No doubt Apple another after the death of Steve Jobs. This, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing. Jobs was very good at many things, but we know that Apple was a complicated company in many ways, especially in its relationship with the press at large.
Many of these rules were set by Katie Cotton, Apple's former head of corporate communications, who retired in the middle of last year. With his departure, Steve Dowling has taken office and is proving to be a much more open person in this regard.
What we have seen from Apple employees (whether they are vice presidents, directors or even lower-ranking employees) giving interviews is not in the comic book. And with the launch of the 21.5-inch iMac with Retina 4K display, Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad, this is even more evident.
While interviewing Kate Bergeron, John Ternus (both project lead engineers) and Brian Croll (vice president of Macintosh product marketing), the journalist Steven levy became the first to enter the Input Design Lab from Apple (where she does all the testing with keyboards, mice, and trackpads). Talking to the three of them and Phil Schiller (senior vice president of world marketing), Levy shared some beautiful details about the creation of the iMac and the peripherals.
Before getting into the details of the products themselves, the lab deserves attention! They are machines and more machines that test everything on these peripherals.
But it does not stop, after all who uses the products are human beings, so nothing is more logical than filling a hand of sensors to understand exactly the behavior (muscle and memory fatigue, acoustic, accurate and other tests) resulting in typing for some minutes / hours on a given keyboard and this they also do there.
Does Apple often make larger-than-normal prototypes to make sure their schematics work like the piano in the movie "Want to be Big" with Tom Hanks? So, well, for the
Testing also involves acoustic room to develop the perfect sound of a Magic Mouse 2 click, a touch of the Magic Keyboard key or the surface of Magic Trackpad 2. There are also machines that test the behavior of peripherals on various surfaces and more. It is worth visiting Levy's article, if only to see the various images of the laboratory.
But back to the products that are obviously very close to the lab itself, although not perfect (a pity that, even with all this gadget, Apple still creates a mouse that can't be used on surfaces like glass and a keyboard that doesn't have backlighting) It's amazing to see Apple's attention in creating anything, whether it's the company's golden egg chicken (iPhone) or a "mere" keyboard / mouse that comes with the iMacs.
Reading Levy's article we have the real notion of how much time Apple has invested in these accessories, though looking at everything quickly we see the same thing. This idea is even bigger with Magic Mouse 2, which has its external structure virtually identical to the first generation mouse. But when we learned that Apple spent hours and hours repurposing the mouse because it was not happy with the noise it made as it was dragged from side to side, or that it was able to put all the keys (which are now larger) into one. smaller (total area) and thinner keyboard.
The iMac itself, incidentally, is a product that many companies would probably not pay much attention to if it was in the role of Apple. When we think that iPhones account for more than 50 percent of the company's revenue and that computers are “becoming increasingly truck-like,” it would be normal to see them earning less and less attention. But no, the Mac is still something very important to Apple, regardless of the revenue it generates.
Schiller could not have been happier in his explanation to Levy. According to him, ideally we will always use the smallest possible device to make as much as possible before opting for the next (largest) product in the line.
They (Apple product line) are all computers. Each of these computers is offering something unique and each is made in a simple way that is quite eternal. It's the clock's job to do more and more things on your wrist so you don't have to pick up the phone so often. The phone's job is to do more and more things that might make you not need your iPad, and it should always be trying hard to do that. The work of the iPad will be so powerful and capable that you never need a notebook. Like why do I need a notebook? I can add a keyboard! I can do all these things! The notebook's job is to do everything to the point that you don't need a desktop, right? He has been doing this for a decade. And that leaves the poor desktop at the end of the line, what's his job?
Their job is to challenge what we think a computer can do and do things no computer has ever done before, to be increasingly powerful and capable, so we need a desktop because of its capabilities. Because if everything that it is doing is competing with the notebook is thinner and lighter, then it need not exist.
And the iMac differentials come in, starting, of course, with the incredible Retina display that now supports the P3 standard, which offers 25% more colors than sRGB. For this Apple had to invent a new LED coding standard that generates higher intensities of reds and greens and which, through a color filter, would create this whole new range of colors. After that they went after suppliers able to implement this new scheme. An alternative was the technology called quantum dot, but Apple eventually rejected everything because it used the toxic element cadmium. After a while, however, they finally managed to find a way into what they wanted without any environmental disadvantage.
Even Microsoft has become the focus of this chat, after all, for every "yes" Apple needs to say a lot of "us", and one of those negatives put a multi-touch screen on computers, something competitors (like Microsoft) do. Today's Apple partner (who even attended Ma's last presentation demonstrating the Office suite on the iPad Pro) recently launched some interesting products and spawned two reactions on Schiller.
While not following the event (at least he said), Apple's marketing head reinforced something we already knew: From an ergonomic point of view, Apple has studies that prove that this kind of interaction is totally uncomfortable. It's a computer unlike products like iPhones and iPads, which were created from the start with the idea of ​​finger interactivity. "These two worlds have different purposes, and that's a good thing we can optimize everything around the best experience for each of them and not try to mix them into a more common experience," said Schiller.
Couldn't miss a slight prick, anyway? And quite rightly. Schiller took the opportunity to comment that Microsoft's entry into the computer market (the first time the company launches a notebook) only proved that Apple was right in its strategy (of creating both its hardware and software) from the beginning. . “It's amazing that a single event has validated a lot that Apple does, putting us at a level above. And that is flattering. ”
If you enjoy these behind-the-scenes stories, be sure to read Levy's articles.
(via Daring Fireball)
