Elegant Technology

When I saw the new Apple Magic Mouse it immediately struck a cord. Just from the pictures I knew it was a beautiful product. The functionality was of interest but it was the design that appealed most.

In reality the mouse is even better. The picture above shows the mouse in its clear plastic case. Yes this is really how it comes. Once out of its case and on the desk it looks like a building of the future.

It is comfortable and the multi touch features work really well.

As I type I keep casting a sideways glance at the mouse. I imagine if a car our house were designed like this.

I first became aware of the documentary “Objectified” after I saw a related poster in the Design Museum, London.

I never actually got to see the documentary in a movie theatre as the showing was very selective. Recently, however, I noticed that the documentary would be released as a DVD.

In “Objectified” Gary Hustwit explores the subject of product design through interviews with some of the most recognized and, in my opinion, cutting edge designers today.

All of the DVD is interesting but I especially like the sections with Alice Rawsthorn, Jonathan Ive, Karim Rashid, and Chris Bangle.

Chris Bangle envisages that in the future we will manufacture our own products with through rapid prototyping type technologies. Perhaps in the future all we will buy is the ‘Design’.

Rashid is very interesting. He questions why we are obsessed with re-visiting archetypes and singles out today’s digital cameras as an example.

I also enjoyed the extras that come on the DVD where specific projects are also discussed.

Batman – Arkham Asylum on the PS3 is a brilliant game. Awsome as they say.

After the usual initial install (preceeded by a system update and followed by the PS3 specials) an hour later and I was into the game.

Hours passed without notice and yet I am only 5% through.

By far the best Batman Game ever.

After receiving my Snow Leopard disk from Apple by post on Saturday I quickly set about performing an upgrade.

Having recently carried out a Time Machine backup all I needed to do was to connect an Apple DVD drive to my MacBook Air and start the installation.

The software installed in about 40 minutes.

As the whole point of Snow Leopard is refinement and performance improvement, I took some measurements before and after upgrade.

On my MacBook Air 1.6GHz Rev A (Standard) laptop I saw improvements of up to 80% in some of the more common tasks. Just as important was the disk space I recovered – in my case nearly 4Gb (9%).

Using Snow Leopard I am noticing lots of small improvements and aesthetic changes. One example is when I took a screen-shot of the table below and cropped it in Preview – I saw size details as I selected the area to crop to.

This upgrade is like having a Porsche tuned and upgraded with modern materials.

Highly recommend for all Intel Macs.

Regular readers have probably noticed my obsession with the colour white. This started many years ago when I came across minimalist interior design. Later Apple adopted white as a prime colour for it’s products.

If I needed any further confirmation that everything in life should be white I got it when I saw the recent picture of Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive. As you can see Ive is wearing a completely white outfit. Admittedly the Californian sunshine makes this more of an option than the British summer rain.

Now if I can only loose some weight so a white wardrobe would look good.

iPod Dock

I have just received an email from my local Bang and Olufsen dealer. They have introduced a new iPod dock. In the UK the dock will retail for £375. That is a heafty price for a simple dock that is just a connection device. You need additional speakers or a B&O music system to connect to.

The dealer information was as follows;

We’ve got it docked

We’ve just launched an I-Pod docking station which you can attach directly to your BeoSound Audio System or even just to a pair of our BeoLab active loudspeakers.

It is fully compatible with our Beo 4 remote control so you can surf your tracks or adjust volume from your armchair

Priced at £375.00 our dock fits all I-pods. We have one set up in the showroom so please feel free to bring in your I-pod and see what a difference Bang & Olufsen can make.

I think another £100 spent on a Vita R4 would be a better deal.

Like many, I queued at my local Apple store to pickup a new iPhone 3 GS. This device is well worth the upgrade. The new features work well and the speed bump is terrific.

When you spend time and take in all the changes Apple makes you will notice what I call Incremental Beauty.

Look at the picture above. This is of the wall charger that now comes with the iPhone 3GS. If you were to compare this with the previous versions you would see how much more beautiful  it is. One piece instead of two. Smaller. Neater.

These are the changes that make Apple great.

Like many Apple customers, what I find appealing is the limited choice of products.

Along with their refined design reduced to the essential I feel that by offering a limited product range I can clearly focus on what’s essential for me. Less choice = greater clarity.

So, at the WWDC ‘09 next week I hope that they mainly update existing products and not introduce too many new things.

LAMY noto pen in grey

As a long standing fan of the Lamy pen company I regularly take a look at their web-site to see what new products are available.

I was recently taken with the new noto pen designed by Naoto Fukasawa. This pen is an exercise in restraint from the uniform colour, in this case matt grey, the discrete branding, through to the simple triangular body for easier grip.

I quickly looked into where I could get one and found a very reasonably priced version on eBay.

From the Lamy web-site;

LAMY noto

The LAMY noto is a design product from the Japanese star designer Naoto Fukasawa. The name Fukasawa stands for the reduction of form to the absolutely essential. The LAMY noto is a ballpoint pen whose design is restricted to the absolutely essential functions and good writing…
…Ballpoint pen in the new, functional design. With triangularbody and impressive clip solution.

With Apple stating that its not interested in the Netbook market…

Netbooks have cramped keyboards, small screens, “junky” hardware and bad software, said Tim Cook, chief operating officer of Apple, during a fiscal second-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday 22 April 2009. They don’t offer the “consumer experience” that Apple wants to offer through its Macintosh hardware.

Via Macworld UK.

… I think they have forgotten that they already make the best Netbook available.

I am proposing that the MacBook Air is that machine.

For those who don’t already know the MacBook Air is designed as a wireless ultra-mobile computer. Like a Netbook, it does not have an internal DVD drive. Apart from that it functions like any other Laptop.

If you compare one Netbook; the Samsung NC10, with the Air you will see many similarities but the Air scores higher in the areas that count i.e. Screen size, RAM, and Aesthetics.

The only positive for the NC10 would be it’s cheap price, but then a Peugeot is cheaper than a Porsche.