... is it today discontinued?
Braun Design
I think someone has already commented how the Apple designs of today look similar to the classic Braun designs of 50 years ago. The attached link is of designs by Deiter Rams. Although they were small for their time, it is not recommended that they hang from your ears.
http://www.designmuseum.org/__entry/4795?style=design_image_popup
That last image is very...
That last image is very nice, a good link.
I'm 31 so only got the tail end of listening to lp's, though I've got a big case full of records which rarely get listend too, has anyone noticed how hard it is to get a good mid - late 80's Marantz or Technics hi fi system? I used to see them around all the timne and they were really cheap. They are so much more attractive than these tinny little things with blue led lights all over them, big knobs a man can grab, so to speak.
ironic
that two apple designers, past and present are in the same post. I don't know if Mr. Brunner was responsible for that Rio product, but by looking at Pentagram's other products, it appears he is trying to give his customers what they think they need, not what he thinks they need. Definitely not a timeless design.
http://www.pentagram.com/en/partners-brunner.htm
Just to clarify.
HP. The record player by Dieter Rams was for 7" discs (45s) not the larger 12" LPs. Now you can appreciate how compact this design was - only slightly larger than a CD player. Obviously at that time there were other technical limitations with the electronics, motor, battery, etc.
There is something fascinatingly different....
about the purpose of using a similar minimalist form language in both the Braun and iPod.
Ram's Braun radio was a fantastically simple device. It was a radio with a dial that when spun allowed you to pick up a bunch of radio stations. It was a miniaturization of the radio to make it portable, which was itself a simple device to use that all persons in western society were long familiar with.
The function of the iPod was similarly single purpose (listening to recorded sound), and it was a miniaturization of all sound play back devices, be they tape players, or computers playing sound files.
But the iPod is a far more different creature from a computer or a tape player than a transistor radio is from a tube radio.
An iPod is basically a miniature hard drive with ear phones.
The user of a Braun transistor radio understood the concept of the small portable radio intuitively and was already trained to use a radio regardless of size. As a result, Rams minimalist design was more of a purely aesthetic statement, than a functional one. All transistor radios had a minimun of knobs an dials whether they looked like Ram's Braun, or like my brothers plastic and fabric covered GE.
Something different was at play with the iPod. Here the minimalist form language descended from the Braun radio served a serious practical function, as well as an aesthetic one. There had not been any large tubed iPods before the small digital iPods. People hand not long been used to using iPod like devices. It was actually new. And using an iPod is significantly more complicated than using a radio, because you have to load it with music before you can play it, and then you have to keep reloading it. And an iPod was overtly digital, an obvious cousin of digital computers albeit shrunken. There were many computer literate persons at the time the iPod came along, but there were many more potential customers who were only marginally so and who had little insight into how to rip and burn music, for instance. For the napster crowd, the iPod was a logical step, but for the eventual larger share of the iPod's market, it was as new and different as the car when it first achieved mass appeal. The wisdom of Apple was to say let's make the device as user friendly as possible. And so the form language that was borrowed from Ram's Braun radio had a practical function--it reduced the stress of people trying to learn to use it. It looked cool, it felt good in your hand, and it didn't intimidate you with clutter.
pt. 2
The iPod design helped you learn to do something new.
The Braun design added good taste to something you already understood.
I really do not think downloadable file music would have spread nearly as rapidly to portability had the iPod had a more cluttered, intimidating interface and look, or alternately, if it had had even less interface with more complexity of function. By the last observation, I doubt the iPod would have been the smash success it has become had it condenced the enormous complexity and multiplicity of function into a single dial the way iDrive tried to do in a BMW.
Steve may be an ego maniac and a perfectionist, and too much of a control freak, but he has a great sense of balance and elegance and of recognizing their presense or absense in the designs of those he hires.
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