Our office got a very nice mailer from Apple last month promoting the G5. With customized digital printing, off-center fold, and clear envelope, it was a very nice piece. You see mailers that use your name throughout the text of the piece all the time, but the quality of Apple’s printing was the best I have seen. I couldn’t believe it was done on a digital press.

The only thing that bugged me about the mailer was that they chose Paula Scher to endorse the G5. Don’t get me wrong, Paula Scher is great, but a computer is the last thing she should be endorsing. I have only heard her rip on technology in favor of a more hands-on approach to design. To quote Scher from the short film that Jake brought to our attention:

“I can get my email out, that’s it … The computer made me feel like my hands were cut off … It doesn’t smell right. It should smell like an art supply. It smells like a car.”

That’s fine if she doesn’t appreciate computers, but Apple quotes her as saying, “I’m no longer aware of limitations. The Power Mac can do whatever we think of” and “The Power Mac is the state of the art form if you’re a graphic designer.” I guess Apple didn’t do their research on Paula before they bought her out. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t be disappointed if Santa brought me a G5 for Christmas.

I would assume that most designers are much like me, and drooling over the two newest pieces of hardware from Apple. I would love to get the new iPod Shuffle and the tupperware size Mac mini. I have a regular iPod and G4 that work just fine, so I guess I will have to live vicariously through someone else.

Another encouraging sign from apple is their new packaging for iLife and iWork. Is Apple starting to abandon their hyper-realistic 3-D icons for a more illustrative approach? Personally, I think it is time that Apple went back to a more symbolic approach to it’s packaging and icons. I commend Apple for not letting their look become predictable.

In a move that nobody saw coming, Apple made a bid for MCI today. The bidding war between Verizon and Qwest just got much more interesting now that Apple has joined in the bidding. Apple’s offer of $9.5 billion is considerably better than Qwest’s, and better than Verizon’s offer of $7.65 billion in cash and stock. Steve Jobs was unavailable for comment, but it is thought that this is a continuation of Apple’s effort to brand itself as more than just a computer company. Rumors are already starting about a secret development of an iPhone. The amazing part of this story is that it comes just days after our site’s speculation about whether or not Apple would ever think about entering the telephone industry. Coming on the first day of April, this is really good news for designers.

I really enjoyed the following quote by Steve Jobs:

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But, of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. To design something really well, you have to ‘get it.’ You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something…. Most people don’t take the time to do that.”

The quote is taken from the upcoming book iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon. I got the quote from Wired’s preview of the biography which will be released May 16. The Wired article is called Steve Jobs Buys a Washing Machine, and it is worth a read if you are a Steve Jobs fan.

Wired news ran an interesting story today on OSX running on a PC.

As has been known, the new Macintosh computers due out next year will be based on an Intel chip. Obviously the hardware between the Windows and Mac machines will be more alike than thought if a simple hack can convert one computer to run the others’ OS.

Will this make writing programs for both platforms easier as well? But more importantly, as the hardware comes closer together, I wonder if it will make it easier or harder to convince corporations to buy Macs for their designers. Will they say, “Use a Dell, it’s basically the same, right?” or, “Well, I guess if the Mac’s Intel, our tech guys can hook it up to the network.” I myself hope for the second one.

Feeling relatively alone in my fears that the Mac is becoming a PC, today I again felt like part of the Apple community when I heard of the new iPod Nano. Bennett may never forgive me for my PC ownership, but the rest of you can believe me when I say, "I love Apple!" But Don't let me ruin the moment with too many words. Lets just sit back and enjoy a beautifully designed product...

A bit overshadowed by the release of iPod nano, iTunes 5 was also released last week. Although you can’t exactly call it a redesign, there were some design changes to the interface. As has come to be expected from the Apple faithful, let’s dissect the changes…

Today, Apple has unveiled its newest (yes, even newer than the nano) iPod: The iPod Video. From apple.com:

“Time for the world’s best music player to take the stage for another encore. In 30GB and 60GB models that hold up to 15,000 songs, full-color album art and up to 25,000 photos, the new iPod makes the most of your music and more. Yeah, you’ve heard that tune before. Only now, you can watch it, too. With support for up to 150 hours of video and a 2.5-inch color display, the new iPod lets you take music videos and TV shows on the road.”

BeADesignGroup will update with more information as it becomes available. ‘Till then, we suggest talking about how much you want one.

“That’s the smartest thing I’ve ever heard.” –Jennifer Philippi, Omaha

Today, Apple announced not only their newest iMac G5, nor just the prophesized iPod Video, but a groundbreaking step in digital home entertainment. Partnering with both ABC and Disney, you are now able to purchase episodes of your favorite televison shows — to keep, not stream — for a scant $2 apiece.

My agency has a visitor this week. She’s a freelancer doing production and finish work. She is very awesome, very competent, and very funny. She’s a very good fit for the group. And she’s also very deaf. She speaks through ASL, written notes, and emails. Last year I taught a hearing impaired student, but the college provided a translator at all times and I got lazy and relied on that. Now I’ve pulled out my pocket dictionary of signing and I’m learning my abc’s all over again. But that’s neither here nor there. Let me get to my point.

I buy The Office from iTunes every week. I then hook my iPod to our conference room big-screen TV (it looks pretty good that size, you’d be surprised) and we watch it over lunch—as a big group. So for us to do that today, we’d need to turn on closed captioning on the iPod. Except that Apple doesn’t support closed captioning on the iPod, or iTunes videos in any capacity.

Oh sure, you say, because deaf people probably don’t listen to a lot of iPods. Well sure, I assume they wouldn’t. But with their foray into video, Apple and their partners (ABC, NBC, Disney, etc.) have a pretty solid and obvious responsibility here. It has been proposed by others on the web that a specific feature in iTunes, probably a Preference, could simply be turned on for videos to be watched by people who are hearing impaired and deaf. My iPod asks me everytime I watch a video if I want to send a signal for a TV hookup, so a similar Settings feature could surely be implemented.

I can understand Apple, in the rush and excitement of launching a video revolution, accidentally forgetting that the hard-of-hearing might still want to download LOST. Hey, sometimes I forget to spell-check documents, too. But I always have to go back in and fix the things I’ve overlooked, and it’s time for Apple to do the same.

It is amazing what good design can do for a product. Griffin Technology has a product called the iMic that is basically an external sound card. It is an excellent product (read my full review here), but it might as well been called the iSore. Not only was it ugly, it also had a confusing interface. By “interface” I mean it has one switch. You use the switch to change between using the iMic for a microphone or a speaker. When I bought my iMic I thought it was broken because when I plugged my microphone in I pushed the unmarked switch towards the mic icon. That is the only logical way it can go, right? As crazy as it seems, in order to use a microphone with the iMic, you have to push the switch towards the speaker icon. I wonder how many iMic’s were returned just because Griffin failed to put any thought into the only switch on the entire product.

Fortunately, the new design appears to correct the fatal design flaw. Also, it is now an object worthy of proudly sitting on your desk next to the rest of your Apple gear. There are so many great products trapped in ugly or non-functional shells. Hats off to Griffin for finally recognizing the value of good design.

This movie is too funny not to to share with the group. It is a video of what would happen if Microsoft were to redesign the packaging of the iPod. It is worth it just to read the client feedback throughout the video. Gems like, “Let’s make better use of this space” are so funny it hurts.

(If you have trouble seeing the video, that is because it got dugg. You might be able to find an alternative link over at Digg, though.)

Designers everywhere pulled a proverbial Pavlov earlier today when Apple announced its 13” MacBook Computer. In black. Now your 2Ghz portable life can match your designer black glasses, black shoes, black shirt, black leather jacket, black leather pants, black leather socks, black hair, black underwear, black iPod, black house, black car, black black and half-caf mocha cinnamon hazelnut latté… wait, I mean, black coffee.

Or you can buy a white one. Pavlov, if you please?

DING!

Inspired by Be A Design Cast 19.

File this under “something to do in your free moments” today.

New “Get A Mac” ads. And oh, what the heck? All the Get A Mac Ads. Just for fun. My favorite is still the too-true, too-funny “Network” ad, but “Better Results” definitely has a certain je ne sais quois about it…

Okay, we’re a little late on this one, but for some fun Monday-afternoon viewing, scope out the newest Get A Mac spots (sadly Gisele-free this time, fellas). And for an even more enjoyable experience, check them out in Japanese! No, we don’t speak Japanese either, but it translates pretty well even without understanding the dialog. Note the slight character differences between the far corners of the globe…

Other near-winning headlines for this article were:

“I Feel Like a Caveman For Using Phone Numbers.”

“Your Video iPod Sucks,” and

“Who The Hell is Going To Want Anything Else Ever Again?”

Oh Apple. Why dost thou hate me so? I am the very cheery color of the sun and a myriad of flowers around the globe. I am in almost every fast food logo, and I am many people’s favorite color. I could go on and on, but I am a color that should need no introduction. I am in fact a primary color. If you think about it, there are only two colors that are equal to me.

I can try to understand why you have picked blue for your product colors more often than any other (nine in my very rough estimate), but can’t you let me shine every once in a while? Why did you not use me when the rest of the rainbow was represented in your original iMac line? Not since you stripped the color from your original logo have I been able to show my stuff.

At&t needs help. Botched rebranding aside, they just can’t get anything right. Not even a kiss from Apple’s ultracool iPhone can turn this frog into a prince. They were given a gift - the most highly touted product in the history of the world - and they can’t gain an ounce of street cred. As I observed the launch of the iPhone I was really surprised by how poorly at&t handled their part of the deal.

Sites all over the internet are reporting that Toshiba is finally, finally pulling the plug on HD-DVD. Thank GAWD. Not that my wife is going to allow me to pick up a Blu-Ray player anytime soon, they are still far too expensive, and the movies are even more overpriced than DVDs.

It’s WIRED, though, that offers the best assessment of the situation: “This leaves Blu-Ray as the presumptive victor in the irrelevant optical disk format war. It now must face up to the real competition: the continuing success of DVD and the growing popularity of downloads, both on the internet and on-demand cable TV.”

Well, that’s all well and good. I personally still prefer to have a physical disc that I can take around, watch on my computer, watch on my TV, watch whenever the hell I want to, as opposed to say, getting a 30-day window to watch something one time over a 24-hour period that is only actually available on your newest line of products so fools like me that spend $5 on them get shafted by your staunch refusal to either refund my money or support my still-functioning fifth-generation iPod. Dicks.

I wrote this over a year ago, but for some reason I never posted it. Since writing this, Creative Suite has been released for Intel Macs along with the Multi-Touch trackpad for the MacBooks.

As I work on my four year old G4 I can’t help but imagine that graphic designers are becoming useless to the likes of Apple and to a certain extent Adobe. I can think of very few software or hardware upgrades that were made in the last couple of years that have made our job significantly faster, better or easier. Sure we will be able to work faster when Adobe comes out with software that is ported for Intel machines, but do we really need anything much faster? When it seems that iTunes takes up about as much processor speed as Photoshop, I realize that it is not designers that are driving the technology anymore. So what industry is driving the market for faster computers? The obvious answer is video.