Ive has some kind of charisma that makes his designs convincing. It's notable that everyone mentioned in that WSJ article (Bono, Foster, Serota) is a charismati

Ive has some kind of charisma that makes his designs convincing. It's notable that everyone mentioned in that WSJ article (Bono, Foster, Serota) is a charismatic, persuasive leader. Ive's work is competent, in the tradition of Dieter Rams, not a snoozefest but part of a long tradition of rejecting shallow styling (the major culprit in the eyes of those designers, eg at HfG Ulm, was the exaggerated forms of auto design of 50s America) Apple design makes sense if you see it as a cultural practice embedded in competing traditions of design (analogous to punk vs prog rock vs ...). Jobs himself placed great importance on developing his own charisma, a compelling personal vision. The fact that it's largely a functional vision conceals the seductive ideology behind it. If you look at Swiss graphic design, like Josef Muller-Brockmann's work, it's often just sans-serif type in a grid layout on a white background. That can be interesting once you tune in to it. This probably sounds patronizing but I mean to say minimalism can be just as interesting and subtle as maximalism. Splashy, garish expression is not a long-term solution to the "snoozefest" problem. Having said all that, sometimes minimalism is just a way of being chic (like an art gallery) rather than vulgar (like a muscle car). I'm definitely not saying it's better, but the superficially dull ingredients (straight lines, gray, rectangles) are not the deciding factor. Apple HQ may be a meretricious display of precision and expensive design independently of the superficial appearance.