Apple Inc. design motifs
Apple Inc. products has had various design motifs since its inception. Recent motifs were mainly developed under the collaboration of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive beginning in 1997, radically altering the previous Apple computer designs.
Translucency[edit]
This first phase appeared in 1997 with the eMate, followed in 1998 with the release of the original Bondi-blue iMac (see below). This motif was later applied to the first iBook models released in 1999, and the Blue and White Power Mac G3 and their accompanying Studio Displays. The design was characterised by translucent surfaces with either a candy-like or milky-white coloring and soft, bulging contours. Subdued vertical pinstripes were made to show through the translucent faces of these products. Printed on the back panel for ports and agency approval marks was a lenticular plaque that contains a wavy 3D pattern. AC power cords were also translucent, with the twisted wires visible within them.
The translucency and colors in this style appear to have been inspired by gumdrop candies, and Ive reportedly visited confectionery plants to learn to replicate the gumdrop's visual effect. Ive and his team went on to develop novel manufacturing techniques in order to build products based on this design motif.[1]
Only the PowerBook G3 was uninfluenced by the translucent style (with the exception of a translucent, bronze-colored keyboard on the Lombard and Pismo models), and retained its opaque black casing until it was replaced by the Titanium PowerBook G4 in 2001.
In 2013, iOS went through a major redesign with the release of iOS 7 in September. Much of the refreshed UI had a translucent effect, noticeable in places like the Notification Center, Control Center, the multitasking screen, and Apple's Remote app for iOS.
OS X went through a major redesign in 2014 which was similar to iOS 7, with the release of OS X Yosemite. Yosemite's refreshed UI had translucent effects seen in the Dock, the user login window, Notification Center, and in the Safari web browser.
Minimalism[edit]
In 2001, Apple designs shifted away from multicolored translucency and began two new design branches. The professional motif appeared with the PowerBook G4, and featured industrial grade metal: first titanium, then aluminum. The minimalist consumer design debuted with the iBook G3, and featured glossy white coloring and opaque finishes. Both lines did away with soft, bulging shapes and moved toward streamlined, orthogonal, minimalist shapes. The designs appear to have been heavily influenced by German industrial designer Dieter Rams,[5] with a clear example being the iPhone calculator application, which appears to have been directly influenced by Dieter Rams' 1978 Braun Control ET44 calculator.[6]
The iPod continued the look of the consumer line, featuring an opaque, white front. The success and wide embrace of Apple's iPod appeared to have had an effect on Ive and his design team, and some noted the striking similarity of the iPod's design with the subsequent iMac G5 and Mac mini designs. Apple even promoted the release of the iMac G5 as coming "from the creators of iPod," and, in the accompanying promotional photographs, both products were shown next to each other in profile, highlighting the similarities in their design.[7] The newer generations of AirPort Extreme, 2012 model of AirPort Express, Apple TV, and iPhone designs have continued this trend toward a simple rounded-rectangle styling across product lines.
Slate[edit]
Even more recently in late 2012, Apple has been shown to be moving towards a more brushed slate texture, with diamond-cut chamfered edges. This was evidenced by the iPhone 5 and iPad mini respectively. The benefits of this new slate style are that the devices are more easily gripped and they cannot be scratched as easily. Analysts speculated that Apple might release a full sized iPad with this same slate style in 2013, and this was confirmed with the release of the iPad Air on November 1, 2013. The slate design continued with the introduction of the MacBook in 2015, and reinforced with the redesigned MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lineups, in amino acids.