMac, and this was the eye Book,
(27:42):
which was a nod to the iMac and the intended
purpose to serve as a computer that could quickly connect
to the Internet. So this was a clamshell laptop computer
that also featured rounded corners, so you didn't have these
sharp corners of your typical laptop. It also featured colorful
rubber accents that bordered a polycarbonate white plastic case to
(28:05):
give it kind of a whimsical appearance. There are elements
of translucent plastic in that case as well, and a
lot of the design elements that made the IMAX so
compelling found their way into the Eyebook design. By the
time Steve Jobs is ready to unveil this new computer
in nine, a year after the iMac had come out,
(28:28):
the crowd was already on board. You should really watch
this presentation, the Eyebook unveiling presentation, to see how the
cult of Apple was off to a big start. Even
as early as nine, the crowd had not even seen
a single image of the laptop. But as soon as
(28:48):
Jobs revealed that Apple had a new consumer laptop to
show off after referencing the incredibly popular iMac, he was
already getting crazy amounts of applause. He got even more
when he revealed that the name of the laptop was Eyebook,
and he still hadn't actually shown off the ding dang
darn thing. Because Apple was known as using this naming
(29:09):
convention of power in front of its professional grade hardware,
so a power Mac was meant for professionals, whereas the
iMac was meant as a consumer product. Well, the professional
grade horrible Mac computer was called a power book. So
he said, since we have the iMac, this is going
(29:32):
to be the Eyebook, and that alone got a huge
ovation from the crowd. I mean, it really was bonkers,
and Jobs had to have been flying high. His audience
was already on his side. He didn't have to win
them over. They were providing him a ton of energy.
So he then went through the technical specs of the laptop,
(29:54):
which again not really important for this podcast, so I'm
not going to go through them, And then he finally
showed off the design. And when he did, he showed
off this tangerine colored, rubber accented laptop, so like, all
the color parts are rubber that overlay the white polycarbonate plastic.
(30:15):
And it was a nice nod to Ive's past I
think because in case you don't remember from the last episode,
Johnny I've came to Apple after he had been working
at a design consultancy firm called Tangerine. Even the Apple
logo on the front was tangerine and color against the
white polycarbonate plastic on the back. You had the entire
(30:38):
bottom of the laptop coated in this, you know, tangerine
shaded rubber, except for the Apple logo which was in white.
So very nice little accent nods. Jobs continued with the presentation,
even though you can hear the audience roaring like he
didn't pause for them too a shout out their their
(31:02):
joy at seeing this, and they would roar again when
Jobs revealed that the computer had a handle near the
hinge of the laptop, which would let you carry the
laptop like a briefcase, which just goes to show we
were easier to please way back in. He also showed
how the laptop didn't have a latch, so it wouldn't
latch closed and you wouldn't have to press anything in
(31:22):
order to open it. Uh, the hinge was had enough
tension in it to keep the laptop closed under normal conditions.
He also showed how the communication ports didn't have covers,
which made them easier to access. You can really see
ives influence here, his desire to make the products something
that you would want to use, and trying to avoid
any components that would make that experience frustrating. Jobs announced
(31:44):
that the Eyebook would be available in the colors tangerine
or blueberry upon their first release. Later on, Apple would
include a couple of other colors. They had Indigo, graphite,
and key line. I never owned an Eyebook, but I
have to say that the color and do signs really
actually do look super inviting. I mean, I know that
my phone is technically more advanced than those computers are,
(32:08):
but still I kind of would like a Tangerine eyebook
because it's just really pretty. And that goes to show
how i'vean his team were geniuses. They tapped into something
really powerful. They were able to come up with an
aesthetic that had an instant appeal, and I've, with his
tendency towards simplicity and minimalism, kept his team from adding
(32:28):
in superfluous or distracting features or embellishments. Now we're gonna
take another quick break. When we come back, i'll talk
about and I've designed product that sadly did not see
the kind of success that the iMac and eyebook would.
But we'll do that after these messages. So I don't
(32:56):
want to give the impression that Johnny I've was incapable
of failure. We already saw that the IMAX mouse was
kind of a misstep that people didn't really like using it.
And if you don't like using a product, that's a
that's a huge design problem. Right. It can look as
gorgeous as anything, but if people don't like using it,
it's a failure. Well, ivan Apple did turn out a
(33:20):
few misfires. The eyebook and iMac were both really well
performing products, but one that wasn't was the power Mac
G four Cube, which had a G four processor in it,
which is what gave it its name, just as the
iMac G three would be called that well. The power
(33:41):
Mac G four Cube was meant for professional users because
it had the power designation right, so it was more
powerful and included more features than what you would find
in consumer Macintosh computers, and also had a hefty price
tag to go along for the ride. The design of
the power Cube was incredibly striking, because, as the name
(34:03):
tells you, the computer's form factor was that of a
cube rather than a tower. However, I should mention it
wasn't a perfect cube and measured seven point seven by
seven point seven by nine point eight inches or twenty
by twenty by twenty five centimeters. Further, the cube had
a housing that was made of clear acrylic glass, and
(34:27):
i've's team chose that design because it gave the computer
this sort of illusion of hovering just above the desk
it would sit on because the bottom of the case
of this acrylic case would uh hold up the computer
a couple of inches. The computer had no internal fan
inside it to dissipate heat. Instead, it relied on a
(34:49):
grill in the top of the computer case that allowed
heat to escape passively. It also didn't have a physical
power button. Instead, it had a touch sensitive button that
as soon as you made contact with it, would power
on the computer or would make a power down computer
go to sleep, which was a problem some people had
where they would accidentally graze this touch sensitive button and
(35:12):
turn their working computer into sleep mode, and that was frustrating.
The cubic form factor placed other limitations on this computer,
namely in order to fit all the components into that
small space, and meant Apple would not be able to
include expansion slots, so you couldn't expand out the capabilities
of the computer beyond what it could do out of
(35:34):
the box. The trail list CD slot that jobs had
wanted for the iMac would find its way into the
G four Cube and Johnny I've relished the challenge of
creating a form factor of a computer that was unique
among PCs. And while the design meant Apple had to
make some massive compromises, Johnny Ivan his team did manage
(35:57):
to get it all working, and the process really solidified
a shift in Apple's operations. The design team would now
have a much larger influence in product development than it
had ever had before because Jobs was such a huge
ally for industrial design. While the physical appearance of the
(36:18):
Cube was striking, it failed to find a real market.
Critics said that Jobs actually didn't identify a target market
for the device, and that the lack of features, paired
with a high sticker price meant that most folks in
the market for a more powerful Mac We're gonna go
with a more traditional PowerMac computer, not the Cube. Also,
(36:39):
the injection molding fabrication process for the Cube's case sometimes
had errors which introduced flaws like cracks in the clear
acrylic case, so some customers were frustrated that it wasn't
up to the standards of the previous models. Where you know,
Johnny I was known for going and inspecting the manufacturing
(37:01):
process to make absolutely certain that the design he created
would come out flawlessly. This was a case where that
did not happen, at least in some instances. Leading up
to the Cube's release, Apple had enjoyed nearly three full
years of profitability, but the Cube underperformed drastically, and Apple
said that poor Cube sales led to a ninety million
(37:25):
dollar shortfall for the company just won the cube alone.
I think it was a hundred eighty million dollars less
than what they had projected total, so the Cube accounting
for about half of that shortfall, and so that was
a pretty tough quarter, and it was another reminder that
leaning more on form over function can sometimes have negative consequences.
(37:48):
Now we'll say that despite the poor sales, the presentation
the Jobs gave in order to introduce the cube went
over like gangbusters, so that initial excitement didn't progress into
sales unfortunately. But it was another case where the cold
of Apple was in full display. Jobs came out and
the crowd went gaga for the presentation once they saw
(38:11):
the design of the cube, particularly when Steve Jobs turned
the case upside down and revealed that there was a
handle on the underside of the computer and by unlocking
the handle, he could pull out the internals of the
computer in one smooth motion. You didn't have to fiddle
(38:31):
with with screws or anything like that and remove a panel,
You just lifted it straight out of the case. I
will say that was an amazing design choice, like something
that made it super easy to access the internals, really
really cool. It's just unfortunate that because of the form factor,
there wasn't a whole lot you could do, Like you
couldn't really slot in expansion cards into it or anything
(38:54):
because there wasn't the space for it. But the design
choice to make that a feature super cool, now it
just didn't sell well. So it was a kind of
a black mark on Johnny i'ves record at that point,
not that it was entirely his fault, I mean it
was it was a company wide failure, right because again,
(39:18):
the decision to go with that form factor placed so
many limitations and restrictions on the rest of the teams
that it was pretty much impossible to create something that would,
you know, go toe to toe with the other more powerful,
professional level computers that Apple was creating and also justify
the very high price tag. So a lot of people said,
(39:42):
it's more like a very expensive toy rather than a
computer that justifies the high price. However, it was the
next big product line that would really push Apple into
a new trajectory. It was the product line that I
argue really saved Apple and put it on a pathway
(40:03):
to becoming ridiculously uh successful. The product wouldn't come out
till two one, and the first really breakthrough model of
it wouldn't emerge until two four. I am, of course
talking about the iPod. Now, I have done episodes on
(40:24):
the iPod before, so we're not going to go through
all of that. I will say it was not the
first MP three player. It was Apple's first MB three player,
but it wasn't the first in the world. So Apple
is very rarely first to market with a technology that's
not really the company's m oh, that's not what it does. Instead,
Apple is known for designing top of class examples of
(40:48):
technologies that someone else has already created. So no, iPod
was not the first MP three player. It was just
the first one that would become a runaway success, though
as I said, it took a bit of time for
that to happen. Now, the first model of the iPod
had some features that the company would quickly drop. For
one thing, it had a mechanical method for scrolling through songs.
(41:12):
If you looked at the face of the iPod, you
would see there was this circular device that's on the
face of the iPod. Underneath the screen and you would
put your thumb on this and you would physically turn
this circle. It was a scroll wheel in other words,
and you would use it to click through playlists or songs.
(41:34):
You can scroll through menus this way. Um. But it
physically would turn on its axis. So it had this
tactile uh feature that other iPods would lack in the future,
probably because this was a mechanical point of failure. Although
there's something really satisfying I think of turning a mechanical component.
(41:58):
I mean, we've seen plenty of fidget devices that are
that's all they are, right, They're just a little physical
things that you can play with in order to, you know,
burn off some excess energy. And the original iPod had
one of those mechanical elements to it. Uh. Sadly, I
guess well, I guess it depends on your perspective. In
(42:20):
my view. Sadly, they would get rid of that in
the future versions of the iPod. But surrounding this scroll
circle were four buttons that made up a perimeter around
the circle, and these buttons had controls like play and pause,
and rewind and fast forward, that kind of thing. Now,
the original iPod could hold about a thousand songs, and
(42:40):
it lacked a few things that really prevented this first
generation from becoming a superstar. For one thing, it didn't
have a USB port. Instead, it had a FireWire port,
which really limited how you would be able to use it. Also,
there was no compatible software that you could run on
a PC to interact with an iPod, so it that
(43:00):
if you wanted an iPod, you had to have an
Apple computer in order to make it work. And those
limitations kept the original iPod from becoming the success it
would later be, but it did show the direction of
the company and it set the tone for moving forward.
The next generation of the device ditched the mechanical wheel.
Instead it had a touch sensitive wheel so capacity of
(43:23):
touch instead of mechanically turning a circle around. But physically
it resembled the first generation. It was not a huge
departure in design. Uh the mechanical wheel was gone, but
the layout of the device was pretty much the same.
There were a couple of other minor changes of the
FireWire port then had a cover instead of it being
open like it was in the first generation of the iPod,
(43:46):
and ives team would take a larger departure with the
third edition of the iPod, the entire interface became touch based.
There was not yet a touch screen, but there were
touch buttons instead of mechanical buttons. Two access all the controls.
IVES team moved the control buttons above the touch wheel
(44:06):
rather than around the perimeter of it, and the team
would continue to make adjustments to the iPods design, including
the creation of spinoff products. You know, you had the
iPod Mini, which only lasted two generations, and you had
the iPod Nano, which was the replacement for the iPod Mini,
so was an even smaller version of the iPod, and
(44:26):
then later on you had the iPod Shuffle as well.
We'll probably touch on those a little bit in the
next episode that we won't go into as much detail
as we have for the you know, i amac and
eyebook and the Cube for example, so we're gonna leave
it off here, and in our next episode we'll talk
about how the iPod design would influence Apple's direction and
(44:47):
the general public's perception of the company. I mean, we
call them podcasts because we named it after the iPod.
That's how definitive a product that became. And we'll talk
about ives role in creating this kind of momentum. Then
we'll also talk about other products, the big one obviously
being the iPhone and how that design ended up just
(45:12):
cementing Apple's place as a tastemaker in consumer electronics. And
then we'll also talk about the various things that played
a part in I've becoming less enamored of Apple and
ultimately his decision one to leave the company as an employee,
(45:33):
and then too to essentially cut ties with Apple by
not extending the contract that his design firm had established
with the company. Those will be things we'll talk about
in the next episode in this series. I hope you're
enjoying these episodes. If you have suggestions for topics I
should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach
(45:54):
out and tell me. You can do that in one
of two ways. One way is to download the free
i art radio app, navigate to the tech Stuff podcast page,
use that little microphone icon to record a voice message
up to thirty seconds in length, and let me know
through there, Or you can reach out on Twitter. The
handle for the show is text Stuff hs W and
(46:15):
I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff
is an i Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and how the tech are You? So? On Monday, I
published an episode about Johnny I've's journey to Apple and I've,
(00:26):
if you don't know, is a designer famous for his
influence at Apple. He had a hand in the look
and aesthetic at the company for twenty years, and recently
he and Apple have cut ties. So we're going to
continue his story in this episode. But this is really
not just an episode about Johnny I've and his influence.
It's really an episode that's about Apple in its transition
(00:51):
from a company that was in serious trouble to one
that became a tastemaker. Like this is the period in
which Apple itself underwent a massive transformation. So while I
is going to take a crucial part of that story,
it's going to require us to talk about some other
(01:12):
stuff too. Now where we left off, I was in
a really delicate position. He had recently been promoted to
Apple's director of Industrial Design. This was just five years
after he had joined Apple. He joined Apple as a designer,
the ninth member of the design team. Five years later,
(01:32):
the outgoing director of industrial design recommended I've for the job.
So this was a really remarkable journey. I mean, that's
a short amount of time to go from entering in
as a basic member of a team to becoming the
leader of that team. I've came into Apple in the
early nineties, which was a period where co founder Steve
(01:53):
Jobs was effectively banished from Apple. I talked about that
in the last episode, and you know, Jobs at or
he had been pushed to the side. In the mid eighties,
he left Apple and founded a different computer company called
Next Big End, Little E, Big X, Big T. This
company would end up designing computers meant for the educational sector,
(02:16):
at least primarily, but the computers were really expensive and
they had a fairly limited suite of software. Because you know,
software developers aren't likely to dedicate the time and resources
to make stuff for a platform that doesn't have a
very large install base. It just doesn't make sense. You're
never going to make back the investment you made in
(02:37):
order to make the thing in the first place. So
it would just make more sense as a developer to
create software for computers that a lot of people use,
instead of an upstart company that's trying to muscle its
way into a pre existing market. And over at Apple,
things had become pretty rocky, in no small part due
to the chaos going on with the team that was
(02:57):
responsible for building the next generation of the Macintosh operating system.
That whole project had ballooned out of control with feature
creep and internal struggles within the team, and so the
then CEO Gil Emilio moved to acquire the Next Computer Company,
and the idea was that while Next wasn't getting much
(03:20):
traction in the market, it's operating system was really good
and it could serve as the next generation of the
mac operating system, and the internal build of the next
mac os at Apple could be set aside for the
time being. Maybe it could be rescued and fixed. But
Emilio felt that in the state that it was in
(03:42):
within Apple, it just wasn't going to be ready for
the market, so he decided to acquire Next and use
that operating system instead. So Apple acquires Next, and then
Steve Jobs came back to Apple, initially as an advisor,
but within short order he became the interim CEO. And
then eventually the permanent CEO, and Jobs was not happy. Actually,
(04:07):
if you read up on various stories of Apple's history,
there are a lot of tales about Jobs not being happy,
and part of that was the fact that Jobs, as
standards were at the tippy tippy top, and when products
failed to meet his standards, he got mad. Jobs had
come back to Apple and hated what he saw. Apple
(04:29):
was producing so many different models of Macintosh computers because
the previous leaders thought the way to address the issues
Apple had was to expand the product line by making
a ton of different Macintosh models. But it got to
the point where the company's own sales team had trouble
explaining why one model would be more suitable for a
(04:53):
specific customer over any other model. If your sales team
can't say, oh, based upon your needs, this what you
should get, then you know you're in trouble. So the
message was buddled, the products were confusing, and Jobs was enraged,
and he wasn't shy about voicing his opinions. Now, i've
(05:15):
as the head of industrial design, was really concerned for
his team. Jobs was particularly angry about the direction of
Apple's design team. He said that he felt the quote
unquote sex had been taken out of the products that
they no longer had the appearance of something people wanted
to interact with, and word got around that Jobs was
(05:35):
planning on looking outside Apple to find someone in design
to come in and realign the company and to lead
that team, meaning I would be out of a job.
So I've talked with his team, and they even discussed
the possibility of creating their own design firm if the
whole department should find itself sacked. But I've advised his
(05:56):
colleagues to wait and see what Jobs would do, and
the team created a kind of showcase within the design department.
So I've knew it was just a matter of time
before Jobs would make his way to the design department
and see exactly how things had gone totally wrong, at
least in Jobs's mind. And I've wanted to showcase the
(06:17):
work his team had created with designs that the company
had not accepted. These are these were ideas that no
one else in Apple had approved, So they put on
display a lot of the more radical designs that had
failed to find their way through Apple's bureaucratic process. And
sure enough, when Jobs did come down and take a
(06:37):
look at the design department. He was impressed by what
he saw. The things that he was looking at from
the team, they weren't at all representative of the actual
products the Jobs had found so boring and uninspired. According
to Trip Michael, the author of After Steve, a book
that I used extensively in my research here, Jobs turned
(06:59):
to I've and essentially he said, you haven't been very effective,
have you. I am paraphrasing because Jobs could use a
lot of what uh Mr Spock would call colorful metaphors
in his language. What Jobs meant was that I've and
his team were astounding designers. They were creating amazing work,
(07:21):
but they weren't adept at getting that work accepted by
leadership at Apple. And that's, you know, a big component
of being a department head. It's not enough to be
an effective manager. A leader has to have vision and
a way to communicate that vision to others and get
buy in to get them to support that vision. So
a leader has to be able to convince other people
(07:42):
to try new things, or at the very least come
to the table and negotiate a way forward. I've was
unquestionably a great designer, but it might have been that
he was not yet a great leader, at least in
that sense. But then Jobs also felt that the previous
regime at Apple was rife within competence, and so while
(08:04):
Jobs gave I've a little bit of a hard time,
it was clear that he placed almost all the blame
on Apple's previous leadership, that the company had become so
weighed down by people afraid to take risks, or more
interested in competing directly against the ensconced PC market rather
than creating a compelling alternative, that they were incapable of
(08:26):
listening to I've and his team, and so really the
fault was on them more than it was on i've.
And the good news was that Jobs saw this and
felt that the design team was doing great work, that
they were brilliant and innovative. So Jobs knew that the
department was the right group of people to make his
vision of what Apple could be into a reality, and
(08:48):
this began the working relationship that would develop into a
fierce friendship between Jobs and I've. And it also meant
Jobs would end his search for a new head of design,
so i was safe in his job. Jobs and I've
bonded over a shared fascination with the form of products,
and and by form, I really actually mean a bunch
(09:11):
of different things, not just the physical shape, although that
is a huge part of it. I've was actually really
obsessed with materials. He would carefully go through each and
every sample of various materials to determine what was right
for any given project. He had in his mind specific
(09:31):
effects that the materials should pull off, whether it was
a shiny metal surface or a very smooth curve of
glass or a pebbled leather cover. And Jobs was very
much the same way. So the two spent ages talking
about different materials and what was possible with each one,
(09:51):
or what limitations existed with them, and how to find
a solution to meet those limitations or you know, in
most cases is with I've, if he found fault in
a material, he was far more likely to just reject
the material outright and find something better that met his expectations,
even if it meant scouring the entire world to find
what he wanted. And Jobs wasted no time. Once he
(10:14):
returned to the leadership role, he gave the Newton program
the Acts in n I talked about the Apple Newton
in the last episode that was a little less than
six years after the Apple Newton had debuted, and that
was an attempt to create a new product line, but
because of some real limitations with the hardware and more
(10:36):
more over, the software, it did not work. It was
a failure. But Steve Jobs didn't just acts products. He
acted entire layers of management. Jobs essentially laid off the
general managers overseeing the various business units within Apple. In fact,
he did that in a single day, like it was
(10:57):
an armageddon, where he laid off, you know, legions of
general managers, and that probably contributed to some people at
Apple using the phrase getting jobs as a way of
saying you got fired. Apple had created silos of departments,
so little feudal states, each with its own leader that
(11:17):
was largely cut off from the other departments, and Jobs
knocked those silos down. He essentially reorganized the entire company
into a more cohesive and collaborative operation. Now the teams
would still have leaders, you know, like I've was leader
of the designers for industrial design, and these would be
people who had deep expertise in whatever field it was
(11:39):
that they were representing. So they were people who could
manage others, but they also knew how to do the
stuff that the team was doing. You know that the
team they were managing was doing. Jobs said, One really
big mistake that he and Wozniak made way back in
the seventies was to bring in people who are really
adept at business, but they didn't know how computers worked,
(12:02):
and that that disconnect led to all sorts of trouble
down the line. And then Jobs gave I've a critical assignment.
Jobs knew that the company needed to launch a product
that would put it back in the minds of consumers.
They needed to capture the rebellious and innovative spirit of
the company in its early days. Jobs also saw how
(12:24):
the Internet was playing an increasingly important role in well everything,
and so he wanted Apple to create a desktop computer
with the express purpose of being a machine that would
work well with the Internet. Jobs also wanted to ditch
some traditional features found on most personal computers of the day.
(12:45):
For example, he didn't want this new computer to have
a floppy disk drive, something that was standard on other
machines at the time. He also wanted to ditch serial boards, which,
if you're not familiar, were used as a communication interface
with computers. They could connect with other peripherals right and
send information to and receive information from those peripherals. Jobs
(13:06):
instead wanted to incorporate USB technology in this new Apple computer,
and he also gave Ive's team one other directive. He
wanted the design for this computer to be quote joyful
end quote, and I've and his team would take on
that challenge. We're gonna take a quick break. When we
(13:28):
come back, we'll talk more about this project and how
it really helped turn things around for Apple. But first
these messages. So Johnny I've and his team got this
assignment from Steve Jobs, and they got to work. Uh,
(13:50):
they had the parameters and then pretty much a blank
canvas that they could use where they could create the
next generation of consumer Macintosh computers. It would be called
the iMac. And yeah, this was the beginning of Apple
using that lower case I in front of its various
product names. The iMac would be the first of those
(14:12):
those products, the first major one anyway. So the team
led by Johnny I've decided that the computer should be
innovative but not threatening. So I needed to look futuristic,
but it also needed to look accessible. It couldn't be
something where you're like, oh, that looks cool, but I
don't want to touch it. So one big point of
(14:33):
inspiration was the cartoon The Jetsons. You know, Meet George
Jetson and so on. Well, the Jetsons lived in a
world that was simultaneously futuristic and also anchored in the
aesthetic of the nineteen fifties. While the iMac wouldn't look
like it came straight out of the nineteen fifties, they
did have elements of the familiar along with the novel. Now,
(14:57):
the original iMac was not a flat screen computer like
later models would turn into. It was an all in
one computer that looked like a very colorful CRT monitor.
Before the iMac, the team had created a laptop prototype
that had translucent plastic built into the body of the computer,
(15:17):
and I've decided he wanted to incorporate that element into
the iMac design. I've presented his ideas to Jobs, and
Jobs rejected a lot of them, but one that Jobs
really liked was a sketch that I've showed him, and
I've described it as a computer that looks as though
it was about to jump off the desk and go
(15:39):
do something, and that really resonated with Jobs. So I've
returned to his team with Jobs as input, and they
refined that design. They began to move more in that
specific direction, and they created a model. The Jobs like
so much they would actually take that to other departments
in order to show it off to them. The team
chose a polycr abinate shell for the computer for a
(16:02):
couple of reasons. One, it's a very strong material, so
it's it's resilient, but also it can hold a tinted
color really effectively. It doesn't fade over time, at least
not rapidly, so so it would hold whatever color you
wanted to give it. And as for those colors, they
initially created computer shells that were either orange or purple,
(16:26):
or a bluish greenish color that would end up being
called Bondie blue. The process to make the shells was expensive,
both because of needing to make the polycarbonate translucent, and
also the process itself was sort of a customized one.
They couldn't rely on existing manufacturing processes. It all had
to be built from scratch in order to mass manufacture these. Now,
(16:50):
this meant that it would cost Apple sixty dollars per
unit per per computer case, just the case, not the internals,
and that was much more expensive than typical computer case was. However,
I was very happy to find out that Steve Jobs
wasn't really concerned about manufacturing costs because Steve Jobs saw
(17:10):
the need to bring customers back to Apple as well
as to attract new customers to the company, and he
thought it was going to be shortsighted to worry about
production costs and that this was really going to be
a swing for the fences kind of product. A we
need a home run, so we're gonna swing as hard
as we can. So because the case was translucent, I've
(17:34):
and his team worked with other departments to figure out
how the circuitry layout that would be in the computer
underneath would be visible and attractive. They wanted it to
look sophisticated and not messy, So this was another consideration
that really set Apple apart. It would also be the
foundation for the types of computer rigs that are are
(17:55):
very popular today. There are a lot of computer cases
out there that have trend his parent glass panels so
that you can see the interior right. You can see
the the fans and the various components, many of them
decked out with L E. D s and that's the
kind of rig that gamers prefer these days, and I
feel that we can thank Apple in particular, and specifically
(18:16):
Johnny I've and his team for setting us down that
kind of pathway. I feel like the iMac was sort
of an early example of that aesthetic that extends all
the way down to today. Obviously, the shapes are very
different today than the iMac was, but there are those
those elements I feel that have carried through. When it
(18:38):
came time to unveil the iMac, things nearly went pear shaped.
One of the components the Jobs really wanted in this
computer's design was a c D slot so that users
could just insert a compact disc into the slot. It
would go into the computer and then they could, you know,
load information from the c D. So he wanted it
(19:00):
to be a little slit in the computer and to
be as unobtrusive as possible. But when it came time
to actually unveil the design and Jobs looked at the
prototype that he was going to show off. He saw
that the iMac had a c D tray that would
extend out from the computer. You would put the CD
into the tray and then retract the c D tray
(19:23):
back into the computer and he was furious. But when
he was lashing out super angry that the thing he
wanted wasn't part of the iMac, he was told the
problem was the technology he wanted in the computer didn't
exist yet. No one had built a working version of
what he was envisioning, and that, you know, that was
(19:46):
the issue. Johnny. I've actually stepped up to talk Steve
Jobs down, Johnny. I've said, you know what you're thinking
of right now, that's the next one of these, that's
the next iMac. We can't do it yet, but ex
generation we will. However, we have to ship this version.
And remarkably, Johnny Ives approach really worked. It calmed down
(20:09):
Steve Jobs and he went on to rehearse what the
presentation that would unveil the iMac would become. And you
can actually watch that presentation online. This was done way
back in so if you do find a copy of
it that there are copies on YouTube. The video quality
is pretty bad, but it is late nineties and you
(20:30):
can watch as Jobs calls the iMac quote the excitement
of the Internet, the simplicity of Macintosh end quote. Jobs
then goes on to essentially slam the competition, saying that
consumer computers that are on the market are all slow
and ugly, that they have lousy displays, and if they
(20:52):
have any networking capability in them at all, it's pretty limited.
So he was really trying to set up how the
iMac would contrast with what he was claiming to be
the status quo. And the technical specs on the iMac were,
you know, they were impressive for the time, but you
would laugh at them now because Jobs talks about having
a ton of memory in this computer, which was thirty
(21:14):
two whole megabytes worth, and that the processor ran it
up blistering two three mega hurts. That processor was the
G three power PC processor, by the way, that's why
this computer is sometimes referred to as the iMac G three,
because that was the processor that powered it. But he
really wanted to focus on the impact of industrial design
(21:36):
of the computer, and that's really what we want to
talk about. Two. We don't want to I'm not going
to run down all the technical specs because that's not
really what these episodes are about. We're talking about the
aesthetic of Apple. So when Jobs revealed the iMac, the
crowd could only see the front of the machine. Initially
they could just see the face of the iMac right,
(21:57):
it looked like a sleek, rounded computer, so instead of
sharp corners, that had rounded corners. And while they could
only see one face of the computer initially, they went
ahead and went banana. And then Jobs brought in a
camera that could you know, the camera operators could circle
(22:17):
the iMac and the feed was sent live to movie
screens that were in the presentation hall, so everyone could
see the translucent plastic along the sides and the back
of the computer. Um and Jobs showed off how the
iMac had a handle as well in the back, like
along the top, and that was a design factor that
(22:39):
Johnny I've had suggested because he thought it looked cool.
It wasn't practical. People weren't going to be carrying around
their iMac computers everywhere, but it was something that just
made it look like you wanted to get your hands
on it. That was the whole point of it. So
this was not a practical component added into the design.
(23:01):
It was one at least not practical in the sense
of physically practical. It was practical in the sense of
marketing because it was another thing that made you want
to pick one of these things up and purchase it. Right.
So Jobs agreed to that design change, even though it
meant that the production costs of the case of the
computer would be even higher because it would require a
(23:22):
special approach to make this handle that's incorporated into the
case itself. Jobs would end up saying it looks like
it came from another planet, a good planet, one that
has better designers, which huge accolades for Johnny. I've right
saying that Johnny Ivan his team were better than all
(23:43):
the other designers on Earth. Now, the IMAX solved a
ton of issues. For one thing, the all in one
design meant that Apple could actually ship an iMac in
a single box that contained the computer, the keyboard, and
the mouse. More on the mouse in the second there
were no components to connect apart from the keyboard and
(24:03):
mouse to the computer, right, So you didn't have to
connect speakers to it, you didn't have to connect the
monitor to the tower. All of that was integrated. It
was one thing, So that really simplified the setup process Apple,
and to make sure that the customer wouldn't need to
install any software or do anything complicated, they wanted it
(24:24):
to work out of the box. Like this was the
beginning of that idea of it just works, although that
wasn't how Steve Jobs described it yet he would later
describe Apple products as it just works. That would become
one of kind of the mottos of the company. So
all you really had to do was take the iMac
out of the box, plug it in, turn it on,
(24:45):
you know, have the keyboard and mouse connected, and you
were good to go. They really simplified the process of
connecting to the Internet as well and doing so well
using a really attractively designed computer case. And it really
was a showcase for ives work and his team's work.
Their collaboration on each design element got the spotlight. And
(25:07):
like I said, the iMac was a watershed product for Apple.
The company had been in danger of bankruptcy due to
mismanagement of the previous regime, and Apple and Jobs both
needed a slam dunk hit or a grand slam hit
if you prefer, and the iMac delivered. Now, I did
mention the computer mouse that was one part of the
(25:29):
iMac that was not a slam dunk. The computer mouse
for the iMac was small and it was circular in shape,
not like egg shaped or oblong like your typical computer mouse,
but more like almost like a perfect circle, and it
also had a very short chord. So it was very
pretty to look at. It had the same translucent polycarbonate
(25:52):
plastic and had the same color features as the parent
iMac that it came with, But the mouse itself was
awkward to use. The size and the shape meant it
was a little challenging to keep things on track, because
if the mouse rotated even a little bit under your hand,
then it meant whenever you moved the mouse, the cursor
(26:13):
was going to go in the direction you had not
intended it to go on um and the cable length
also meant it could get a little hard to use
as well. It could, you know, limit you. And so
this particular mouse, which would gain the derogatory nickname the
hockey Buck, wasn't lauded like the iMac was. It was
(26:34):
very pretty, but it was not practical, and this would
not be the last time that I've and his team
would design something that would be criticized as emphasizing form
over function. But the iMac it became the fastest selling
computer in Apple's history. At that point. The company moved
eight hundred thousand units by the end of its first
(26:56):
year in existence. More importantly, it marked a reverse soul
of Apple's fortunes. So for two years, essentially the company
had been reporting massive losses. It had been operating in
the red, but the IMAX popularity gave Apple a profitable
quarter in early and then it was off to the races.
(27:18):
The company that so many people had shrugged off as
having lost its way appeared to be not just back
on track, but leagues ahead of the competition. And it
was largely thanks to Ive's design team that tam was
already hard at work on another product, one similar in
many ways to the iMac, and this was the eye Book,
(27:42):
which was a nod to the iMac and the intended
purpose to serve as a computer that could quickly connect
to the Internet. So this was a clamshell laptop computer
that also featured rounded corners, so you didn't have these
sharp corners of your typical laptop. It also featured colorful
rubber accents that bordered a polycarbonate white plastic case to
(28:05):
give it kind of a whimsical appearance. There are elements
of translucent plastic in that case as well, and a
lot of the design elements that made the IMAX so
compelling found their way into the Eyebook design. By the
time Steve Jobs is ready to unveil this new computer
in nine, a year after the iMac had come out,
(28:28):
the crowd was already on board. You should really watch
this presentation, the Eyebook unveiling presentation, to see how the
cult of Apple was off to a big start. Even
as early as nine, the crowd had not even seen
a single image of the laptop. But as soon as
(28:48):
Jobs revealed that Apple had a new consumer laptop to
show off after referencing the incredibly popular iMac, he was
already getting crazy amounts of applause. He got even more
when he revealed that the name of the laptop was Eyebook,
and he still hadn't actually shown off the ding dang
darn thing. Because Apple was known as using this naming
(29:09):
convention of power in front of its professional grade hardware,
so a power Mac was meant for professionals, whereas the
iMac was meant as a consumer product. Well, the professional
grade horrible Mac computer was called a power book. So
he said, since we have the iMac, this is going
(29:32):
to be the Eyebook, and that alone got a huge
ovation from the crowd. I mean, it really was bonkers,
and Jobs had to have been flying high. His audience
was already on his side. He didn't have to win
them over. They were providing him a ton of energy.
So he then went through the technical specs of the laptop,
(29:54):
which again not really important for this podcast, so I'm
not going to go through them, And then he finally
showed off the design. And when he did, he showed
off this tangerine colored, rubber accented laptop, so like, all
the color parts are rubber that overlay the white polycarbonate plastic.
(30:15):
And it was a nice nod to Ive's past I
think because in case you don't remember from the last episode,
Johnny I've came to Apple after he had been working
at a design consultancy firm called Tangerine. Even the Apple
logo on the front was tangerine and color against the
white polycarbonate plastic on the back. You had the entire
(30:38):
bottom of the laptop coated in this, you know, tangerine
shaded rubber, except for the Apple logo which was in white.
So very nice little accent nods. Jobs continued with the presentation,
even though you can hear the audience roaring like he
didn't pause for them too a shout out their their
(31:02):
joy at seeing this, and they would roar again when
Jobs revealed that the computer had a handle near the
hinge of the laptop, which would let you carry the
laptop like a briefcase, which just goes to show we
were easier to please way back in. He also showed
how the laptop didn't have a latch, so it wouldn't
latch closed and you wouldn't have to press anything in
(31:22):
order to open it. Uh, the hinge was had enough
tension in it to keep the laptop closed under normal conditions.
He also showed how the communication ports didn't have covers,
which made them easier to access. You can really see
ives influence here, his desire to make the products something
that you would want to use, and trying to avoid
any components that would make that experience frustrating. Jobs announced
(31:44):
that the Eyebook would be available in the colors tangerine
or blueberry upon their first release. Later on, Apple would
include a couple of other colors. They had Indigo, graphite,
and key line. I never owned an Eyebook, but I
have to say that the color and do signs really
actually do look super inviting. I mean, I know that
my phone is technically more advanced than those computers are,
(32:08):
but still I kind of would like a Tangerine eyebook
because it's just really pretty. And that goes to show
how i'vean his team were geniuses. They tapped into something
really powerful. They were able to come up with an
aesthetic that had an instant appeal, and I've, with his
tendency towards simplicity and minimalism, kept his team from adding
(32:28):
in superfluous or distracting features or embellishments. Now we're gonna
take another quick break. When we come back, i'll talk
about and I've designed product that sadly did not see
the kind of success that the iMac and eyebook would.
But we'll do that after these messages. So I don't
(32:56):
want to give the impression that Johnny I've was incapable
of failure. We already saw that the IMAX mouse was
kind of a misstep that people didn't really like using it.
And if you don't like using a product, that's a
that's a huge design problem. Right. It can look as
gorgeous as anything, but if people don't like using it,
it's a failure. Well, ivan Apple did turn out a
(33:20):
few misfires. The eyebook and iMac were both really well
performing products, but one that wasn't was the power Mac
G four Cube, which had a G four processor in it,
which is what gave it its name, just as the
iMac G three would be called that well. The power
(33:41):
Mac G four Cube was meant for professional users because
it had the power designation right, so it was more
powerful and included more features than what you would find
in consumer Macintosh computers, and also had a hefty price
tag to go along for the ride. The design of
the power Cube was incredibly striking, because, as the name
(34:03):
tells you, the computer's form factor was that of a
cube rather than a tower. However, I should mention it
wasn't a perfect cube and measured seven point seven by
seven point seven by nine point eight inches or twenty
by twenty by twenty five centimeters. Further, the cube had
a housing that was made of clear acrylic glass, and
(34:27):
i've's team chose that design because it gave the computer
this sort of illusion of hovering just above the desk
it would sit on because the bottom of the case
of this acrylic case would uh hold up the computer
a couple of inches. The computer had no internal fan
inside it to dissipate heat. Instead, it relied on a
(34:49):
grill in the top of the computer case that allowed
heat to escape passively. It also didn't have a physical
power button. Instead, it had a touch sensitive button that
as soon as you made contact with it, would power
on the computer or would make a power down computer
go to sleep, which was a problem some people had
where they would accidentally graze this touch sensitive button and
(35:12):
turn their working computer into sleep mode, and that was frustrating.
The cubic form factor placed other limitations on this computer,
namely in order to fit all the components into that
small space, and meant Apple would not be able to
include expansion slots, so you couldn't expand out the capabilities
of the computer beyond what it could do out of
(35:34):
the box. The trail list CD slot that jobs had
wanted for the iMac would find its way into the
G four Cube and Johnny I've relished the challenge of
creating a form factor of a computer that was unique
among PCs. And while the design meant Apple had to
make some massive compromises, Johnny Ivan his team did manage
(35:57):
to get it all working, and the process really solidified
a shift in Apple's operations. The design team would now
have a much larger influence in product development than it
had ever had before because Jobs was such a huge
ally for industrial design. While the physical appearance of the
(36:18):
Cube was striking, it failed to find a real market.
Critics said that Jobs actually didn't identify a target market
for the device, and that the lack of features, paired
with a high sticker price meant that most folks in
the market for a more powerful Mac We're gonna go
with a more traditional PowerMac computer, not the Cube. Also,
(36:39):
the injection molding fabrication process for the Cube's case sometimes
had errors which introduced flaws like cracks in the clear
acrylic case, so some customers were frustrated that it wasn't
up to the standards of the previous models. Where you know,
Johnny I was known for going and inspecting the manufacturing
(37:01):
process to make absolutely certain that the design he created
would come out flawlessly. This was a case where that
did not happen, at least in some instances. Leading up
to the Cube's release, Apple had enjoyed nearly three full
years of profitability, but the Cube underperformed drastically, and Apple
said that poor Cube sales led to a ninety million
(37:25):
dollar shortfall for the company just won the cube alone.
I think it was a hundred eighty million dollars less
than what they had projected total, so the Cube accounting
for about half of that shortfall, and so that was
a pretty tough quarter, and it was another reminder that
leaning more on form over function can sometimes have negative consequences.
(37:48):
Now we'll say that despite the poor sales, the presentation
the Jobs gave in order to introduce the cube went
over like gangbusters, so that initial excitement didn't progress into
sales unfortunately. But it was another case where the cold
of Apple was in full display. Jobs came out and
the crowd went gaga for the presentation once they saw
(38:11):
the design of the cube, particularly when Steve Jobs turned
the case upside down and revealed that there was a
handle on the underside of the computer and by unlocking
the handle, he could pull out the internals of the
computer in one smooth motion. You didn't have to fiddle
(38:31):
with with screws or anything like that and remove a panel,
You just lifted it straight out of the case. I
will say that was an amazing design choice, like something
that made it super easy to access the internals, really
really cool. It's just unfortunate that because of the form factor,
there wasn't a whole lot you could do, Like you
couldn't really slot in expansion cards into it or anything
(38:54):
because there wasn't the space for it. But the design
choice to make that a feature super cool, now it
just didn't sell well. So it was a kind of
a black mark on Johnny i'ves record at that point,
not that it was entirely his fault, I mean it
was it was a company wide failure, right because again,
(39:18):
the decision to go with that form factor placed so
many limitations and restrictions on the rest of the teams
that it was pretty much impossible to create something that would,
you know, go toe to toe with the other more powerful,
professional level computers that Apple was creating and also justify
the very high price tag. So a lot of people said,
(39:42):
it's more like a very expensive toy rather than a
computer that justifies the high price. However, it was the
next big product line that would really push Apple into
a new trajectory. It was the product line that I
argue really saved Apple and put it on a pathway
(40:03):
to becoming ridiculously uh successful. The product wouldn't come out
till two one, and the first really breakthrough model of
it wouldn't emerge until two four. I am, of course
talking about the iPod. Now, I have done episodes on
(40:24):
the iPod before, so we're not going to go through
all of that. I will say it was not the
first MP three player. It was Apple's first MB three player,
but it wasn't the first in the world. So Apple
is very rarely first to market with a technology that's
not really the company's m oh, that's not what it does. Instead,
Apple is known for designing top of class examples of
(40:48):
technologies that someone else has already created. So no, iPod
was not the first MP three player. It was just
the first one that would become a runaway success, though
as I said, it took a bit of time for
that to happen. Now, the first model of the iPod
had some features that the company would quickly drop. For
one thing, it had a mechanical method for scrolling through songs.
(41:12):
If you looked at the face of the iPod, you
would see there was this circular device that's on the
face of the iPod. Underneath the screen and you would
put your thumb on this and you would physically turn
this circle. It was a scroll wheel in other words,
and you would use it to click through playlists or songs.
(41:34):
You can scroll through menus this way. Um. But it
physically would turn on its axis. So it had this
tactile uh feature that other iPods would lack in the future,
probably because this was a mechanical point of failure. Although
there's something really satisfying I think of turning a mechanical component.
(41:58):
I mean, we've seen plenty of fidget devices that are
that's all they are, right, They're just a little physical
things that you can play with in order to, you know,
burn off some excess energy. And the original iPod had
one of those mechanical elements to it. Uh. Sadly, I
guess well, I guess it depends on your perspective. In
(42:20):
my view. Sadly, they would get rid of that in
the future versions of the iPod. But surrounding this scroll
circle were four buttons that made up a perimeter around
the circle, and these buttons had controls like play and pause,
and rewind and fast forward, that kind of thing. Now,
the original iPod could hold about a thousand songs, and
(42:40):
it lacked a few things that really prevented this first
generation from becoming a superstar. For one thing, it didn't
have a USB port. Instead, it had a FireWire port,
which really limited how you would be able to use it. Also,
there was no compatible software that you could run on
a PC to interact with an iPod, so it that
(43:00):
if you wanted an iPod, you had to have an
Apple computer in order to make it work. And those
limitations kept the original iPod from becoming the success it
would later be, but it did show the direction of
the company and it set the tone for moving forward.
The next generation of the device ditched the mechanical wheel.
Instead it had a touch sensitive wheel so capacity of
(43:23):
touch instead of mechanically turning a circle around. But physically
it resembled the first generation. It was not a huge
departure in design. Uh the mechanical wheel was gone, but
the layout of the device was pretty much the same.
There were a couple of other minor changes of the
FireWire port then had a cover instead of it being
open like it was in the first generation of the iPod,
(43:46):
and ives team would take a larger departure with the
third edition of the iPod, the entire interface became touch based.
There was not yet a touch screen, but there were
touch buttons instead of mechanical buttons. Two access all the controls.
IVES team moved the control buttons above the touch wheel
(44:06):
rather than around the perimeter of it, and the team
would continue to make adjustments to the iPods design, including
the creation of spinoff products. You know, you had the
iPod Mini, which only lasted two generations, and you had
the iPod Nano, which was the replacement for the iPod Mini,
so was an even smaller version of the iPod, and
(44:26):
then later on you had the iPod Shuffle as well.
We'll probably touch on those a little bit in the
next episode that we won't go into as much detail
as we have for the you know, i amac and
eyebook and the Cube for example, so we're gonna leave
it off here, and in our next episode we'll talk
about how the iPod design would influence Apple's direction and
(44:47):
the general public's perception of the company. I mean, we
call them podcasts because we named it after the iPod.
That's how definitive a product that became. And we'll talk
about ives role in creating this kind of momentum. Then
we'll also talk about other products, the big one obviously
being the iPhone and how that design ended up just
(45:12):
cementing Apple's place as a tastemaker in consumer electronics. And
then we'll also talk about the various things that played
a part in I've becoming less enamored of Apple and
ultimately his decision one to leave the company as an employee,
(45:33):
and then too to essentially cut ties with Apple by
not extending the contract that his design firm had established
with the company. Those will be things we'll talk about
in the next episode in this series. I hope you're
enjoying these episodes. If you have suggestions for topics I
should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach
(45:54):
out and tell me. You can do that in one
of two ways. One way is to download the free
i art radio app, navigate to the tech Stuff podcast page,
use that little microphone icon to record a voice message
up to thirty seconds in length, and let me know
through there, Or you can reach out on Twitter. The
handle for the show is text Stuff hs W and
(46:15):
I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff
is an i Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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