Saturday, July 13, 2013

Budget iPhone Echoes Ive's First Eye Candy, The Original iMac


Plastic scraps of brightly-colored plastic buttons from a Chinese factory floor corroborate rumors of the look of the purported "Budget iPhone." Designer Martin Hajek, famous for beautifully detailed renderings of mythological Apple products has produced the representations above. It is notable that the candy colors of iOS 7, which seem a bit jarring and discordant in the context of the precision engineered iPhone 5, might make more aesthetic sense on a phone such as this.


And despite Jony Ive's history of chromatic restraint, the budget iPhone concept, based on months worth of leaks and speculations, is not his first foray into unalloyed bright colors. Ive was in fact the mastermind of the original iMac G3, that came in five colors of (what even seemed at the time to be) dubious sophistication. The "i" in the name stood for the internet and the new Macs were billed as "The most colorful way to the internet" in 1998. The design was charming, perhaps, in the way that the VW Bug has been, but its bulbous bright colors did not become hallmarks of Apple's future products.



What did stick, of course, was the "i" before the name of every product, and the "works right out of the box" simplicity of their setup. It was not, 15 years ago, a high point of Apple design, but it was the start of the company's aggressive courtship of the mainstream consumer. The original iMacs were not for geeks and they weren't particularly for guys. You could get one for your grandma or your kid.


Such, i think, is the gambit of the "budget iPhone." There are conflicting notions of what the hardware of the actual phone will be, colors aside. Most common is the idea that it will have the same screen size as the iPhone 5, just with a chunkier casing. Wedge Partners' Brian Blair issued a report on Monday about possible production cuts of iPhone model by as much as 20%. Blair's minority view expects that "Apple will repurpose the iPhone 4 with a plastic backing that will allow the handset to sell at a retail price below $250."


Perhaps both ideas could be true? Maybe the larger screen model will sell in the U.S. and the smaller, less expensive (and expansive) model is destined for China and the developing world at lower price points.


A third possibility, of course, is that all of the rumored plastic iPhones are cheap Chinese knockoffs. And some of them may well be. A case in point was a video and photos released last weekend from a Taiwanese site called Techdy, that showed a rotating white plastic iPhone. The company, it turns out, is also selling an inexpensive Android phone that is modeled after the "Budget iPhone"! So their leak (authentic or not) was also clearly a publicity stunt to boost preorders of their own product. With 5,000 preorders in the past week for their "Basic Bear," it's hardly in the league of preorder kings like Pebble or Leap Motion, but it did put them on the map.


Every leak is serving some purpose. When Apple wants to leak something itself, it tends to go to The Wall Street Journal for credibility. The kind of blurry photos of iPhone parts that tend to surface prior to an actual release often serve the interests of parts or accessory manufacturers. Who knows how adversarial Apple's relationship with its suppliers actually is, but one can only imagine.


And Hayek? His motivations seem to be involved with demonstrating his abilities to make finely-detailed prototype of non-existing products. As a member of what I call the Fantasy Prototype League, he clearly enjoys living in the alternate reality of possible futures. But he has now taken this to a new extreme by releasing his 3D model as well. "I have even included a .STP (NURBS) format file," he writes, "so you can use it to 3D print it or design your own cases! " One-off accessories for possible iPhone models, now that's geeky Apple fanboy fun!


For the moment, the prospect of a cheaper plastic iPhone neither excites or repels me. A friend confided in me a few days ago his fear of this possibly unfortunate resonance between the plastic iPhone and the original iMac, regarding it as an example of how the post-Jobs Apple is losing its way by returning to its less-than-finest moment. I'm not so sure about that assessment. Although this strategy does not seem to have a lock on the design high-end, look at what Jony Ive's original iMac led to. The newest, super sleek iMacs are still easy to set up but are also sculpturally refined and top-of-the-line. Perhaps we shouldn't let a plastic case color our expectations?


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