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September 04, 2004
Do what you want to do.
After a month’s delay, Apple unveiled the new iMac G5 at Apple Expo Paris. There’s a lot to comment on, most of which has already been said elsewhere. Still, might as well sum a few things up:
- Apple’s learned a lot about heat dissipation and compact design, and used it here.
- The system bus runs at 1/3 the CPU speed; on the Power Mac G5, it’s 1/2 the CPU speed.
- The aluminum stand clashes with the white plastic of the case, but it’s same stand the new displays use. Fewer parts for Apple to have fabricated.
- This ain’t no Gateway Profile 3 remix, and John Dvorak is full of shit.
- If I was in the market for a new desktop, I’d be getting a tricked-out 20” iMac G5 - and it’d cost me $400 less than the PowerMac G4/933 and 17” Apple LCD I got a incredible deal on in 2002.
That said, here’s something I really wanted to point out: if you watch the iPod-influenced introduction video for the iMac G5, you’ll hear Jonathan Ive (Apple’s much-celebrated VP of Industrial Design) make a comment at 1:27 in the video:
It just lets you do the stuff that you want to do.
Back in 1989, I had a phone interview with Apple Marketing. They were looking for people to be in a new college-student-oriented advertising campaign, and had been given my name by our campus rep. While I was ultimately passed over (because, although I used Macs extensively in school and work, I didn’t own one of my own), there was one part of the interview that I very clearly remember:
“So, why do you use Macs?”
After a rambling discourse, I summed up with the following:
“It lets me do what I want to do.”
They liked that. They liked it a lot. It really does sum up much of the apparent Apple design philosophy for hardware and software - letting you, the user, do what you want to do. I’m not so full of myself to think that my little phrase somehow was stolen by Ives - it’s just wonderful to hear someone at Apple saying, putting it on the table:
They make stuff that lets you do what you want to do.
Posted by jim at September 4, 2004 11:43 AM