10 reasons why

is bad for design

1: Design attributions

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/05/jonathan-ive-knighted/

Apple’s design may be good (or not –see below), but too

many people accept that the success of the company can be attributed to their design

achievements

Jobs, Ive and the media have reinforced this causal

relation, underplaying the primary role of marketing

and exaggerating the ancillary role of design

Yet, many designers prefer to believe fabricated stories

that attribute commercial success to ‘design strategies’

2: The ‘inevitability’ illusion

www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/9488354/New-iPhone-New-iPad-Rumours-drive-Apple-value-to-new-heights.html

Apple’s successes largely depend on a system of

‘engineered anticipation’, while their failures go

largely unnoticed -or are grossly underrated.

Their product design escape objective

evaluation and professional scrutiny.

Critical views are non-existent or are rapidly

dismissed as ‘dissenters’ of a higher cause.

3: Sosumi: Double standards

http://www.mbaonline.com/Also see: http://www.androidauthority.com/patent-war-infographic-88534/

Apple has shown a double standard in regard to intellectual property.

Jobs ‘borrowed’ many inventions from Xerox

PARC and SRI in the 1980s and the company is well

known by experts to improve existing

technologies.

Yet, Apple is the most active company launching

patent battles against competitors.

4: Stereotypes

http://www.apple.com

The corporate strategy of Apple has been built in building simplistic and

ridicule stereotypes.

Sadly, many in the design world have blindly

adopted this worldview and equate the ‘creative type’ with buying Apple

products.

The irony is that “think different” becomes a way of conventional, uncritical

conformism.

5: Cult and rhetoric

http://www.world-and-local-news.com/2012/06/5-signs-that-apple-is-cult.html

Indoctrination, delusion and infatuation of a

leader’s personality have been very successful

components in Apple’s commercial strategy.

Apple fanatics are made believe that by buying

these products they somehow ‘change the

world’.

Few people are critical of Apple’s revolutionary

rhetoric.

6: Greenwashing Apple is constantly questioned for its

strategies, materials, suppliers and

‘sustainability’ claims.

They have addressed some complaints, but the

core of their strategy is “planned obsolescence”.

Many corporations engage in these practices, but it is especially cynical coming

from a company that markets itself in such metaphysical terms.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/21/apple-least-green-tech-company

7: Bubble

mashable.com/2012/08/22/apple-is-ridiculously-valuable-infographic/

Apple’s growth is unsustainable and the

company is over-valued -this is 2012, check back in

a few years.

This is almost trivial from a design viewpoint, except

that so many people are claiming that design can

do miracles for any company who follows

Apple’s example (see slide #1).

8: (no) design contribution

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-Rams-Apple-has-achieved-something-I-never-did.html

Besides setting superficial trends in product

appearance, Apple design has made no substantial

contribution to design.

Jobs and Ive follow the modernist tradition,

praising Bauhaus, Braun and Dieter Rams’s 50-year

old principles.

Their claims of “product essence” and “purity” are

uncanny and lead to a racist ideology of design

and aesthetics.

9: The designer is God

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/08/28/steve-jobs-american-genius.html

Apple’s paternalistic view of design is becoming a

paradigm in some design circles.

In such conventional terms, the “user” doesn’t really

know what he/she wants –and the designers’

superiority enable them to envision breakthrough ideas.

Fortunately, participatory and co-creation methods

have shown in the last decades that individuals and

communities know better than any self-proclaimed

genius.

10: Gatekeeper

http://gawker.com/5809978/listen-to-richard-dreyfuss-make-apple-sound-evil

Apple’s model of the Internet consists of an

“app world” where they get to decide and approve what is made available to

the users.

This is not being challenged by most

people, but it is as if back in the 1990s Mosaic and

Netscape inspected every website before its

publication.

Ludicrous.

Want more facts and arguments?

Check Morozov’s article:http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/100978/form-fortune-steve-jobs-philosopher

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html

http://vator.tv/news/2010-04-05-ipad-launch-weekend-news-round-up

http://theredlist.fr/wiki-2-24-224-267-view-fiction-profile-adam-eve.html