5 ms·

We're talking about the Jony Ive who designs rectangles? Meh. Him and Apple have stolen plenty! Isn't Steve Jobs famously quoted as saying "great artists steal

We're talking about the Jony Ive who designs rectangles? Meh. Him and Apple have stolen plenty! Isn't Steve Jobs famously quoted as saying "great artists steal"? Anyway, what's the fucking difference if you steal a few pieces here and there or the whole thing? Nothing. (EDIT: A piece of something is still a whole piece that you've stolen. And Apple has also stolen entire apps, like Konfabulator. They get no sympathy from me.)

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
astrodust 10y ago
Apple literally redefined what a smart phone is. While he borrowed design cues from history, Braun in particular, applying that to the phone space and coming up with a design language that had durability was a big breakthrough. Remember in 2006 Nokia, Motorola, RIM and others made literally everything but rectangular phones. They were covered in buttons and other crap. Ive's vision of a virtually button free phone was strikingly different at the time, a device even simpler than the Star Trek communicator pad. >Anyway, what's the fucking difference if you steal a few pieces here and there or the whole thing? Nothing. It's very hard to strip something down to the essential components and integrate those into a package that becomes obvious in retrospect. The steering wheel in a car, the magnetic seal on a refrigerator door, these are all obvious now but at the time were huge breakthroughs. If you can't see the difference between copying and working to reduce something down to the fundamentals you're obviously unaware of how one is lazy and the other is crazy hard.
- uola 10y ago
  The Sony Ericsson P800/P900/P910 had a removable keypad making them effectively rectangular phones. The Neonode N1 had a touch driven interface, including the slide to unlock feature. Then there were PDAs like Sony Clie PEG-TH55. All this a couple of years before the iPhone. The reason phones didn't look like rectangles wasn't because no one had the idea, but because screens were expensive and touch technology (and other technologies like data) wasn't mature yet. That's why you had something like the LG Prada come out at the same time (or even slightly before) the iPhone. Just because you are first to adopt something (e.g. because your customers don't mind paying a premium and you've secretly developed it for years including controlling the supply chain) doesn't mean you should have the sole right to use a concept derived from evolution of components. P910 http://pdadb.net/img/sony_ericsson_p910.jpg http://pdadb.net/img/sony_ericsson_p910.jpg Neonode N1 http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Neonode_N1_Sept_2004.jpg http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Neonode_N1_Sept_2004.jpg Sony Clie PEG-TH55 https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2010/08/03/b26d3392-67c5-11e3-a665-14feb5ca9861/thumbnail/770x433/7668c0c8969b4ad46849bf3676b17ea6/30733801-2-440-front-2.gif https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2010/08/03/b26d3392-67c... LG Prada http://image.cellphones.ca/images/phones/74/767/lg-prada-full-1.jpg http://image.cellphones.ca/images/phones/74/767/lg-prada-ful...
  - 627467 10y ago
    This post should be marked as reference anytime some Apple-zealot brings the "Apple invented everything under the sun" argument. Don't get me wrong: Apple deservingly got tons of credits (literally, in their bank accounts) for the combination of great hardware/software/ui design/marketing of the past 10 years. They still do. But their success means that just like Jony Ive got "inspired" by Braun, Apple is not inspiring everybody else.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      I use air-quotes on inspired because while it's obvious in hind-sight the way the Braun styling was adapted, distilling the design language of a blender or a pocket calculator made in the 1960s into a cutting edge product launched in the mid 2000s is not exactly a straight-forward exercise. If you look at the mock-ups people made of the hypothetical and long-rumored "iPod phone" that Apple was working on you'll see how many of the design decisions Apple took were completely unexpected: https://www.engadget.com/2009/12/28/how-early-iphone-predictions-fared-in-the-face-of-reality/ https://www.engadget.com/2009/12/28/how-early-iphone-predict... Apple didn't invent everything under the sun, and they didn't even "invent" everything they use. What they do is try hard to come up with a striking, simple design that they know will differentiate their products. They also get very upset when people steal their design without even trying to make it their own. Notice how Apple's been quiet about the Microsoft Surface device, and even though it directly competes with the iPad, they're still partnering with Microsoft to build Office apps. I think they respect Microsoft here because re-inventing the tablet and making a compelling notebook product of that sort takes a lot of bold engineering. Apple's appropriation of the keyboard cover (http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9297805/apple-ipad-pro-microsoft-surface-comic-prediction http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9297805/apple-ipad-pro-micr...) is one of those things that's inevitable. I'm not sure what else they could have done here, they were boxed in, so it ends up being 'theft' by some definition of that term. Microsoft doesn't seem to have raised this as an issue, so I'm sure there was some communication here between the two parties to make sure it didn't poison the waters.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
aljones 10y ago
"good artists copy, great artists steal" This quote is meant to make you think about the differences between stealing and copying ideas. It isn't literal. It doesn't even make sense literally. Stealing means you make it yours. It is no longer theirs. How do you do that with an idea? You make it so much better that people forget about the previous idea you took.
- arvinsim 10y ago
  I really this interpretation. Made me look at it in a whole new way.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

astrodust 10y ago

Apple literally redefined what a smart phone is. While he borrowed design cues from history, Braun in particular, applying that to the phone space and coming up with a design language that had durability was a big breakthrough. Remember in 2006 Nokia, Motorola, RIM and others made literally everything but rectangular phones. They were covered in buttons and other crap. Ive's vision of a virtually button free phone was strikingly different at the time, a device even simpler than the Star Trek communicator pad. >Anyway, what's the fucking difference if you steal a few pieces here and there or the whole thing? Nothing. It's very hard to strip something down to the essential components and integrate those into a package that becomes obvious in retrospect. The steering wheel in a car, the magnetic seal on a refrigerator door, these are all obvious now but at the time were huge breakthroughs. If you can't see the difference between copying and working to reduce something down to the fundamentals you're obviously unaware of how one is lazy and the other is crazy hard.

uola 10y ago
The Sony Ericsson P800/P900/P910 had a removable keypad making them effectively rectangular phones. The Neonode N1 had a touch driven interface, including the slide to unlock feature. Then there were PDAs like Sony Clie PEG-TH55. All this a couple of years before the iPhone. The reason phones didn't look like rectangles wasn't because no one had the idea, but because screens were expensive and touch technology (and other technologies like data) wasn't mature yet. That's why you had something like the LG Prada come out at the same time (or even slightly before) the iPhone. Just because you are first to adopt something (e.g. because your customers don't mind paying a premium and you've secretly developed it for years including controlling the supply chain) doesn't mean you should have the sole right to use a concept derived from evolution of components. P910 http://pdadb.net/img/sony_ericsson_p910.jpg http://pdadb.net/img/sony_ericsson_p910.jpg Neonode N1 http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Neonode_N1_Sept_2004.jpg http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Neonode_N1_Sept_2004.jpg Sony Clie PEG-TH55 https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2010/08/03/b26d3392-67c5-11e3-a665-14feb5ca9861/thumbnail/770x433/7668c0c8969b4ad46849bf3676b17ea6/30733801-2-440-front-2.gif https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2010/08/03/b26d3392-67c... LG Prada http://image.cellphones.ca/images/phones/74/767/lg-prada-full-1.jpg http://image.cellphones.ca/images/phones/74/767/lg-prada-ful...
- 627467 10y ago
  This post should be marked as reference anytime some Apple-zealot brings the "Apple invented everything under the sun" argument. Don't get me wrong: Apple deservingly got tons of credits (literally, in their bank accounts) for the combination of great hardware/software/ui design/marketing of the past 10 years. They still do. But their success means that just like Jony Ive got "inspired" by Braun, Apple is not inspiring everybody else.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    I use air-quotes on inspired because while it's obvious in hind-sight the way the Braun styling was adapted, distilling the design language of a blender or a pocket calculator made in the 1960s into a cutting edge product launched in the mid 2000s is not exactly a straight-forward exercise. If you look at the mock-ups people made of the hypothetical and long-rumored "iPod phone" that Apple was working on you'll see how many of the design decisions Apple took were completely unexpected: https://www.engadget.com/2009/12/28/how-early-iphone-predictions-fared-in-the-face-of-reality/ https://www.engadget.com/2009/12/28/how-early-iphone-predict... Apple didn't invent everything under the sun, and they didn't even "invent" everything they use. What they do is try hard to come up with a striking, simple design that they know will differentiate their products. They also get very upset when people steal their design without even trying to make it their own. Notice how Apple's been quiet about the Microsoft Surface device, and even though it directly competes with the iPad, they're still partnering with Microsoft to build Office apps. I think they respect Microsoft here because re-inventing the tablet and making a compelling notebook product of that sort takes a lot of bold engineering. Apple's appropriation of the keyboard cover (http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9297805/apple-ipad-pro-microsoft-surface-comic-prediction http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9297805/apple-ipad-pro-micr...) is one of those things that's inevitable. I'm not sure what else they could have done here, they were boxed in, so it ends up being 'theft' by some definition of that term. Microsoft doesn't seem to have raised this as an issue, so I'm sure there was some communication here between the two parties to make sure it didn't poison the waters.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

aljones 10y ago

"good artists copy, great artists steal" This quote is meant to make you think about the differences between stealing and copying ideas. It isn't literal. It doesn't even make sense literally. Stealing means you make it yours. It is no longer theirs. How do you do that with an idea? You make it so much better that people forget about the previous idea you took.

arvinsim 10y ago
I really this interpretation. Made me look at it in a whole new way.