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Originally Posted by pandy71
Well... look at NeXT - truly marvelous product from engineering perspective, engineered almost like non-Jobs vision and fail, similarly other products with at least debatable esthetics... Obviously people forgotten about failed Jobs ideas and remembering only good ones - truth is laid somewhere between - that's why i've wrote about overestimated Jobs visionary capabilities...
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Have we?
I haven't forgotten about how Jobs killed the Apple III's reliability by insisting on not having a fan in it, but that's what being a visionary is about - doing things that conventional wisdom says are unnecessary, impractical or impossible. I hate computers with noisy fans. Even quiet fans aren't good, as they suck dust into the machine (including into the floppy drive where it damages disks) and have limited lifespan. This Lenovo 3000j I recently bought sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it's running, which is very annoying (I sense that it's headed for the rubbish bin soon!).
But it wasn't Job's fault that the Apple III suffered from overheating - that's the kind of problem engineers are paid to solve. Commodore had a similar problem only worse - Gould let the engineers have their own visions, but they couldn't even solve the problems they themselves created!
The A1200 was in some ways visionary, as it pushed the idea of a smaller 'all in the keyboard' design when PCs were getting larger to fit the stuff that was going into them (including huge heat sinks and fans to keep the grossly overclocked CPU cool.). I'm glad they did that. A conventional box with separate keyboard would be boring, and wouldn't fit on my coffee table. This design meant the A1200 was able to bridge the gap between game consoles and desktop PCs.
But the engineers didn't want that. They wanted a box big enough to take all the latest advanced hardware they were looking at stuffing in it. Style and ergonomics were the last things on their minds, as they imagined how incredible an Amiga with VRAM and DSP and a RISC CPU would be. Never mind that it would take years for coders to get the best out it, or that most developers would still ignore it because they had their hands full making stuff for the PC, or that it would cost so much that you might as well just buy a PC anyway.
Today desktop PCs are declining in popularity because nobody wants a big box huffing and puffing away in the living room where there's nowhere to put it. That's why most people today have a laptop or even just a tablet, and game consoles like the PlayStation 5 are popular even though they cost more than a typical PC (quite the change from the 90's when they were far cheaper). A full-size gaming PC with all the extra stuff is just too unwieldy, as well as too expensive for all but the most hardcore gamer to justify.
When it came to
failed visions, Apple didn't need Jobs. The number of different machines kept multiplying as they tried to make one to suit every customer. Jobs cut through all this by making a chart with 4 segments. Did you want a portable or a desktop, for business or personal use? That's 4 combinations for 4 models, no need to make more! And then he concentrated on style.
The iMac was a breath of fresh air in a market crowded with boring boxes. My favorite iMac design is the G4 'Sunflower' - a bitch to work on but so stylish and practical in use. One day I hope to own one.
Why iMac G4 is still the greatest Mac ever made 20 years later
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Apple could’ve taken the easy route and gone with a design that mirrored the original Bondi Blue iMac except with a smaller footprint (in fact Steve Jobs made a joke slide about that during Macworld San Francisco keynote). But no, Apple took a whole new approach, with the core components in a domed case, a chrome arm that stuck out from the top of the dome, and an LCD attached to the top.
The iMac G4 was dubbed the “sunflower” Mac, or the “iLamp,” a name inspired by the Luxo Jr. video short by Pixar. It didn’t look like a computer. To this day, the iMac G4 stands out in a mundane world of desktop computers—current Macs included. It was quirky, fun, and functional, but more importantly, the design proved that Apple’s success with the original iMac wasn’t a fluke.
Apple got the ergonomics right
The best part of the iMac’s design was the cantilevered metal arm that held the 15-inch LCD. It allowed users to precisely place the display in the best position—you could move it up or down, left or right, and you adjust the tilt, too. In an ode to the iMac G4, Christopher Phin wrote that the display’s arm was, “impossibly, magically smooth, and preposterously stable, like no other piece of engineering you’ve used before.”
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