Following up the quick success of the latest MacBook Pro Apple CDO Jony Ive sat back in his chair and smiled. He calmly stroked his iPhone 7 and chuckled. Apple has reached a pinnacle of design success, 3.5mm jacks and only using USB-C be damned. Now the people would actually see what Jony Ive has seen all these years because Apple, in its infinite quest of revolutionary design and innovation, has released a visual guide. A glimpse inside the heads of its design teams over the years. A final farewell to Steve Jobs. A coffee table book titled "Designed by Apple in California".
If there is one thing Apple loves to do, is look itself in the mirror while self pleasuring its product line in front of the tech press and consumers. Apple loves Apple more than anything in the world and that has created an ecosystem of unique products and industry changing design decisions. It has also created a reputation of luxury exclusivity and narcissistic tech idolization. This book, released today, is the pinnacle of decades of doing things 'differently'.
"The idea of genuinely trying to make something great for humanity was Steve's motivation from the beginning, and it remains both our ideal and our goal as Apple looks to the future," said Ive in a press release. "This archive is intended to be a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years. We hope it brings some understanding to how and why they exist, while serving as a resource for students of all design disciplines."
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Jobs' motivation for creating something great for humanity was never in question. His goal was always to create products that changed how people interacted with the technological world. Since his death however, the overreaching goal of Apple has been to create a luxury brand with sharp exclusivity and limited inter-connectivity with the rest of the tech landscape. This is evident in creating a coffee table book of pictures of Apple products that itself is a luxurious reminder of where Apple is now.
The book is available in two sizes and printed on "specially milled, custom-dyed paper with gilded matte silver edges, using eight color separations and low-ghost ink." It has been in development for eight years (unlike your coffee table book with silly pictures of nature). The small version will run you $199 while the large version will cost $299. That's right. Apple knows that innovation in coffee table book design means a higher price point.
In the book's forward Ive writes "While this is a design book, it is not about the design team, the creative process, or product development. It is an objective representation of our work that, ironically, describes who we are. It describes how we work, our values, our preoccupations, and our goals. We have always hoped to be defined by what we do rather than by what we say."
This self glamorizing narcissism by Apple truly takes the company to a new level. The level of Bond Villain. The level of Patrick Bateman flexing his biceps in the mirror, but with less sociopathy. We know it's not about the design team or the creative process, we know that it's Apple's best way of trying to show the highly romanticized view it takes of its own product line.
While it is perfectly acceptable for a company to truly love the product it produces, putting it all in a book and charging hundreds of dollars for it just seems like Apple has finally gotten lost in its own reflection. As much as this book is for Apple itself, it is true fanboy porn.
"Designed by Apple in California" is available exclusively in the Apple store. Don't expect to be able to use your iTunes gift cards for this one.
