Core77

So apple is copying the droid?

ID isn't hitting it's limits. They can keep on switching back and forth between curved and flat *indefinitely*!

Seriously, though, some products get mature. And when that happens, designers can focus on something new.

There is this common perception that ID should always be about what is 'sketchable' i.e. different shape of housing, buttons. Apple ID obviously focusses more on manufacturing process and materials to make it products slimmer, better, simpler etc.
From a design perspective the major issue with previous iPhones was the sensitivity to scratches on the glossy plastic part. A flat and hard ceramic panel is a good solution and does not influence wireless peformance.

Experienced IDers will know that these kinds of new innovative solutions take a lot of effort and time to develop. Not only the technical aspect but also the commercialisation i.e. making it affordable enough.

There is no doubt that cell phones have reached their physical limit.For instance, you simply cannot use correctly a keyboard which is smaller then your thumb! The new generation touch screens by-pass the problem, but we still have to remain inside human hand's proportions.
That said, i think that whenever there is a best seller which combines aesthetics and usability, such as the iphone, all the others try to imitate. It is too hard to invent the next limit, so inevitably they copy the shell, hoping this way to get some shares of the market..

You _might_ be able to argue that Apple is reaching the limits of _its_ industrial design, or at least this particular aesthetic (it's been a good 10 years for them), but to say that it's the end of ID is pretty laughable.

Then again, consumer electronics are just about the least interesting form of design to my tastes, so maybe I should just stay out of this debate...

If this hasn't been THE question occupying my brain as of late I don't know what is. Everything I've designed as of late has been a black rectangle in essence, as our customers are really excited about the possibilities of developing a cool UI, but also want a seamless blend of display into their vehicle environments. So what we end up with is a lot of variations on the black rectangle. Where it gets tricky is being expected to wear the UI guy hat when there aren't any in the building. I have some ideas about good UI design, but my toolkit for creating them is spare at best. So my conundrum has been, do I accept the black rectangle - the Arthur C. Clarkian "Monolith" - and challenge myself to understand and develop (at least conceptually) UI, or do I keep pushing wilder external hardware while masking my shortcomings as a UI guy. So far I've chosen to push myself, as I think Industrial Design considered as a separate practice can only grow in not-yet imagined ways from learning what UI design and use is really all about. If I just create empty black rectangles in isolation, I remove myself from the process of interacting with an end user. Ultimately though I think the process will lead to IDers trained in UI tools, and people interested in strictly UI to become more hardcore UI engineers.

The assertion that "the iPhone has reached the limits of industrial design." is ridiculous. You could have said that mobile phones were all beginning to look the same before the iPhone now it is happening again. The thin rectangle form factor is one of many that most mobile phones have coalesced around. There are the clamshells, the blackberries, the candybars (on the wane), now there is a new variant coming to the fore... the laptop? An articulated rectangle, either by hinge or slide. As long as what we want from a mobile experience remains the same the solutions will evolve to fit a few preferred and more or less stable forms. This will continue. We may have the answer nailed for now, but new questions will be asked.

I think the point is that its not terribly risky or inventive, based on Apple's track record of groundbreaking ID. The details do look very well resolved, but its not breaking any ground in form factor, size, etc. The glass/ceramic dual sandwich layers are said to improve wireless/cellular transmission, and resemble (to me anyway) the sapphire crystal on good wristwatches. I see this as "vintage TAG Heuer" rather than straight-up Braun style. But as to your last paragraph, no, as long as people have hands, feet, skin, and ears, the physical experience will be as important as the UI.

Couple of points I want to make.

First, miniaturization can remove a device's aesthetic wiggle room only if you're optimizing for the smallest possible package. What we have with the iPhone is that the size of the insides and the size of the outside are close to parity. If the internals were shrunk in half Apple wouldn't make a phone half the size because that would make for a pretty crappy phone. So if the outside stays roughly the same size and the internals shrink you get your wiggle room. Take the iPod nano for example, because the internals are so much smaller in respect to it's enclosure it can be as curvy as it wants to be.

But all of this is assuming that Ive wants things to be curvy which I'm not convinced he does. If you look at the Apple products that feature big curves iPad/iMac/MB Air/iPhone 3GS, they use curves APPEAR thin rather than actually BE thin. The new iPhone is thin without having to fake it.

Second, in response to Farhad Manjoo's complaint that the new iPhone looks like the old one, the answer is: of course it does. Every other Apple product follows the same pattern: Spend more time than you can ever imagine on the initial version then spend years refining the hell out of it. The MacBook Pro doesn't look all that different from a TiBook but people don't seem to complain. When a product does change radically (iMac/iPod) it's because they feel that new design is fundamentally better for the user, not to satisfy your desire to have something that looks different. If you want different for the sake of being different you're looking at the wrong company.

What a great article. If you look at what is required in a touch screen phone, you will notice it's all screen. Sure there are a few buttons on the side and front of any touch screen phone but thats it. This is not the end of ID, this just might be the end of refining at rectangular touch screen device. Maybe the next ID will be in pull out e-ink screens, or holograms. Eventually It will all come down to how is this information projected. Phones are communication devices, so how can you bring the communication any closer to the user? You could embed the ear piece into the users ear or maybe their brain and the microphone into their voice box. Whats left? A device to control dialing or any other interaction.

There are still so many possibilities for phones, just less for a 100% touch screen device.

The thing that strikes me most about the new iPhone design is that it's *safe.* There's nothing interesting about it--no flourish, no fun, no element to it that makes you stand back and go "wow!"--but there's no mistakes being made, either. The reasoning behind every design choice seems clear. The big change--the move from a complex-curvature back to a flat back--makes sense when you start asking yourself what, exactly, the point of the complex-curvature back was. Industrial design pornography and a highly-debatable hand feel choice aren't worth sacrificing two hours of battery life and flat-surface usability.

Minimalism as a trend makes sense for flexible-purpose devices. Maximizing screen area is the logical choice to allow for the greatest variety of experiences on the platform, and extraneous elements distract from that. I don't think we'll be moving away from the "big screen, small bezel, minimal buttons" look for smartphones and televisions anytime soon, though designs like the new HTC Droid Incredible and the Sony Bravia NX800 show there's still interesting design things to be done within those constraints. Apple's not in a place to use those kinds of risky design flourishes, though--as long as they're insisting on a single-device-choice platform, they can't use masculine, racecar-inspired design elements or out-of-left-field construction paradigms for fear of alienating part of their userbase. Companies with broader product lines have a lot more room to experiment than a company whose strategy is a limited product line with minimal product overlap.

Companies with broader product lines also have room to make more appliance-like devices that don't require the gigantic screens. Feature phones designed to perform one task well, for example, have a lot more space to explore unique design elements. The first-gen Microsoft Kin phones seem to have a bit of iPhone Envy when closed, but I wouldn't be shocked to see something unique from their second-generation entries.

The role of ID and IxD on handheld consumer electronics is shifting. The ID guy will need to know when to step back and let the UI guy work his magic, but the ID guy's input will still make a difference between a forgettable or unusable product and an amazing experience. We'll be the stagehands and set designers--doing the important legwork to make sure everything's in place for the UI to shine. It's not as glamorous a role, but it's just as critical.

It seems naive to simply conclude that because Apple is doing minimalism, everyone else will. Granted there are many knockoffs of Apple style and simplicity, I don't believe that it will change the physical form of hand-held electronics permanently. That being said, I believe that the UI designer has a MUCH greater impact than the ID'er on user experience for a device like this. When the iPhone came out, it wasn't the best looking cell phone, it was just the first one to consider user interface very thoughtfully, which is why it was so successful.

Is it me or is that thing.. rather ugly? Why doesnt it seem to have the sleekness of an Apple product? :(

Claiming that ID will fall to the UI guy/gal is like suggesting the architect will fall to the interior designer. IMO they are both equally important. I guarantee it took a lot more work to get the last iPhone to the form that it is, then one might imagine. If the exterior of the house doesn't catch my attention, Im moving on. Both the interior and the exterior must work together to form a unique harmony or the project will likely be a waste.

This certainly hits on something I've been debating within my own head for quite some time - it does seem that the future conglomeration of form factors for various product categories, when laid out on a page, may tend to make a bell curve with the large middle portion of devices being full of this minimal aesthetic, where the physical detailing is calling out for much less attention than the UI resting on its surface, almost becoming a simple container for the life inside.

To its credit, UI is becoming king, especially on interactive devices, but it's not likely that the bare forms that are tending to be made now will be the only forms we see from this point on, unless it's unanimously agreed that "it is the only proper way" for these products to provide a successful user experience. This design trend, while resulting in beautiful, potentially iconic designs, might very well eventually become boring and tiresome to users as (or if) these design nuances become more familiar... will there eventually be a rebellion of expression? Hmmmm...

that's a fake! i can tell right away. bye bye BS

It is very true that a lot of these touch smart phones are beginning to look very similar. Having said that though, there is one key defining feature that causes this, the large touch screen display. With the demand for larger, higher quality screens, one complete side of the device is going to be devoted to that alone, thus leaving very little room for distinctive design characteristics etc. It's no wonder that they have to focus on the interaction design aspects of these phones, because they have replaced the the need for the physical design. Ive himself is even quoted in Objectified, that "everything defers to the display". As if he understands that there isn't much in the way of physical features of the phone because the true user experience is in what it can do and not what it loos like. By simplifying it to oblivion, there is nothing to distract the user from anything else but what they need to do. Personally I love it, and I think the changes, as small as the seem, will no doubt have a large impact on the phone. As with many Apple products, wait until you have it in your hand, and it will all make sense.

absolutely not, ID is not hitting it's limit if intended in the proper way. ID isn't only shape but first ideas and innovation, and then materials and technology and price and usability and...
The iPhone is a great example of good ID, but there's plenty of bad examples if you ask me so there is still place for ID improvements.
Is not a matter of objects being all box-shaped, is a matter of them being the best they can and Apple has an outstanding way of achieving this.
UI can also make the difference, so good UI and good ID do make a winning product.

I'd say that ID is hitting its limit. That doesn't mean ID will go away as long as we have bodies, hands, feet...etc. Like you wouldn't imagine Furniture design going away because all our devices are touchscreens.

I'm sure apple spends much more money on UI design than physical product design. It's probably more on engineering design than those hot sketches ID'ers rejoice so much about.

It's time for ID to evolve more into IxD, ergonomics, fashion and engineering. And it's time ID gets rid of that damn stereotype of sketching ability equaling design ability. I can't imagine Jonathan Ives ever doing marker renderings at Apple. I can imagine him though fussing over radii in Solidworks and debating interaction models with UI designers

Fake or not, i guess the 'ceramic' rear is likely for contact charging, or perhaps wireless charging. a la Microsofts 'apparent' flat screen monitor with no power cord from some time ago. or perhaps just a mug warmer.

To answer the posed question: NO

ID is a wide field that encompasses many gigs
- form, innovation, and research get a lot of print on core77, but that is just the front end of design.

- materials, process, assembly, finish, and color are the physical end of design. Designing something minimal is not easy, thats why few can do it well - look at the motorola droid and compare it with the iphone and you will see the devil is in the details.

Now if you are one of those who tend to argue that consumers will never notice these things, then look at apples results.