Design and Culture Icon

"We don’t have good language to talk about this kind of thing.... In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service...

.....That is the furthest thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started. This is what customers pay us for — to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We’re supposed to be really good at this. That doesn’t mean we don’t listen to customers, but it’s hard for them to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it."

 -- by Steve Jobs

The above was quoted from the New York Times, re Steve Jobs expressing his focus on design in a Fortune magazine article in the year 2000, the year after I graduated with a degree in industrial design.  I couldn't have defined design better myself.  Even back then, while working on my industrial design degree, I was already tracking the comeback of Apple.  And I have entrepreneur uncles who used Macintosh computers in their businesses pre-colorful iMacs.  So about 5 years or so later -- after some messy experiences with Windows PCs and laptops and my non-existent Windows OS reinstall and formatting skills (lol) -- I finally got my own, an iBook running on a PowerPC G4 chip by Motorola (the last of its kind).  

my old Apple iBook G4, at a hotel in Germany

Along with the above info (only emphasized by the Fortune magazine interview), once I got that Mac and used its OS and hardware, I never went back.. hehe!  Best decision I made and money well spent. 

Like a Time magazine article mentioned, Steve Jobs believed he was doing people a service:
"They're busy doing whatever they do best, and they want us to do whatever we do best.  Their lives are crowded.  They have other things to do than think about how to integrate their computers and devices." 
 


Indeed it's not so much the physical aspect of it that was the reason I decided to get a Mac, it was as a user and the advantages and productivity and performance it'd bring me over using a competing OS that made me decide to get a Mac.  It made things simpler.  I didn't have to be too technical about hardware specs 'cause I know already whatever hardware it might have, would surely be the next best one or next generation to be used by the rest of the Windows-compatible PCs.  And when it comes to the OS, well, enough said.  hehe!  It's like buying a Mercedes Benz with its benchmark features (some of which later came to be used by the car industry, i.e. ABS, etc).  If I'm spending money on something I know I'd be using everyday, and if that would also mean less computer problems needing extra time and effort troubleshooting down the road, then I might as well get the best I can afford, si?  It's just a bonus that it looked quite lovely at the same time.  hehehe.

My iBook is still hale and hearty, 'cept for a non-working keyboard, 5 years after I bought it.  I don't know how many other PC or laptop models from other manufacturers and bought on the same timeframe can say the same thing.  I now use a Macbook Pro on Lion OSX. 

Reading the NYT article, I agree.  Steve Jobs is an artist and culture icon.... a designer who transcended it by the impact he and Apple contributed to culture and way of life and business in the modern world.  One only hopes that even without him, Apple would continue to produce such great products.