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Jony Ive and the Transformation of Apple

Published Jul 20, 2022, 8:41 PM

Upon the return of Steve Jobs to Apple, Jony Ive found his role transformed. Given more freedom and authority to have innovative designs find their way into products, Ive and Jobs set out to restore Apple's reputation in the industry.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and how the tech are You? So? On Monday, I published an episode about Johnny I've's journey to Apple and I've, if you don't know, is a designer famous for his influence at Apple. He had a hand in the look and aesthetic at the company for twenty years, and recently he and Apple have cut ties. So we're going to continue his story in this episode. But this is really not just an episode about Johnny I've and his influence. It's really an episode that's about Apple in its transition from a company that was in serious trouble to one that became a tastemaker. Like this is the period in which Apple itself underwent a massive transformation. So while I is going to take a crucial part of that story, it's going to require us to talk about some other stuff too. Now where we left off, I was in a really delicate position. He had recently been promoted to Apple's director of Industrial Design. This was just five years after he had joined Apple. He joined Apple as a designer, the ninth member of the design team. Five years later, the outgoing director of industrial design recommended I've for the job. So this was a really remarkable journey. I mean, that's a short amount of time to go from entering in as a basic member of a team to becoming the leader of that team. I've came into Apple in the early nineties, which was a period where co founder Steve Jobs was effectively banished from Apple. I talked about that in the last episode, and you know, Jobs at or he had been pushed to the side. In the mid eighties, he left Apple and founded a different computer company called Next Big End, Little E, Big X, Big T. This company would end up designing computers meant for the educational sector, at least primarily, but the computers were really expensive and they had a fairly limited suite of software. Because you know, software developers aren't likely to dedicate the time and resources to make stuff for a platform that doesn't have a very large install base. It just doesn't make sense. You're never going to make back the investment you made in order to make the thing in the first place. So it would just make more sense as a developer to create software for computers that a lot of people use, instead of an upstart company that's trying to muscle its way into a pre existing market. And over at Apple, things had become pretty rocky, in no small part due to the chaos going on with the team that was responsible for building the next generation of the Macintosh operating system. That whole project had ballooned out of control with feature creep and internal struggles within the team, and so the then CEO Gil Emilio moved to acquire the Next Computer Company, and the idea was that while Next wasn't getting much traction in the market, it's operating system was really good and it could serve as the next generation of the mac operating system, and the internal build of the next mac os at Apple could be set aside for the time being. Maybe it could be rescued and fixed. But Emilio felt that in the state that it was in within Apple, it just wasn't going to be ready for the market, so he decided to acquire Next and use that operating system instead. So Apple acquires Next, and then Steve Jobs came back to Apple, initially as an advisor, but within short order he became the interim CEO. And then eventually the permanent CEO, and Jobs was not happy. Actually, if you read up on various stories of Apple's history, there are a lot of tales about Jobs not being happy, and part of that was the fact that Jobs, as standards were at the tippy tippy top, and when products failed to meet his standards, he got mad. Jobs had come back to Apple and hated what he saw. Apple was producing so many different models of Macintosh computers because the previous leaders thought the way to address the issues Apple had was to expand the product line by making a ton of different Macintosh models. But it got to the point where the company's own sales team had trouble explaining why one model would be more suitable for a specific customer over any other model. If your sales team can't say, oh, based upon your needs, this what you should get, then you know you're in trouble. So the message was buddled, the products were confusing, and Jobs was enraged, and he wasn't shy about voicing his opinions. Now, i've as the head of industrial design, was really concerned for his team. Jobs was particularly angry about the direction of Apple's design team. He said that he felt the quote unquote sex had been taken out of the products that they no longer had the appearance of something people wanted to interact with, and word got around that Jobs was planning on looking outside Apple to find someone in design to come in and realign the company and to lead that team, meaning I would be out of a job. So I've talked with his team, and they even discussed the possibility of creating their own design firm if the whole department should find itself sacked. But I've advised his colleagues to wait and see what Jobs would do, and the team created a kind of showcase within the design department. So I've knew it was just a matter of time before Jobs would make his way to the design department and see exactly how things had gone totally wrong, at least in Jobs's mind. And I've wanted to showcase the work his team had created with designs that the company had not accepted. These are these were ideas that no one else in Apple had approved, So they put on display a lot of the more radical designs that had failed to find their way through Apple's bureaucratic process. And sure enough, when Jobs did come down and take a look at the design department. He was impressed by what he saw. The things that he was looking at from the team, they weren't at all representative of the actual products the Jobs had found so boring and uninspired. According to Trip Michael, the author of After Steve, a book that I used extensively in my research here, Jobs turned to I've and essentially he said, you haven't been very effective, have you. I am paraphrasing because Jobs could use a lot of what uh Mr Spock would call colorful metaphors in his language. What Jobs meant was that I've and his team were astounding designers. They were creating amazing work, but they weren't adept at getting that work accepted by leadership at Apple. And that's, you know, a big component of being a department head. It's not enough to be an effective manager. A leader has to have vision and a way to communicate that vision to others and get buy in to get them to support that vision. So a leader has to be able to convince other people to try new things, or at the very least come to the table and negotiate a way forward. I've was unquestionably a great designer, but it might have been that he was not yet a great leader, at least in that sense. But then Jobs also felt that the previous regime at Apple was rife within competence, and so while Jobs gave I've a little bit of a hard time, it was clear that he placed almost all the blame on Apple's previous leadership, that the company had become so weighed down by people afraid to take risks, or more interested in competing directly against the ensconced PC market rather than creating a compelling alternative, that they were incapable of listening to I've and his team, and so really the fault was on them more than it was on i've. And the good news was that Jobs saw this and felt that the design team was doing great work, that they were brilliant and innovative. So Jobs knew that the department was the right group of people to make his vision of what Apple could be into a reality, and this began the working relationship that would develop into a fierce friendship between Jobs and I've. And it also meant Jobs would end his search for a new head of design, so i was safe in his job. Jobs and I've bonded over a shared fascination with the form of products, and and by form, I really actually mean a bunch of different things, not just the physical shape, although that is a huge part of it. I've was actually really obsessed with materials. He would carefully go through each and every sample of various materials to determine what was right for any given project. He had in his mind specific effects that the materials should pull off, whether it was a shiny metal surface or a very smooth curve of glass or a pebbled leather cover. And Jobs was very much the same way. So the two spent ages talking about different materials and what was possible with each one, or what limitations existed with them, and how to find a solution to meet those limitations or you know, in most cases is with I've, if he found fault in a material, he was far more likely to just reject the material outright and find something better that met his expectations, even if it meant scouring the entire world to find what he wanted. And Jobs wasted no time. Once he returned to the leadership role, he gave the Newton program the Acts in n I talked about the Apple Newton in the last episode that was a little less than six years after the Apple Newton had debuted, and that was an attempt to create a new product line, but because of some real limitations with the hardware and more more over, the software, it did not work. It was a failure. But Steve Jobs didn't just acts products. He acted entire layers of management. Jobs essentially laid off the general managers overseeing the various business units within Apple. In fact, he did that in a single day, like it was an armageddon, where he laid off, you know, legions of general managers, and that probably contributed to some people at Apple using the phrase getting jobs as a way of saying you got fired. Apple had created silos of departments, so little feudal states, each with its own leader that was largely cut off from the other departments, and Jobs knocked those silos down. He essentially reorganized the entire company into a more cohesive and collaborative operation. Now the teams would still have leaders, you know, like I've was leader of the designers for industrial design, and these would be people who had deep expertise in whatever field it was that they were representing. So they were people who could manage others, but they also knew how to do the stuff that the team was doing. You know that the team they were managing was doing. Jobs said, One really big mistake that he and Wozniak made way back in the seventies was to bring in people who are really adept at business, but they didn't know how computers worked, and that that disconnect led to all sorts of trouble down the line. And then Jobs gave I've a critical assignment. Jobs knew that the company needed to launch a product that would put it back in the minds of consumers. They needed to capture the rebellious and innovative spirit of the company in its early days. Jobs also saw how the Internet was playing an increasingly important role in well everything, and so he wanted Apple to create a desktop computer with the express purpose of being a machine that would work well with the Internet. Jobs also wanted to ditch some traditional features found on most personal computers of the day. For example, he didn't want this new computer to have a floppy disk drive, something that was standard on other machines at the time. He also wanted to ditch serial boards, which, if you're not familiar, were used as a communication interface with computers. They could connect with other peripherals right and send information to and receive information from those peripherals. Jobs instead wanted to incorporate USB technology in this new Apple computer, and he also gave Ive's team one other directive. He wanted the design for this computer to be quote joyful end quote, and I've and his team would take on that challenge. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk more about this project and how it really helped turn things around for Apple. But first these messages. So Johnny I've and his team got this assignment from Steve Jobs, and they got to work. Uh, they had the parameters and then pretty much a blank canvas that they could use where they could create the next generation of consumer Macintosh computers. It would be called the iMac. And yeah, this was the beginning of Apple using that lower case I in front of its various product names. The iMac would be the first of those those products, the first major one anyway. So the team led by Johnny I've decided that the computer should be innovative but not threatening. So I needed to look futuristic, but it also needed to look accessible. It couldn't be something where you're like, oh, that looks cool, but I don't want to touch it. So one big point of inspiration was the cartoon The Jetsons. You know, Meet George Jetson and so on. Well, the Jetsons lived in a world that was simultaneously futuristic and also anchored in the aesthetic of the nineteen fifties. While the iMac wouldn't look like it came straight out of the nineteen fifties, they did have elements of the familiar along with the novel. Now, the original iMac was not a flat screen computer like later models would turn into. It was an all in one computer that looked like a very colorful CRT monitor. Before the iMac, the team had created a laptop prototype that had translucent plastic built into the body of the computer, and I've decided he wanted to incorporate that element into the iMac design. I've presented his ideas to Jobs, and Jobs rejected a lot of them, but one that Jobs really liked was a sketch that I've showed him, and I've described it as a computer that looks as though it was about to jump off the desk and go do something, and that really resonated with Jobs. So I've returned to his team with Jobs as input, and they refined that design. They began to move more in that specific direction, and they created a model. The Jobs like so much they would actually take that to other departments in order to show it off to them. The team chose a polycr abinate shell for the computer for a couple of reasons. One, it's a very strong material, so it's it's resilient, but also it can hold a tinted color really effectively. It doesn't fade over time, at least not rapidly, so so it would hold whatever color you wanted to give it. And as for those colors, they initially created computer shells that were either orange or purple, or a bluish greenish color that would end up being called Bondie blue. The process to make the shells was expensive, both because of needing to make the polycarbonate translucent, and also the process itself was sort of a customized one. They couldn't rely on existing manufacturing processes. It all had to be built from scratch in order to mass manufacture these. Now, this meant that it would cost Apple sixty dollars per unit per per computer case, just the case, not the internals, and that was much more expensive than typical computer case was. However, I was very happy to find out that Steve Jobs wasn't really concerned about manufacturing costs because Steve Jobs saw the need to bring customers back to Apple as well as to attract new customers to the company, and he thought it was going to be shortsighted to worry about production costs and that this was really going to be a swing for the fences kind of product. A we need a home run, so we're gonna swing as hard as we can. So because the case was translucent, I've and his team worked with other departments to figure out how the circuitry layout that would be in the computer underneath would be visible and attractive. They wanted it to look sophisticated and not messy, So this was another consideration that really set Apple apart. It would also be the foundation for the types of computer rigs that are are very popular today. There are a lot of computer cases out there that have trend his parent glass panels so that you can see the interior right. You can see the the fans and the various components, many of them decked out with L E. D s and that's the kind of rig that gamers prefer these days, and I feel that we can thank Apple in particular, and specifically Johnny I've and his team for setting us down that kind of pathway. I feel like the iMac was sort of an early example of that aesthetic that extends all the way down to today. Obviously, the shapes are very different today than the iMac was, but there are those those elements I feel that have carried through. When it came time to unveil the iMac, things nearly went pear shaped. One of the components the Jobs really wanted in this computer's design was a c D slot so that users could just insert a compact disc into the slot. It would go into the computer and then they could, you know, load information from the c D. So he wanted it to be a little slit in the computer and to be as unobtrusive as possible. But when it came time to actually unveil the design and Jobs looked at the prototype that he was going to show off. He saw that the iMac had a c D tray that would extend out from the computer. You would put the CD into the tray and then retract the c D tray back into the computer and he was furious. But when he was lashing out super angry that the thing he wanted wasn't part of the iMac, he was told the problem was the technology he wanted in the computer didn't exist yet. No one had built a working version of what he was envisioning, and that, you know, that was the issue. Johnny. I've actually stepped up to talk Steve Jobs down, Johnny. I've said, you know what you're thinking of right now, that's the next one of these, that's the next iMac. We can't do it yet, but ex generation we will. However, we have to ship this version. And remarkably, Johnny Ives approach really worked. It calmed down Steve Jobs and he went on to rehearse what the presentation that would unveil the iMac would become. And you can actually watch that presentation online. This was done way back in so if you do find a copy of it that there are copies on YouTube. The video quality is pretty bad, but it is late nineties and you can watch as Jobs calls the iMac quote the excitement of the Internet, the simplicity of Macintosh end quote. Jobs then goes on to essentially slam the competition, saying that consumer computers that are on the market are all slow and ugly, that they have lousy displays, and if they have any networking capability in them at all, it's pretty limited. So he was really trying to set up how the iMac would contrast with what he was claiming to be the status quo. And the technical specs on the iMac were, you know, they were impressive for the time, but you would laugh at them now because Jobs talks about having a ton of memory in this computer, which was thirty two whole megabytes worth, and that the processor ran it up blistering two three mega hurts. That processor was the G three power PC processor, by the way, that's why this computer is sometimes referred to as the iMac G three, because that was the processor that powered it. But he really wanted to focus on the impact of industrial design of the computer, and that's really what we want to talk about. Two. We don't want to I'm not going to run down all the technical specs because that's not really what these episodes are about. We're talking about the aesthetic of Apple. So when Jobs revealed the iMac, the crowd could only see the front of the machine. Initially they could just see the face of the iMac right, it looked like a sleek, rounded computer, so instead of sharp corners, that had rounded corners. And while they could only see one face of the computer initially, they went ahead and went banana. And then Jobs brought in a camera that could you know, the camera operators could circle the iMac and the feed was sent live to movie screens that were in the presentation hall, so everyone could see the translucent plastic along the sides and the back of the computer. Um and Jobs showed off how the iMac had a handle as well in the back, like along the top, and that was a design factor that Johnny I've had suggested because he thought it looked cool. It wasn't practical. People weren't going to be carrying around their iMac computers everywhere, but it was something that just made it look like you wanted to get your hands on it. That was the whole point of it. So this was not a practical component added into the design. It was one at least not practical in the sense of physically practical. It was practical in the sense of marketing because it was another thing that made you want to pick one of these things up and purchase it. Right. So Jobs agreed to that design change, even though it meant that the production costs of the case of the computer would be even higher because it would require a special approach to make this handle that's incorporated into the case itself. Jobs would end up saying it looks like it came from another planet, a good planet, one that has better designers, which huge accolades for Johnny. I've right saying that Johnny Ivan his team were better than all the other designers on Earth. Now, the IMAX solved a ton of issues. For one thing, the all in one design meant that Apple could actually ship an iMac in a single box that contained the computer, the keyboard, and the mouse. More on the mouse in the second there were no components to connect apart from the keyboard and mouse to the computer, right, So you didn't have to connect speakers to it, you didn't have to connect the monitor to the tower. All of that was integrated. It was one thing, So that really simplified the setup process Apple, and to make sure that the customer wouldn't need to install any software or do anything complicated, they wanted it to work out of the box. Like this was the beginning of that idea of it just works, although that wasn't how Steve Jobs described it yet he would later describe Apple products as it just works. That would become one of kind of the mottos of the company. So all you really had to do was take the iMac out of the box, plug it in, turn it on, you know, have the keyboard and mouse connected, and you were good to go. They really simplified the process of connecting to the Internet as well and doing so well using a really attractively designed computer case. And it really was a showcase for ives work and his team's work. Their collaboration on each design element got the spotlight. And like I said, the iMac was a watershed product for Apple. The company had been in danger of bankruptcy due to mismanagement of the previous regime, and Apple and Jobs both needed a slam dunk hit or a grand slam hit if you prefer, and the iMac delivered. Now, I did mention the computer mouse that was one part of the iMac that was not a slam dunk. The computer mouse for the iMac was small and it was circular in shape, not like egg shaped or oblong like your typical computer mouse, but more like almost like a perfect circle, and it also had a very short chord. So it was very pretty to look at. It had the same translucent polycarbonate plastic and had the same color features as the parent iMac that it came with, But the mouse itself was awkward to use. The size and the shape meant it was a little challenging to keep things on track, because if the mouse rotated even a little bit under your hand, then it meant whenever you moved the mouse, the cursor was going to go in the direction you had not intended it to go on um and the cable length also meant it could get a little hard to use as well. It could, you know, limit you. And so this particular mouse, which would gain the derogatory nickname the hockey Buck, wasn't lauded like the iMac was. It was very pretty, but it was not practical, and this would not be the last time that I've and his team would design something that would be criticized as emphasizing form over function. But the iMac it became the fastest selling computer in Apple's history. At that point. The company moved eight hundred thousand units by the end of its first year in existence. More importantly, it marked a reverse soul of Apple's fortunes. So for two years, essentially the company had been reporting massive losses. It had been operating in the red, but the IMAX popularity gave Apple a profitable quarter in early and then it was off to the races. The company that so many people had shrugged off as having lost its way appeared to be not just back on track, but leagues ahead of the competition. And it was largely thanks to Ive's design team that tam was already hard at work on another product, one similar in many ways to the iMac, and this was the eye Book, which was a nod to the iMac and the intended purpose to serve as a computer that could quickly connect to the Internet. So this was a clamshell laptop computer that also featured rounded corners, so you didn't have these sharp corners of your typical laptop. It also featured colorful rubber accents that bordered a polycarbonate white plastic case to give it kind of a whimsical appearance. There are elements of translucent plastic in that case as well, and a lot of the design elements that made the IMAX so compelling found their way into the Eyebook design. By the time Steve Jobs is ready to unveil this new computer in nine, a year after the iMac had come out, the crowd was already on board. You should really watch this presentation, the Eyebook unveiling presentation, to see how the cult of Apple was off to a big start. Even as early as nine, the crowd had not even seen a single image of the laptop. But as soon as Jobs revealed that Apple had a new consumer laptop to show off after referencing the incredibly popular iMac, he was already getting crazy amounts of applause. He got even more when he revealed that the name of the laptop was Eyebook, and he still hadn't actually shown off the ding dang darn thing. Because Apple was known as using this naming convention of power in front of its professional grade hardware, so a power Mac was meant for professionals, whereas the iMac was meant as a consumer product. Well, the professional grade horrible Mac computer was called a power book. So he said, since we have the iMac, this is going to be the Eyebook, and that alone got a huge ovation from the crowd. I mean, it really was bonkers, and Jobs had to have been flying high. His audience was already on his side. He didn't have to win them over. They were providing him a ton of energy. So he then went through the technical specs of the laptop, which again not really important for this podcast, so I'm not going to go through them, And then he finally showed off the design. And when he did, he showed off this tangerine colored, rubber accented laptop, so like, all the color parts are rubber that overlay the white polycarbonate plastic. And it was a nice nod to Ive's past I think because in case you don't remember from the last episode, Johnny I've came to Apple after he had been working at a design consultancy firm called Tangerine. Even the Apple logo on the front was tangerine and color against the white polycarbonate plastic on the back. You had the entire bottom of the laptop coated in this, you know, tangerine shaded rubber, except for the Apple logo which was in white. So very nice little accent nods. Jobs continued with the presentation, even though you can hear the audience roaring like he didn't pause for them too a shout out their their joy at seeing this, and they would roar again when Jobs revealed that the computer had a handle near the hinge of the laptop, which would let you carry the laptop like a briefcase, which just goes to show we were easier to please way back in. He also showed how the laptop didn't have a latch, so it wouldn't latch closed and you wouldn't have to press anything in order to open it. Uh, the hinge was had enough tension in it to keep the laptop closed under normal conditions. He also showed how the communication ports didn't have covers, which made them easier to access. You can really see ives influence here, his desire to make the products something that you would want to use, and trying to avoid any components that would make that experience frustrating. Jobs announced that the Eyebook would be available in the colors tangerine or blueberry upon their first release. Later on, Apple would include a couple of other colors. They had Indigo, graphite, and key line. I never owned an Eyebook, but I have to say that the color and do signs really actually do look super inviting. I mean, I know that my phone is technically more advanced than those computers are, but still I kind of would like a Tangerine eyebook because it's just really pretty. And that goes to show how i'vean his team were geniuses. They tapped into something really powerful. They were able to come up with an aesthetic that had an instant appeal, and I've, with his tendency towards simplicity and minimalism, kept his team from adding in superfluous or distracting features or embellishments. Now we're gonna take another quick break. When we come back, i'll talk about and I've designed product that sadly did not see the kind of success that the iMac and eyebook would. But we'll do that after these messages. So I don't want to give the impression that Johnny I've was incapable of failure. We already saw that the IMAX mouse was kind of a misstep that people didn't really like using it. And if you don't like using a product, that's a that's a huge design problem. Right. It can look as gorgeous as anything, but if people don't like using it, it's a failure. Well, ivan Apple did turn out a few misfires. The eyebook and iMac were both really well performing products, but one that wasn't was the power Mac G four Cube, which had a G four processor in it, which is what gave it its name, just as the iMac G three would be called that well. The power Mac G four Cube was meant for professional users because it had the power designation right, so it was more powerful and included more features than what you would find in consumer Macintosh computers, and also had a hefty price tag to go along for the ride. The design of the power Cube was incredibly striking, because, as the name tells you, the computer's form factor was that of a cube rather than a tower. However, I should mention it wasn't a perfect cube and measured seven point seven by seven point seven by nine point eight inches or twenty by twenty by twenty five centimeters. Further, the cube had a housing that was made of clear acrylic glass, and i've's team chose that design because it gave the computer this sort of illusion of hovering just above the desk it would sit on because the bottom of the case of this acrylic case would uh hold up the computer a couple of inches. The computer had no internal fan inside it to dissipate heat. Instead, it relied on a grill in the top of the computer case that allowed heat to escape passively. It also didn't have a physical power button. Instead, it had a touch sensitive button that as soon as you made contact with it, would power on the computer or would make a power down computer go to sleep, which was a problem some people had where they would accidentally graze this touch sensitive button and turn their working computer into sleep mode, and that was frustrating. The cubic form factor placed other limitations on this computer, namely in order to fit all the components into that small space, and meant Apple would not be able to include expansion slots, so you couldn't expand out the capabilities of the computer beyond what it could do out of the box. The trail list CD slot that jobs had wanted for the iMac would find its way into the G four Cube and Johnny I've relished the challenge of creating a form factor of a computer that was unique among PCs. And while the design meant Apple had to make some massive compromises, Johnny Ivan his team did manage to get it all working, and the process really solidified a shift in Apple's operations. The design team would now have a much larger influence in product development than it had ever had before because Jobs was such a huge ally for industrial design. While the physical appearance of the Cube was striking, it failed to find a real market. Critics said that Jobs actually didn't identify a target market for the device, and that the lack of features, paired with a high sticker price meant that most folks in the market for a more powerful Mac We're gonna go with a more traditional PowerMac computer, not the Cube. Also, the injection molding fabrication process for the Cube's case sometimes had errors which introduced flaws like cracks in the clear acrylic case, so some customers were frustrated that it wasn't up to the standards of the previous models. Where you know, Johnny I was known for going and inspecting the manufacturing process to make absolutely certain that the design he created would come out flawlessly. This was a case where that did not happen, at least in some instances. Leading up to the Cube's release, Apple had enjoyed nearly three full years of profitability, but the Cube underperformed drastically, and Apple said that poor Cube sales led to a ninety million dollar shortfall for the company just won the cube alone. I think it was a hundred eighty million dollars less than what they had projected total, so the Cube accounting for about half of that shortfall, and so that was a pretty tough quarter, and it was another reminder that leaning more on form over function can sometimes have negative consequences. Now we'll say that despite the poor sales, the presentation the Jobs gave in order to introduce the cube went over like gangbusters, so that initial excitement didn't progress into sales unfortunately. But it was another case where the cold of Apple was in full display. Jobs came out and the crowd went gaga for the presentation once they saw the design of the cube, particularly when Steve Jobs turned the case upside down and revealed that there was a handle on the underside of the computer and by unlocking the handle, he could pull out the internals of the computer in one smooth motion. You didn't have to fiddle with with screws or anything like that and remove a panel, You just lifted it straight out of the case. I will say that was an amazing design choice, like something that made it super easy to access the internals, really really cool. It's just unfortunate that because of the form factor, there wasn't a whole lot you could do, Like you couldn't really slot in expansion cards into it or anything because there wasn't the space for it. But the design choice to make that a feature super cool, now it just didn't sell well. So it was a kind of a black mark on Johnny i'ves record at that point, not that it was entirely his fault, I mean it was it was a company wide failure, right because again, the decision to go with that form factor placed so many limitations and restrictions on the rest of the teams that it was pretty much impossible to create something that would, you know, go toe to toe with the other more powerful, professional level computers that Apple was creating and also justify the very high price tag. So a lot of people said, it's more like a very expensive toy rather than a computer that justifies the high price. However, it was the next big product line that would really push Apple into a new trajectory. It was the product line that I argue really saved Apple and put it on a pathway to becoming ridiculously uh successful. The product wouldn't come out till two one, and the first really breakthrough model of it wouldn't emerge until two four. I am, of course talking about the iPod. Now, I have done episodes on the iPod before, so we're not going to go through all of that. I will say it was not the first MP three player. It was Apple's first MB three player, but it wasn't the first in the world. So Apple is very rarely first to market with a technology that's not really the company's m oh, that's not what it does. Instead, Apple is known for designing top of class examples of technologies that someone else has already created. So no, iPod was not the first MP three player. It was just the first one that would become a runaway success, though as I said, it took a bit of time for that to happen. Now, the first model of the iPod had some features that the company would quickly drop. For one thing, it had a mechanical method for scrolling through songs. If you looked at the face of the iPod, you would see there was this circular device that's on the face of the iPod. Underneath the screen and you would put your thumb on this and you would physically turn this circle. It was a scroll wheel in other words, and you would use it to click through playlists or songs. You can scroll through menus this way. Um. But it physically would turn on its axis. So it had this tactile uh feature that other iPods would lack in the future, probably because this was a mechanical point of failure. Although there's something really satisfying I think of turning a mechanical component. I mean, we've seen plenty of fidget devices that are that's all they are, right, They're just a little physical things that you can play with in order to, you know, burn off some excess energy. And the original iPod had one of those mechanical elements to it. Uh. Sadly, I guess well, I guess it depends on your perspective. In my view. Sadly, they would get rid of that in the future versions of the iPod. But surrounding this scroll circle were four buttons that made up a perimeter around the circle, and these buttons had controls like play and pause, and rewind and fast forward, that kind of thing. Now, the original iPod could hold about a thousand songs, and it lacked a few things that really prevented this first generation from becoming a superstar. For one thing, it didn't have a USB port. Instead, it had a FireWire port, which really limited how you would be able to use it. Also, there was no compatible software that you could run on a PC to interact with an iPod, so it that if you wanted an iPod, you had to have an Apple computer in order to make it work. And those limitations kept the original iPod from becoming the success it would later be, but it did show the direction of the company and it set the tone for moving forward. The next generation of the device ditched the mechanical wheel. Instead it had a touch sensitive wheel so capacity of touch instead of mechanically turning a circle around. But physically it resembled the first generation. It was not a huge departure in design. Uh the mechanical wheel was gone, but the layout of the device was pretty much the same. There were a couple of other minor changes of the FireWire port then had a cover instead of it being open like it was in the first generation of the iPod, and ives team would take a larger departure with the third edition of the iPod, the entire interface became touch based. There was not yet a touch screen, but there were touch buttons instead of mechanical buttons. Two access all the controls. IVES team moved the control buttons above the touch wheel rather than around the perimeter of it, and the team would continue to make adjustments to the iPods design, including the creation of spinoff products. You know, you had the iPod Mini, which only lasted two generations, and you had the iPod Nano, which was the replacement for the iPod Mini, so was an even smaller version of the iPod, and then later on you had the iPod Shuffle as well. We'll probably touch on those a little bit in the next episode that we won't go into as much detail as we have for the you know, i amac and eyebook and the Cube for example, so we're gonna leave it off here, and in our next episode we'll talk about how the iPod design would influence Apple's direction and the general public's perception of the company. I mean, we call them podcasts because we named it after the iPod. That's how definitive a product that became. And we'll talk about ives role in creating this kind of momentum. Then we'll also talk about other products, the big one obviously being the iPhone and how that design ended up just cementing Apple's place as a tastemaker in consumer electronics. And then we'll also talk about the various things that played a part in I've becoming less enamored of Apple and ultimately his decision one to leave the company as an employee, and then too to essentially cut ties with Apple by not extending the contract that his design firm had established with the company. Those will be things we'll talk about in the next episode in this series. I hope you're enjoying these episodes. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out and tell me. You can do that in one of two ways. One way is to download the free i art radio app, navigate to the tech Stuff podcast page, use that little microphone icon to record a voice message up to thirty seconds in length, and let me know through there, Or you can reach out on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is an i Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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