Shop Ani- May
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the authors

Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Appledesign: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group Paperback – October 1, 1997

4.0 out of 5 stars 24 ratings

To celebrate Apple's twentieth anniversary, AppleDesign provides a rare inside look at the Industrial Design Group, examining the role this small team of creative individuals has played in the rise of Apple from a Silicon Valley garage to a billion-dollar corporation. It details the formation of the Group, outlines their method for turning great ideas into even greater products, reveals many design concepts and products that never reached the marketplace, and offers a glimpse at the triumph and turmoil than results when creative desire meets (and occasionally collides with) corporate reality.
With more than 400 color illustrations and detailed discussion of more than 100 products, design concepts and works-in-progress, AppleDesign provides the most thorough examination of a corporate design group ever published.
From the Macintosh to the PowerBook, the Newton MessagePad, the eMate and the just-released Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, Apple's designers have given us some of the most compelling and enduring products of our time. Their work not only enriches the lives of more than 50 million Apple users worldwide, it influences the computer industry at large, providing strong evidence for those who argue that industrial design is as powerful and relevant an art form as painting, sculpture or architecture.
The%20Amazon%20Book%20Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This oversized, coffee-table volume is devoted to the industrial design of every product made at Apple Computer over the course of 20 years. Lavishly illustrated with over 400 large color photographs by photographer Rick English, the book transforms the plastic cases, LCD displays, and disk drives from old Apple IIcs, Lisas, Macs, PowerBooks, and Newtons (and a few technologies that never made it to the street) into objects of fine art. The book's attention to detail, even in the small peripherals, such as the stylus of the Newton--the ubiquitous round stick-on microphone that ships with the Mac--contributes to the technological identity of the Apple brand.

Remember that 20 years ago, when you walked into a campus computing center or office building, you could distinguish an Apple system from an IBM system from across a room. The early IBM PCs were box-shaped--as close to pure squares and rectangles as possible--and buttoned down with garters on the socks like the Big Blue executives who sold them to the world as business machines. In contrast, the physical design of the Apple machines has always represented the company's "alternative" (and borderline arrogant) mindset, appealing to the more artistic user and fueling the left-versus-right-brain debates. In addition to the packaging of the machine, the Mac's graphical user interface and Motorola CPUs provided the artistic cover by which this innovative book could safely be judged.

Today other computer companies casually imitate the technofuturistic curvedness of the once-almost-shocking Apple design. Much like how the set of the movie Blade Runner has influenced many films that followed it, the industrial design of Apple machines continues to shape other companies' computer designs. AppleDesign is interesting both as an historical document and an artistic appreciation of these designs.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ UNKNO
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 1, 1997
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1888001259
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1888001259
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.75 x 1 x 12 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 out of 5 stars 24 ratings

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
24 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2024
    Apple Design is the definitive encyclopedia of Industrial and Product designs created by (or for) Apple Computer in its first twenty years. It covers Apple's first products up until the Second Coming of Steve in the mid 1990s.

    The book goes into considerable depth on the personalities who defined and created some of the most iconic products of the personal computer era, as well as many fascinating designs and concepts that never made it to the store shelves.

    Apple’s design in these first twenty years was defined in four epochs. The first was the original products with designs led by Jerry Manock; the Apple II, the Apple III, the original Macintosh. Then Steve Jobs signed on with German designer Harmutt Esslinger and his company frogdesign. This distinctive style of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s (code named “Snow White”) included products like the Apple IIc, Mac II and the Mac IIsi. When Steve Jobs was deposed from Apple in the late 1980s, Esslinger, frogdesign, and frog’s staggering consulting fees fell out of favor. Apple took over their own design, with some chaotic results, including some ugly tower systems and very thick “laptop” computers. In 1990, Bob Brunner took over the industrial design group, working to make it a world-class operation within Apple, and trying to create some consistency from a rather oddball product line.

    The book closes with the Second Coming of Steve, but prior to his new products. We’ll have to wait for a sequel to cover the designs led by Jonny Ive, such as the candy-colored iMacs and “al-yoo-minnyam” Macbooks.

    The book is filled with wonderful color photos of nearly all Apple’s products from the first twenty years, as well as many fanciful prototypes and conceptual mock-ups. Nostalgic Apple fans will love these pictures.

    Ironically for a book on design, however, the layout of this book is terrible. Instead of interspersing the color photos with the text of the stories behind them, the photos are gathered into the center and cross referenced by “plate” numbers. This makes it painful to refer to the photos in the context of their creation stories. Worse, the captions provided are in tiny six point point type, making it even more difficult to understand the context of the photos.
  • Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2009
    This is a beautiful book. It had a short run, and copies are now very rare. It seems like it was too expensive for them to produce or something, but it's quite a book.

    Yes, it could be edited a bit, but the photographs are the important part. Printing quality is wonderful--good enough to make high-quality scans (if you do that sort of thing).

    This is an art book, NOT a history book.. The designs in this book are iconic, striking, and represent a fundamental change in the history of the computer industry.
    2 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2002
    Although this book reads a bit "dry", it is the best source for the information contained therein.
    2 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2014
    This book takes you through all the designs that we have seen and the ones we have not. This is your chance to see the entire spectrum of creativity from Apple over the 90's.
  • Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2000
    The introduction of the iMac in a variety of translucent colours, not just applied as an afterthought, but applied loving to every detail of the design, such as translucent cables, yeah and even a two colour mouse-ball...., all that sparked off a new movement in computer design. Suddenly megaherz and megabyte were no longer sexy, people wanted more. A computer had to fulfill design criteria to be admitted to the household. Numerous other companies have since jumped onto the bandwaggon. Although their orginiality is debateable, there is no doubt that Apple had set a new trend in computing, analagous to the revolution in automobile design in the 50ies and 60ies.
    But before the iMac, Apple was already famed and loved for it's design. An Apple had always stood out from the other computers on the shop shelf. That is because for Apple, design was not a last minute cosmetic operation, but a part of design philosophy. This book traces the history of those designs from the very first Apple in a wooden box, discussing many projects that were never realised, or only realised in a greatly modified form. It discusses alternatives, preliminary and intermediate design studies and the road to the final products. The text is concise and informative and easy to read. The book is amply illustarted with sketches, black and white and colour photographs of Apples that were, that are and that never will be. Unfortunately, the book stops short of the most recent steps. But even so, this book is an enlightenment and enrichment for those who are interested in Apple, or computer history in general.
    3 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2002
    This book offers a comprehensive look at Apple's design, to be sure - and it's a story worth telling. However, the presentation is fundamentally flawed in that it reads like propaganda from the Jobs machine. The fact of the matter is that Jobs had very little to do with design at Apple, or with anything else that Apple did well, for that matter. The myth of Jobs is a nothing more than a fraud - an incredibly successful fraud.
    4 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2010
    I refuse to pay these absurd prices for this book. I emailed the publisher, which is owned by another company now, if they could release another print run of this title, even a small run or something. Hopefully they'll take it under advisement. I'm sure they wouldn't have any trouble selling a few thousand copies, and I put that in my email too.

    I'd like to have the book, but it's not one that's worth more than 45.00. Certainly not 200+ It's just because it's out of print and hard to find and people are trying to make a buck. Do yourself a favor and not buy this book until they release another run. Maybe do what I did and email the publisher. Maybe if they get enough requests they'll do it.

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
  • jbl1981
    5.0 out of 5 stars Magnifique
    Reviewed in France on August 15, 2017
    Que de souvenirs ! Dix ans de design chez Apple : des produits finis, des projets annulés, des réflexions sur des technologies futures… On y retrouve les lignes simples et nobles des produits Apple de l'Apple IIc jusqu'à la veille de la sortie de l'iMac.
    Customer image
    jbl1981
    5.0 out of 5 stars
    Magnifique

    Reviewed in France on August 15, 2017
    Que de souvenirs ! Dix ans de design chez Apple : des produits finis, des projets annulés, des réflexions sur des technologies futures… On y retrouve les lignes simples et nobles des produits Apple de l'Apple IIc jusqu'à la veille de la sortie de l'iMac.
    Images in this review
    Customer image
    Report