Before I begin, this really isn’t intended as a criticism of Apple in any way – its still a great company and the best consumer electronics brand out there. But it is worth asking: has it lost that craziness and distinctiveness, especially from a design point of view, that made it extra special for years, especially after Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997?
We no longer see multicoloured and flowery iMacs. We no longer see rubber bezelled notebooks which have a handle. Everything is way more elegant and simplistic, but is that really what you want?
Clearly it’s purely a subjective matter, but part of Apple’s rebranding under Steve Jobs was that it produced products that were a bit crazy. Like the examples mentioned. Something so radically different from everything else that you really noticed it. You may say competitors copying the Apple design today is what makes their computers stand out slightly less, but I still believe that Apple really needs to regain the crazy side it had.
Apple’s ‘Crazy Ones’ ad, as I call it, doesn’t really apply to the Apple of today. It’s a different company, which for better or for worse, has gone down the route of elegance and simplicity over wackiness and insanity.
Apple has retained one thing throughout its life – quality products. But the way they have been designed and thought about I think has changed. It was a much smaller company back in 1997, with a tiny user base compared to today. People who have jumped on the Apple bandwagon or only recently switched from PCs won’t really get this, but once upon a time there was no Macbook or Mac Pro, there was iBook Clamshell and PowerMac G4, both of which were much more fun from a design standpoint than today’s sleek but not funky aluminium machines.
I wish Apple would, for at least one product, return to its roots as a crazy company. As its ad says, the crazy ones are those who push the human race forward.
