Good Design is Good Business
Good Design is Good Business is something my grandfather used to say and he was something of a retail genius in his day. He definitely wasn't wrong about this statement as shown with the sales of products he introduced over the course of his lifetime.
Anyway, I think I got to thinking after reading some of the complaints about the updated MBP posts here where members think the unit needs to be redesigned and I speak I think primarily about externally now more internally. Internally updates are going to happen according to the development of faster processors and motherboards, SSD's etc. no matter what, but externally,why throw the baby out with the bath water?
This will be my first Mac ever and I know that this particular design has been out for a while now, and everyone knows what it looks like. It is very identifiable as a Apple product as is the ipod. The reason it is identifiable as an Apple product is the inherent creative design of the product, which to me is hard to beat.
It is a very beautiful and very well designed machine in both form and function,
and I say this not even owning one right now and still typing on my piece of junk gateway tablet, which I can't wait to sell on ebay!
It's not easy to design something like this, it takes a creative person, or a team a lot time, ingenuity and research to get to the finished product, and obviously it does not happen overnight.
So I guess what I am trying to say is one does not redesign a major work of art every 6 months, every year, a good design lasts a lifetime.
I think some might argue that this is not true in the computer world. I would disagree, the basic design probably can be improved here and there but when you have a winner, a Michelangelo, a da Vinci, a Caravaggio, a Cézanne or a Pollock, it will always be a beautifully well designed work of art, designed and crafted no matter how many years go by.
Personally along with the creative and innovative nature that Apple has always demonstrated, I also like their overall sense of consistency and branding.
I think most companies cater to the whims and desires of a fickle consumer who for the most part, wouldn't know a good design if it bit them in the ass.
And Please I'm not talking about those reading this post, anyone who has been with Apple for a while obviously knows a well designed product so please don't be offended by that statement, I am talking about the overall general
American public, here, I have to make that distinction here in terms of the overall sense of design.
I'm not saying this particular MBP or for that matter MB design will be here till judgment day, probably they will in a museum of design somewhere, only that whatever design introduced next will probably take some time for the creative team to come up with another Matisse or Picasso and then the other sadly takes the back seat. Perhaps something more along the lines of the Air with a huge SSD, thin, sleek, well designed and also have all the power the current line of laptops have. In time, In time.
Personally I think we live in a far too disposable world that wastes and throws away too much. I'm not going to get into the facts around this, its pointless, its a fact and we need to start doing something about it.
What would be truly innovative of Apple would be to recognize this fact, and start doing something about it. Like making a great looking product in the form of a laptop & desktop model that will be around for a long long time by making it completely upgradeable by the end user, everything from the processor to hard drives. In addition require consumers to return the old parts of the unit as part of a sales incentive for the new component which would then be properly recycled. This would obviously also retain their customer base by giving them this incentive discount.
What a practical idea that would be, just a thought, and I'm really sure there will be those out there that will even find fault with that,
oh well,
can't please everyone,
right?
