The More/Real Blog

Today, after a year of development, I am thrilled to announce the all-new Stylus Caps!

These new Stylus Caps build on everything we learned from the original. They’re lighter, more responsive, and more sustainable. Plus they’ll work great with the new iPad mini, the iPad, Windows Surface, and Kindle Fire.

Lighter.
Stylus Caps are now machined from aluminum, making them 76.2% lighter than the previous generation. That’s right. 76.2%. They feel great in your hand and are so light, you’ll practically forget they’re in your pocket.

More Responsive.
Not too soft and not too hard, people love our exclusive Firm Tips because they feel just right. Now we have dialed in the design to respond even quicker to your screen.

More Sustainable.
Everyday we ask ourselves, “How can we make Stylus Caps simpler?” Then we find new ways to use less materials and energy in our manufacturing processes. What remains is the most sustainable Stylus Cap yet.

We’re beyond excited with how great these new Stylus Caps turned out and hope you take look. The all-new Stylus Caps are available today and can be purchased at the redesigned more-real.com.

I had the idea for Stylus Caps just before New Year’s Day 2011. Perhaps because it was that time of year, something in me clicked. I had been a part of tons of development projects in my career, but never anything on my own. It felt like the right moment to take a leap of faith. On Valentine’s Day, I launched Stylus Caps on Kickstarter. Two days later I had achieved my funding goal.

Then came the hard part: actually making the damn thing. What started as a seemingly simple project turned into the hardest task I’ve ever attempted. Everything took way longer than anticipated. A few times I hit walls that made me question how I would ever get it off the ground. It was a grind from start to finish, but I was able to pull it off. In December of 2011, the last of my Backers’ pre-orders of Stylus Caps finally shipped. 

I now call 2011 my Kickstarter year. It was without a doubt, the most stressful professional year of my life. It was also the most rewarding. When I look back on it now, I can’t help but smile. 

This year I wanted to approach things a little differently. I had started with an idea for a product, but now I needed to figure out what exactly the company wanted to be. As opposed to running a Kickstarter project where I documented my every move, I decided to keep everything behind closed doors. Not to be secretive, but to have the space to think, try things out, and make mistakes.

2012 has been my More/Real year.

The only thing I knew was that More/Real had to play to my strengths and passions: design and technology. Understanding what I loved about design was easy. Simple, clean aesthetics. Great user experiences. Honest use of materials. Sustainability. Figuring out what I loved about technology was trickier. I’ve always been drawn to it, but I has never honestly thought about why. I knew that understanding why I loved technology would be the key to making More/Real work.

Back in May, while watching the most recent season of Mad Men, I got my first clue. It was Episode 8. The one where Megan gives Don a copy of the Beatles’ album Revolver so he can figure out what the kids are listening to these days.

Anyway, did you notice the Drapers’ home theater setup? It’s sort of like those awesome old wooden record consoles, but taken to the next level. The whole thing is built into a mahogany wood-paneled wall. The room-coordinated fabric-covered speaker and TV are recessed flush with the wall. The wood countertop opens up to reveal the record player. There’s storage for records with enough space left over for booze. The wall’s sole purpose in life is for music and entertaining. When it’s not being used, it closes up and recedes into the background. It’s completely seamless. It’s also the most exciting piece of technology I’ve seen all year, and yet the show is set in 1966.

That mahogany wall has been stuck in my head. I couldn’t put my finger on the reason why until recently, when I started thinking of other pieces of technology that has given me the same feeling. Polaroid’s SX-70 Land Camera. Olivetti’s Valentine Typewriter. Apple’s iMac G4. Naoto Fukasawa’s CD Player for Muji. Nest’s Learning Thermostat. Apple’s Smart Covers for the iPad. Nike’s Fuelband.

These things are less about being technology for technology’s sake and more about doing a job as simply and elegantly as possible. They are the designed application of a technological possibility. In other words, my two passions merging into something better than they could be on their own.

I think that’s why I had such a good feeling about Stylus Caps from the beginning. They transformed analog tools into digital tools in a seamless way. The experience was obvious, but the technology was invisible. That’s what I want More/Real to always be about.

Over the course of this year, I have continued development on creating an all-new Stylus Cap, taking the lessons learned from the original and improving on it in every way. This work has made its way through the final stages of production and is now ready to launch.

I can’t wait to show it to you later this week.

Don Lehman

Founder & Designer

More/Real

This is the final part of my trilogy of iPhone 5 design reviews. Yes, I realize this has gotten way out of hand. I’m sorry.

Part I. The Unibody iPhone

Part II. The Foolproof Dock Connector

Part III. The Best, for the Most, for the Least

Charles and Ray Eames, the famous mid-century designers, had a motto: “The Best, for the Most, for the Least.”

How do you design the best possible thing? For everyone? At the cheapest cost? It sounds impossible, but that’s not what they were aiming for.

You start by designing for the most. That doesn’t mean literally everyone, it means most everyone. Still a tall task, but achievable by having the willingness to make tough decisions about what is essential and what is just nice to have.

Some people want a 5-inch screen, or a 3D camera, or a stylus, or a kickstand, or a slideout keyboard, or a projector, or a microSD slot, or a removable battery on their phones. Those things are nice to have. For some people, they can make or break their smartphone experience. For most, they aren’t essential.

Apple decided with the very first iPhone what they thought was essential for most people, and since then, they have worked relentlessly at making those features best in class and as affordable as possible. It may not always be the most exciting strategy, but it almost will certainly lead to the best possible product year in and year out.

More than any other product Apple makes, the iPhone represents “The Best, for The Most, for the Least”.

Shortly after the iPhone 5 announcement, Dustin Curtis said on Twitter: 

“Watching the iPhone manufacturing process video, it’s almost unbelievable that other phone makers are on the same planet at the same time.”

I think he’s looking at it the wrong way. Other manufacturers live on our planet. They do impressive things. Apple is from a different universe playing a completely different game.

The fun stuff starts at the 4:34 mark.

For starters, they’re using friggin’ robots to measure 725 individual pieces to achieve fit tolerances that are measurable in microns. This is absurdly awesome. The only time I’ve seen technology like this used was in the manufacturing of very low volume, high end Swiss watches.

I don’t want to undersell this. Apple has figured out a way to bring Leica level quality to a mass produced consumer electronic that is puchased by 34.3% of the smartphone market.

Let me say that in a slightly different way. When you buy an iPhone 5, you are buying something that is comparable in quality to the parts made for the Mars Curiosity rover BUT THEY MAKE MILLIONS OF THEM!! As a designer who manufactures things, my feelings are a mix of awe and extreme jealousy.

Apple’s external antenna design requires a metal housing. A metal that is the perfect blend of strength, lightness, machineability, scratch proof, low cost, and able to be built at quality Apple demands doesn’t exist. (Yet.) Stainless steel and aluminum are the only real choices, but neither is absolutely perfect.

Stainless is extremely rugged and has a weighty, substantial feel. It’s also hard to machine and perhaps too heavy. Aluminum is very light, easy to machine, strong, and has the bonus ability of being able to be anodized different colors. However, it’s not quite as strong as stainless and more easily scratched.

You can only make this decision by prototyping both a stainless and aluminum version and seeing what feels right. Ultimately, you go with stainless if you value ruggedness above all else. Aluminum if you value lightness.

The Best, for the Most, for the Least.

Apple chose lightness.

You use more senses than you realize when you evaluate something like aluminum. The visual is important, but you’re also affected by weight, texture, even sound.

Apple uses aluminum on most of their products. On larger items like the MacBook Pro, Air, or iPad; it’s instantly recognizable as a metal because the product has weight from the rest of the components. They also feel incredibly solid as opposed to large pieces of plastic, which tend to flex and sound creaky.

On smaller items, it’s harder to read aluminum as being a metal. Once you remove as much material as possible, much like Apple has done with the 5, aluminum can have an almost imperceptible weight difference from a lightweight plastic. Couple that with a unibody design and an across the board part size reduction, you’re going to have people in disbelief over how light it actually is. This can actually turn out to be a problem.

Think about any high end watch or camera. They always have a satifying solid feel to them. The iPhone 4/4S had this quality. It wasn’t exactly a brick, but it had a weight that made it feel like it wasn’t just another plastic phone. It felt special. 

Lightness can make a product feel cheap. Plastic watches are light and cheap. Metal watches are heavy and expensive. Our brains get wired to evaluate new things taking weight into consideration.

Matte, anodized surface finishes, can be easy confused with a silver painted plastic. Small pieces of plastic can feel as strong as small pieces of aluminum. Once you pick it up, you can start to tell the difference, but the point is you want to entice people to pick it up in the first place. 

The first thing people say when they hold an iPhone 5 goes something like, “Wow, thats really light.” You want to make sure that’s a quality feeling and not a cheap feeling.

The trick Apple’s designers use with the 5 is to combine two finishes. Large swaths of matte finish for protection and then small, polished details to highlight precision. That’s why Apple places so much emphasis on those diamond cut, high polished chamfers. Besides being really freaking impressive, they let you know that the iPhone 5 is a high quality metal. 

Two other benefits to the chamfer: They make the 5 fit more comfortably in your hand, especially compared to the 4/4s, and they visually tie together the disparate materials on back of the device.

There is also a more emotive quality to combining finishes. Matte is practical and protective, but maybe a little boring. Polish is flashy and rich looking, but maybe a little too flashy and not that pragmatic. Combine them in the right way and you tell the story of a product that is smart, not boring. Luxurious but not ostentatious.

The scuffability of iPhone 5’s aluminum housing seemed like a big deal in the days immediately following the launch, but that worry seems to have dissipated. Either everyone’s scuff fears have been allayed or they decided to move on to the next thing to be upset about.

Apple protects its aluminum products by sandblasting and then anodizing the surface. Sandblasting is what gives it the matte finish. Anodizing is like the protective, hard candy coating.

Actually, anodizing is not a coating at all, but a chemical process that permanently alters the surface of the aluminum. It’s like getting a protective tattoo. Anodizing is a lot more durable than paint, which can flake, crack or peel off, but it’s still only skin deep. Any decent nics, gouges, or scuffs will reveal the silvery aluminum core underneath.

Both the white and black iPhone 5 are anodized. The white was clear anodized, leaving the aluminum silvery in color. The black was black anodized, tinting the aluminum black. In either case, when the aluminum is gouged, it will reveal the silver colored core underneath. Since black is a high contrast to silver, scratches will be more pronounced looking on the black iPhone 5.

My wife has a 5-year-old, second gen iPod shuffle that she uses for working out. It has a few little nicks, but they really only propagate around the sharp edges. For the most part, it looks great for a such a heavily used device.

Sharp edges always wear away faster then round or flat surfaces. Think of it like grating a wedge of cheese. If you grate cheese on a long flat side, it will take a while to get through it all. If you grate it on the edges, it will wear away quicker. Aluminum is far stronger than cheese, but the same analogy applies.

The difference between my wife’s Shuffle and the iPhone 5 are the chamfers. Each chamfer creates two sharp edges, meaning the 5 actually has four sharp edges, doubling the chances for nicks or cuts to propagate in those areas.

The chamfers are an impressive manufacturing detail. They look great, reinforcing the fact that the iPhone 5 is made of metal while visually creating a continuous line that ties the back together. They also make the iPhone fit more comfortably in your hand. On the flipside they will most likely be the first part of your phone that gets scuffed.

The best choice, for the most people, for the least cost.

In any event, I don’t think anyone should be too worried about scuffs. When you first hold the 5 in your hands you want to baby it. After a short time you’ll realize its actually pretty tough and and can withstand a bit of abuse. Aluminum may be softer than steel, but it’s still far stronger than glass or plastic. The 5’s closest relative in case design is actually the original iPad and it’s holding up pretty well after three years. 

What’s interesting about this to me is that most of Apple’s products are made of aluminum and can be scuffed. Will your iPhone 5 get scuffed? Most likely yes. Will anything you ever own get a scratch on it? Exactly.

So why the worry about the iPhone 5 getting scratched over everything else? Out of the box, the 5 is perhaps the most pristine and tightly toleranced mass produced device ever. People understandably want it to stay that way for as long as possible. The more you simplify and refine something, the more even the smallest imperfections seem like a big deal. 

Some final thoughts…

A thinner iPhone means thinner iPhone cases. If you’re a case person, the iPhone 5 will probably feel about the same thickness as a naked iPhone 4/4S.

I’ve seen an explosion in iPhone sleeves for this generation. They seem to be a good compromise for those who want to protect their iPhone, but also want to appreciate the design of the hardware. Dodocase, Killspencer, Makr, and Hard Graft, all make nice ones.

I’m curious why Apple decided not to make the front display glass flush with the aluminum frame. It seems like that would better protect the glass and keep the aesthetics cleaner.

I also can’t figure out how Apple is adding the polished logo and iPhone name details on the back. Manual polishing? Foil stamp? An acid etch that polished the aluminum? Either way, it’s impressive.

EarPods and the new Lightning connector are those type of seemingly insignificant design projects that actually take a tremendous amount of time and money to finesse. They aren’t as glamorous as the iPhone 5 itself, but they are little labors of love. Congrats to all who worked on them because they are terrific.

I already wrote at length about the Lightning connector, so let’s talk about Earpods. They are quite the upgrade over the old earbuds. If I do anything more than a brisk walk they fall out of my ears, but they sound better and feel much more comfortable than the old earbuds.

The remote on the EarPod cord has a little microphone graphic instead of a perfed metal hole. Come to find out via iFixit, that perfed metal hole on the old earbuds was just for show, only there to give you a visual cue that a microphone was built into the control. Hardware skueomophism. 

The plastic headphone case that the EarPods come with seems a little wasteful to me. Previous generations of earbuds came tightly wrapped in a small, thin plastic sleeve. Granted, the case is more beautiful, but is anyone going to use it after they take out the EarPods for the first time?

My theory is: 

1) The EarPods are new, they worked a long time on them, and they want them to standout as being special when you open the box.

2) They developed the standalone retail package and once they had the assembly line setup, it was more efficient to package them all the same way, regardless if they were standalone or pack in.

The inlaid pieces used on the back of the 5 are ceramic glass for the white iPhone and pigmented glass for the black iPhone. In other words, the inlays are not backpainted like the glass on the front of the iPhone, they are opaque. This should mean that scratches will be less noticable on those materials.

Between the special glass inlays on the back, Gorilla Glass 2 on the front, and the sapphire crystal lens cover, my guess is Corning will be have a very good two years ahead of it.

Which reminds me: Sapphire crystal lens cover. Sapphire. Crystal. Lens cover. Unbelievable. (Throws hands up in air and walks out of room.)

Mashable tears down a Entertainment Weekly.

At first blush this is pretty cool right? A fully working Android smartphone embedded into a magazine! Showing a live Twitter feed! We live in the future!

But think about it: An entire smartphone, embedded into a magazine. It gets used for five minutes tops and then thrown away forever. Fortunately, this was limited to just 1,000 magazines in NY and LA. Still, what a tremendous waste of valuable resources.

The best case scenario is Foxconn had a pile of these boards laying around that were intended to go into a phone, but for whatever reason the job fell through. Instead of just sending them to recyclers, they repurposed them for this magazine. The worst case scenario is it was designed specifically for this issue.

They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Abdel, Jon, and I talk about Kickstarter’s new rules for product design projects and our impressions of the iPhone 5 after a week’s worth of use in this week’s Tech Block podcast.

Download / Subscribe in iTunes

Kickstarter made some interesting changes to the rules Project Creators must follow last week. What’s really interesting about these rules, is that they mainly affect only Product Design and Hardware projects. 

Let me take you through each rule change, tell you how I think they will affect Product Design projects, and then finish up with something I think Kickstarter should consider.

Change #1: Risks and Challenges section

Located at the bottom of a project’s home page, this is a Creator written overview of the risks and challenges a project will / could face. It’s now in effect for all Kickstarter projects. 

This is a great idea. Backers should know upfront what needs to happen to make a project a reality and it reinforces the idea that Kickstarter is not a traditional store. 

Ultimately, this rule will be more beneficial to Creators than Backers. The more you think through potential pitfalls, the better prepared you will be. Many of the Creators I see doing product design projects on Kickstarter are novices and don’t think about this until it is way too late (crying to themselves at 2am, ten months past their estimated delivery date).

I actually think Kickstarter should take this a couple steps further, with Backers receiving more background information on the Creators. Things such as the number of people on the project team, how far along in development they are, what their professional/educational background is, and how much manufacturing experience they have, should all be made available for Backers.

One thing I want to note: The projects I’ve seen use this new Risks & Challeneges section don’t seem to have put enough thought into it. On one project I saw, the Creator wrote a three sentence description that boiled down to, “There are many steps to complete,” with no explaination of those steps. Perhaps Kickstarter could give a basic outline that would help Creators fill this form out and make sure they answer important questions?

Verdict on Change #1: A good change that should go further.

Change #2: Product simulations and photorealistic renderings are prohibited. Pictures of prototypes in their current state, technical drawings, CAD designs, sketches, and other parts of the design process are allowed. This only effects Product Design and Hardware projects.

The problem Kickstarter is trying to address is the right one, but the way they’re trying to solve it is wrong.

Here is what’s currently happening: When Backers see a hot looking computer rendering, they (understandably) think what they are looking at already exists and support the project believing that the project will ship with no problem. This is bad.

The problem isn’t renderings, it’s that Backers don’t know how to interpret renderings. Most of them probably don’t even realize they’re not photographs. However, you don’t solve this communication problem by eliminating renderings, you just create new problems.

Kickstarter’s solution is to only allow pictures of prototypes as they exist at the time of the project launch.

Prototypes are really important and should be required for all Product Design and Hardware Kickstarter projects. You learn more about how your design works and will be produced from making a physical mockup than you would from 100 renderings.

But here’s the thing, prototypes can be just as misleading as renderings. It’s easy to make a single prototype, just like it’s easy to make a photorealistic rendering. The trick is actually mass producing that thing. I can’t tell you the number of projects I’ve been on where we get what looks like a finished prototype back in a month but then it takes another year to get it through production. 

Eliminating renderings does not make manufacturing easier, it just makes it harder to describe to Backers what you are trying to do.

Here’s how I would solve the problem. Make prototypes required, but also allow renderings. The difference will be when Backers see images of those things, they need to be clearly labeled as to what they are with Kickstarter provided explanations of what a rendering is and what a prototype is. That way, Creators would still have the tools they need to tell their story and Backers would have an explanation of what they’re looking at and a better understanding of the level of development that has gone into the project so far.

Verdict on Change #2: This rule doesn’t solve the real issue: Backers need to be educated on what they are looking at.

My recommendation: Kickstarter should start requiring prototypes, but renderings and simulations should still be allowed. In either case, both must be clearly labeled as to help Backers understand what they are looking at.

Change #3: Offering multiple quantities of a reward is prohibited. This only effects Product Design and Hardware projects.

In the past, Creators were able to offer different quantities of a single product. Say my project is to develop a “widget”. I could offer a reward tier that would allow you to purchase one “widget” and another reward tier where you could purchase five “widgets”.

Kickstarter’s hypothesis is that by limiting the quantity of “widgets” that are produced, it will help make life easier for Creators. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how to streamline manufacturing. 

Producing large quantities of a single item actually helps Creators. It allows them to make larger purchases with their vendors, giving them more clout with that vendor, which keeps Vendors motivated to help the Creators. Smaller orders always get less priority, leading to delays. Larger orders can also mean more efficient use of a Vendor’s equipment. Once a production line is up and running, the difference between producing 500 and 5,000 can be minimal.

For Creators, large quantities of a single item can lead to bulk discounts. If 1,000 “widgets” costs $1.00/unit to produce, 5,000 “widgets” might cost $0.50/unit to produce. This is hugely beneficial to Creators, especially when the unexpected happens. It’s common on Kickstarter for shipping to end up costing more than estimated or a project turns out to need more development than anticipated. We shouldn’t punish Creators for things that happen all of the time in even normal product development.

The problem isn’t large quantities of one type of reward, it’s multiple types of rewards. For example, I’ve seen tons of design projects offer not just a “widget” but also a “sprocket”. Making two different things means the Creator has doubled their development work. Even something as small as offering a “widget” in multiple colors can add complexity to a project. In some extreme cases, I’ve seen Creators offer so many different things at so many levels, that their projects felt more like an eBay store than a Kickstarter project. 

The goal of a Kickstarter project isn’t to create an entire product line, it’s to get your project made. Adding something else to make on top of that, multiplies your work and increases the chance for delays and possibly failure. 

Kickstarter and Creators are both to blame for this. For Kickstarter’s part, they actively encourage projects to have unique rewards to entice Backers. Instead of focusing on the point of the whole project, which is to produce the “widget”, Creators get sidetracked doing things like making t-shirts or creating a book about the development of the project. They should just be focusing on the “widget”.

On the Creator side, our natural inclination is to try too much right out of the gate. Take my own project as an example. My initial idea was to create a cap that turned a pen into a stylus. In the end, I offered three different types of Stylus Caps (one for Sharpie, one for Bic, and one for Fineliner), in two different materials (stainless steel and brass). I wasn’t producing just one Stylus Cap, I was producing six different Stylus Caps. Essentially, I was doing six projects at the same time. I don’t know how I survived 2011.

In retrospect, this was the single dumbest move I made over the course of my project. This was a first run production and I should have focused all of my efforts into doing just one version of a Stylus Cap in one material. I probably wouldn’t have made as much money overall, but I’m positive I would have had a lot more Backer support centered around one Stylus Cap. It would have kept me focused, it would have kept my vendors focused, and it would have helped decrease my delay in shipping. If you look at other big design projects that have faced delays, it’s almost always because they tried to do too much and didn’t focus.

This is where I have to give a shout out to my cohorts over at Studio Neat. (You know them as The Glif and Cosmonaut guys.) I think one of the reasons they were able to run tidy projects even though they are a small team, is that they focused on making just one thing and doing it really well. This is a good model for the rest of us.

The other benefit to focusing on just one “widget” is it helps Creators make their projects more understandable to Backers. If you simplify the product offering, you simplify the messaging. This would be helpful both at the point of backing a project and while production is going on.

I would add an out clause to this focusing rule. Let’s call it “The Scott Wilson Clause”. The Scott Wilson Clause would allow “super” Creators who have a proven track record of high profile success either on Kickstarter or in their careers to petition Kickstarter for more flexibility in the way they structure their project. If someone like Scott, who has a powerhouse team at their disposal and wants to do something special with their project, no one should stand in their way.

One last point I want to make. Practically every Product Design project on Kickstarter has run into delays. In normal product development, products get delayed all of the time, however no one knows about it, so no one feels let down. Delays are an unfortunate, but normal part of the process for even large companies with unlimited resources which means small teams will almost certainly face this reality.

Those estimated delivery dates on every Kickstarter page are essentially promises waiting to be broken and piss off Backers. I’m not saying we should eliminate timelines or create projects with no end in sight. Creators must be held accountable. However it seems like we should think of a better way to keep accountability while preserving the Kickstarter spirit of the journey being part of the reward. That will go a long way towards reinforcing the idea that Kickstarter is not a store.

Verdict on Change #3: Eliminating multiple quantities doesn’t make development easier, it can actually make life harder for Creators.

My recommendation: Allow multiple quantities of single items, but help Creators focus on just one “widget”.

Let’s get down to the larger issues.

The problem, as I see it, is threefold:

1) We need to adjust Backers’ expectations of what Kickstarter is and provide them with better information.

2) Creators need to understand how to better plan for the differences in crowdfunded development as opposed to traditional development.

3) Kickstarter doesn’t fully understand product development.

Number 1 can’t be solved until number 2 is solved. Number 2 can’t be solved until number 3 is solved.

I don’t want that to come off as harsh, because I really, really love Kickstarter, but I think it’s true. The lack of knowledge about the development process is it’s Achilles heal right now.

I wrote Kickstarter a letter. (pulls out a folded note, written in Prismacolor on vellum, out of front jean pocket)  I wrote it on behalf of the entire Industrial Design community, which was rather presumptuous of me, but felt right at the time.

Here it is. 

Dear Kickstarter,

We love you.

You have upended our industry. You have radically changed our time tested practices. You have changed the way things are made. You should feel really psyched about that.

These new rules are meant just for us, meaning you realize there is something different from our projects compared to all of the other projects on Kickstarter. This is a positive development because we agree. Manufacturing something for the first time carries a high degree of risk with the potential for failure always looming in the background. But these new rules are… let’s say they feel a little off. 

If we didn’t know any better, we’d think you were a little weirded out by us. Which is understandable. We suppose from the outside, product design is one step away from product development, which is one step away from soul sucking corporations. You started Kickstarter to help creative projects you love, like mailing hand-written letters to an entire town, not to start the next mega corp. We like that about you.

Now here you are dealing with multi-million dollar projects, some of which are delayed, Backers are breathing down your necks, and the press is writing it’s first bad articles about you. What the hell? Amiright?!

It makes sense you would take precautionary measures to protect Backers. These new rules though… while the spirit is right, they feel a little knee-jerk and actually are road blocks for us.

We want to protect Backers as much as you do. However, removing the ability for us to show renderings and order things in higher quantities, is like like cutting off one of our legs. Sure, we’ll hobble around on crutches, but that’s not the point. We don’t want road blocks, we need guide rails.

That’s where you come in. While most of us have only done one project, or none at all, you’ve witnessed thousands. You know where we fail and where we succeed better than we do. But these new rules, lead us to believe that while you have the data, but you don’t know how to interpret it.

So here’s what we suggest: As far as we can tell, you don’t have any industrial designers or engineers on your team. This seems like a big problem. How can you give us guide rails if you’ve never manufactured anything?

For example.

There are several projects now on Kickstarter that we never would have approved because we can tell from the get-go that the Creators are in over their heads. We can take one look at those projects and think to ourselves, “That poor sap has no idea what they’re doing. Good luck getting that thing made. Wait. They said they would deliver in 3 months??? Try two years if everything goes right.”

Another crazy thing we’ve been seeing recently, projects get way overfunded, the Creator starts getting a little too chuffed, and then promises additional things to their Backers. (At $100k we all get flashlights! At $200k… LASERS!!!) It’s not a coincidence that those projects are really late.

It might be time to share our dirty secret with you. Those estimated delivery dates you make us commit to? Yeah, we pulled that out of our butts. No seriously. They mean nothing! 

Here’s the thing: We genuinely believe them ourselves. They’re based off of actual logic and at the beginning we feel confident we can hit them. But then, without fail, the shit hits the fan. We weren’t lying or being malicious when we gave them to you, but neither were our vendors when they gave them to us. Vendors always, always, always, underestimate how long it takes to do something. Truthfully, so do we.

In real life, and by that we mean life where projects aren’t crowdfunded, 90% of our projects are delayed in manufacturing. The only difference is, we didn’t do something crazy like pre-announce our idea and sell it to 10,000 people before it’s ready. 

Because you changed our process, it means we need to change the way we think about the process. We haven’t done that yet because we’ve been too busy fulfilling Kickstarter orders.

Look. Manufacturing is hard. No matter how smart or experienced you are, you run into the unexpected. Even Apple couldn’t ship a white iPhone for a while. These new rules won’t make manufacturing easier. No rule will.

But! We can do things on the front end, before a project launches, to help product design Creators figure out on their own what the heart of their idea is and focus on that.

This normally happens on our real world projects. We start with a big all-encompassing perfect gem of an idea, then figure out what we can accomplish with a reasonable amount of time and money. Your crowdfunding process made us forget this step. We have our crazy ideas, they get funded, and then we go, “Uh oh.” If we figure this out together, we can prevent the “Uh ohs”.

We’re not asking you to change your spirit. For the love of God, please don’t ever change that. But it might be time to think a little different about some of your strategies. That probably starts with bringing a few of our kind into your fold.

To paraphrase someone as equally crazy as the two of us, “There’s no going back. You’ve changed things… forever.” The crowdfunding genie is out of the bottle.

While you might be weirded out by spawning a mega corp, think how much better it would be if that mega corp was run by a designer who cared about all of the same things you do.

That’s the biggest change you made. You put power in the hands of designers. For the first time, the people who are the most concerned with beauty, simplicity, sustainability, local manufacturing, but above of all making people’s lives better, have the power to control our own destiny. This has the potential to remake great swaths of the economy. You may think this is hyperbole, but it isn’t.

We just hope that you and us are destined to do this forever.

Love,

Industrial Design

John Gruber responds to my “Which iPhones survive the 12th?” post:

I wouldn’t count the 3GS out. I presume it will indeed lose its spot as the free-with-contract phone in the lineup, to be replaced by the iPhone 4, and the 4S will take over the $99-with-contract spot. But what about the low-cost prepaid market? If Apple wants to start taking market share in that market, my guess is they’d do with the 3GS.

That’s a lower-margin market than what Apple typically targets, but otherwise, they’re ceding it to Android. In the PC market, Apple ceded the low-cost segment to Windows, so perhaps they’re willing to do the same thing with phones. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

A good point about using the 3GS for prepaid phones and something I didn’t consider. 

Matthew Panzarino, writing for The Next Web back in July, adds that because Apple is making the 3GS iOS 6 compatible and the iPad mini will potentially use the same ppi display as the 3GS, Apple has an incentive to keep the 3GS alive.

So. Prepaid phones, iOS 6 compatibility, and the same display tech as the yet to be announced iPad mini. Makes sense.

The thing I keep coming back to is this: Is Apple really going to continue manufacturing four generations, (3GS, 4, 4S, and 5) of the iPhone? Assuming that the 3GS and the 4 are only produced in black, what does that lineup look like?

• (pre-paid) iPhone 3GS, black, 8GB, CDMA

• (free) iPhone 4, black, 8GB, CDMA
• (free) iPhone 4, black 8GB, GSM

• ($99) iPhone 4S, black, 16GB
• ($99) iPhone 4S, white, 16GB

• ($199) iPhone 5, black, 16GB
• ($199) iPhone 5, white, 16GB

• ($299) iPhone 5, black, 32GB
• ($299) iPhone 5, white, 32GB

• ($399) iPhone 5, black, 64GB
• ($399) iPhone 5, white, 64GB

That’s a lot of supply chain complexity to deal with. Could Apple juggle all of that? Absolutely. They have the best run ops team on the planet (other than Amazon) and their CEO is a genius at managing it.

Its more of a question of does Apple want to juggle all of that? Part of the reason their ops team is the best is that they make smart choices at the design, engineering, marketing, and operations levels to only focus on the essential and eliminate cruft.

That’s what makes me think that my hypothesis about killing the iPhone 4 might make some sense. Of those four generations, the 4 is the most…Complex isn’t the right word. Annoying? Let’s go with annoying…annoying to produce and manage if only because of the two antenna variants. If Apple could bring a lower cost iPhone 4S to their free tier, a model that they could send to any carrier regardless of signal, I have to think they would choose that option any day of the week over the iPhone 4.

After considering all of that, here’s where my baseless speculation ends up for the iPhone lineup on the 12th:

• (pre-paid) iPhone 3GS, black, 8GB, CDMA

• (free) iPhone 4S, black, 8GB

• ($99) iPhone 4S, black, 16GB
• ($99) iPhone 4S, white, 16GB

• ($199) iPhone 5, black, 16GB
• ($199) iPhone 5, white, 16GB

• ($299) iPhone 5, black, 32GB
• ($299) iPhone 5, white, 32GB

• ($399) iPhone 5, black, 64GB
• ($399) iPhone 5, white, 64GB

On a side note: Gruber rewrote my original post’s headline. The original was “Which iPhones survive the 12th?” and his edit is “Which iPhones Survive After September 12th?” I like his version better.

Let’s play the speculation game. Apple currently sells 11 versions of the iPhone:

• (free) iPhone 3GS, black, 8GB, GSM

• ($99) iPhone 4, black, 8GB, CDMA
• ($99) iPhone 4, white, 8GB, CDMA
• ($99) iPhone 4, black, 8GB, GSM
• ($99) iPhone 4, white, 8GB, GSM

• ($199) iPhone 4S, black, 16GB
• ($199) iPhone 4S, white, 16GB

• ($299) iPhone 4S, black, 32GB
• ($299) iPhone 4S, white, 32GB

• ($399) iPhone 4S, black, 64GB
• ($399) iPhone 4S, white, 64GB

Even though there are 11 versions, customers view the lineup as having just three variants (3GS, 4, 4S). Then they get to chose color and storage size.

On the 12th, Apple will presumably start selling an iPhone 5 that would most likely take over the iPhone 4S’ position in the lineup. The 3GS will almost certainly be killed on the 12th. It was introduced in 2009, has been in service for three and a half years and has done its job well.

Assuming Apple continues with their strategy of moving previous generations of the iPhone down the ladder in their pricing umbrella, the lineup would look something like this:

• (free) iPhone 4, black, 8GB, CDMA
• (free) iPhone 4, white, 8GB, CDMA
• (free) iPhone 4, black, 8GB, GSM
• (free) iPhone 4, white, 8GB, GSM

• ($99) iPhone 4S, black, 16GB
• ($99) iPhone 4S, white, 16GB

• ($199) iPhone 5, black, 16GB
• ($199) iPhone 5, white, 16GB

• ($299) iPhone 5, black, 32GB
• ($299) iPhone 5, white, 32GB

• ($399) iPhone 5, black, 64GB
• ($399) iPhone 5, white, 64GB

The lineup would actually increase to 12 models and customers would still view the lineup as having three variants (4, 4S, 5).

Looking at the iPhone 4 has me wondering if Apple should kill it as well. For one thing, Apple has to produce four different versions because of the different antennas. That alone might be enough to kill it.

Then you start looking at the internal components. The iPhone 4 and 4th generation iPod touch are the last iOS devices to use the A4 chip. Variants of the 4S’ A5 chip are used in the iPad 2, Apple TV, and the new iPad. It’s been rumored that the iPad mini may use the same hardware as the iPad 2. Obviously that means that a lot more A5/A5X chips are in production than A4 chips. At a certain point, despite the fact that the A4 is older and perhaps cheaper, economies of scale kick in and it becomes more expensive to produce older stuff than newer stuff. Extend idea to everything else about the iPhone 4 that is older gen tech.

So what if instead of producing the iPhone 4, Apple created two pricing tiers of the iPhone 4S? One free with contract and one that would sell at $99?  

That lineup might look something like this:

• (free) iPhone 4S, black, 8GB
• (free) iPhone 4S, white, 8GB

• ($99) iPhone 4S, black, 16GB
• ($99) iPhone 4S, white, 16GB

• ($199) iPhone 5, black, 16GB
• ($199) iPhone 5, white, 16GB

• ($299) iPhone 5, black, 32GB
• ($299) iPhone 5, white, 32GB

• ($399) iPhone 5, black, 64GB
• ($399) iPhone 5, white, 64GB

To make this lineup work, I created a 8GB version of the iPhone 4S that doesn’t currently exist, but would be a somewhat easy change to make.

That would reduce the lineup to just 10 models and customers would see two variants instead of three.

For Apple the benefits would be huge. The production and supply chain would be simplified, you would be able to buy more in bulk for cheaper, it would be easier to explain to your customers the differences between the 5 and the 4S, and all of your current devices would be able to use Siri.

UPDATE: I originally and mistakenly had the current iPhone 4S and future iPhone 5 storage capacity at 8, 16, 32GB, when in reality its currently at 16, 32, 64GB. I changed those numbers to the correct ones. A dumb mistake.

If anything, correcting that discrepancy better proves my point: inserting a 8GB iPhone 4S into the entry level could make more sense than preserving the 4.

I should also point out that this is a very U.S. centric view of the iPhone lineup. I didn’t take into account pay as you go phones overseas.

UPDATE 2: seanblog.tumblr.com draws up an alternate scenario that could also work:

• (free) iPhone 4, black, 8GB, CDMA
• (free) iPhone 4, black, 8GB, GSM

• ($99) iPhone 4S, black, 8GB
• ($99) iPhone 4S, white, 8GB

• ($199) iPhone 5, black, 16GB
• ($199) iPhone 5, white, 16GB

• ($299) iPhone 5, black, 32GB
• ($299) iPhone 5, white, 32GB

• ($399) iPhone 5, black, 64GB
• ($399) iPhone 5, white, 64GB

This way also reduces SKUs, but not complexity. On the “free” iPhones, color is not the complexity you want to reduce. Different colors are easy. It’s the different antennas that are harder. The GSM and CDMA versions are different enough to be considered two different pieces of hardware.

If you want to simplify my proposed lineup even further, use seanblog’s idea to drop the white color from the “free” tier to take it down from 10 SKUs to 9 SKUs.

UPDATE 3: Daring Fireball responds. I respond back.

Sound Shapes (PS3, PSVita) is your basic side-scrolling platformer but with a key twist: music. Music from artists like Beck, Deadmau5, and Jim Guthrie directly influences the design of the levels. For example, in the video above, Beck has a background chorus that sings, “Ahhhhhhh”. When they are singing “Ahhhh”, a cloud platform is active for you to jump on. When they stop singing, the platform fades away. As you move your little orb character along, you try to pick up tokens that add beats to the song.

It also doesn’t hurt that the art direction is super nice. Steve Wilson from Pyramid Attack talks about designing levels to take advantage of the music:

Between Sound Shapes, Fez, Sword & Sworcery, amongst many others, we’re in a golden age of indie game development.

Looks real to me and makes sense. The current design wastes most of its sound by directing it onto the side of your outer ear, forcing you to crank up the volume so you can hear. This new design focuses sound towards your ear canal and looks like it would do a better job of sealing off outside noise, allowing you to listen to music at a lower volume.

Bose’s IE2 earbuds have a somewhat similar funnel shape, but these are more streamlined and appear to be made of hard plastic.

Between these earbuds, the new dock connector, and of course the iPhone itself, it’s clear Apple has spent a lot of time refining the entire iPhone physical experience. I’m really looking forward to seeing all of this come together.

via Tinh tế

A few years ago I was a speaker coordinator for a design conference that was taking place here in Chicago. My friend Craig Berman, a designer and an aspiring foodie like myself, suggested that we look into having the designer responsible for Alinea’s serviceware come and speak.

At that time, chef Grant Achatz’s Alinea was starting to explode as THE restaurant, not just in Chicago but in the whole country. By that I mean they deconstructed food in such radical and unexpected ways that it made you rethink how you experience what you eat. The results were so unusual, that special serving pieces needed to be developed just so guests could eat. A fork, knife, and plate were not going to (clears throat) cut it.

Achatz put out a want ad looking for a designer to help him develop those serving pieces. The only person who responded was a recent immigrant from the Czech Republic, whose background was in blacksmithing and restoring medieval weaponry named Martin Kastner. Together, they went on to revolutionize not only the way we think about food, but the way food can be presented.

We were lucky to have Grant and Martin speak together at the conference. With no exaggeration I will tell you that it was the best talk I have ever seen.

It went like this: After briefly talking about their backgrounds, they discussed the process for creating a specific dish. Grant would start by describing the flavors he had in mind. Every sense that you could relate to food was considered. Flavor, texture, smell, temperature, etc. Images of the dish slowly faded into each other on a large screen projecting behind them. Grant was staring deep into the laptop display that was driving the show. His spoke with his hands, making small precise gestures. The audience faded away, it was just him and the food.

Martin would follow. Humbly, almost like he was slightly embarrassed that came up with such smart solutions, he would describe the process that brought him to solve the puzzle the dish created. Slowly the dense fog that Grant created would lift. 

(I’m paraphrasing here.) “Grant needed a way to suspend the food because it would just stick to a normal plate, so we created this simple stainless steel bow, that would be visually light enough to keep the focus on the food.” As he went more in depth, he would talk about the fabrication process, the different concepts, the end result. Then he’d scratch the back of his neck, still slightly shy about the whole thing, and step back so Grant could describe the next dish.

It went like this for the next 45 minutes and it was awesome.

My favorite was the design of a dish called Hot Potato, Cold Potato. Grant wanted to create something with a very specific sensation of hot and cold at the same time. If he put the hot sensation into the cold sensation, by the time it reached the table it would be a lukewarm sensation. If they were separated, the hot would be too hot, and the cold would be too cold. He needed a way to combine them at the exact right moment to preserve the flavor combination.

Together, they developed a little parafin wax bowl that could be specially molded every night for each guest. Cold potato soup would go into the bowl. A stainless steel skewer would be poked into the side of the bowl, suspending a hot potato ball and well as a few other fresh ingredients. At the right moment, the guest would pull the skewer, dropping the hot potato into the cold potato, and shoot the whole thing. Crazy.

Here’s a great little video of Grant Achatz describing the Hot Potato, Cold Potato thought process. An absolute must watch.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you all of this, is Martin has a Kickstarter up right now for a piece he developed for Grant’s new cocktail restaurant here in Chicago called The Aviary. The Aviary takes Alinea’s thought process and applies it to cocktails.

The piece is called Porthole. It allows you to artfully display ingredients to create infusions. Of course you could make cocktail infusions, but you could also infuse other liquids, like olive oil. As is the case with all of Martin’s work, it’s simply designed using high quality materials and it’s beautiful.

It’s already (deservedly) massively overfunded but there are just five days left, so if you feel so inclined, join me in backing it over on Kickstarter.

I was back on the Tech Block podcast this week and I’m not going to lie, I think this is the best one we’ve done yet. We hit all the big Apple stories: the Samsung trial, the iPad mini launch timing, and whether the next iPhone will have NFC or not.

But my absolute favorite part, and the part I recommend skipping to if you have limited time, starts at the 36:45 mark when we discuss what a smart watch from Apple could be like. Abdel Ibrahim from the Tech Block wrote a short piece on it last week, and after talking through it, I’m convinced we’ll see a product like this from Apple in the next 2 years. I’ll share more of my thoughts soon, but this is a good starting point. Highly recommended.

Download Podcast / Subscribe in iTunes

Marco Arment, on the Apple v. Samsung decision - 

“What’s really going to disrupt the iPhone is going to be something completely different, not something that tries so hard to clone the iPhone that it hits Apple’s patents.

Unoriginal manufacturers will need to pay for their unoriginality. The most reasonable course of action, therefore, is to truly innovate and design products that aren’t such close copies.

I fail to see how consumers lose.”

I wholeheartedly agree with these sentiments. 

The question for Samsung now is how will it choose to move forward. All indications are that they will publicly fight this and be defiant to the bitter end. That’s to be expected, but internally I hope they realize that maybe, just maybe their earlier mobile devices did bear an uncanny resemblance to Apple’s and just move on. Everyone would be forgive and forget the minute they put some truly unique to Samsung work out in the world.

As I see it they have two options going forward: Either they can produce laywer driven design work (imagine a lawyer standing behind a designer as they were sketching, and repeating in a monotone voice: “no rectangles, no square radiused icons, no chrome bevels…”) or they can use this moment as an opportunity to start fresh and rethink what their products should can be.

Obviously, I would choose the start fresh approach. Here’s how I would do it.

Take your twenty best people out of your design, engineering, and marketing teams. Select one of them to be in charge of the whole group. It can be one person from any of those disciplines, but choose based on what type of company you want to be. If you want to be marketing driven, put a marketing person in charge. Engineering driven? Put an engineer in charge. Obviously I am biased towards design, so I would put a designer in charge. The key thing is that the selected person has a point of view and can get the rest of the team to fall in line and believe in their vision.

Then, send them all on a vacation. Two weeks off to wherever each of them wants to go hit the reset button and clear their minds. If any group has had an emotional stake in this trial, its the people responsible for actually designing the products.

No product focused person gets into this line of work to copy. That was a directive passed down from management. It was a business decision, not a creative one. The business people can sleep at night because they think they made the right call for the business and you could argue that they in fact did. But I’ll bet the product team feels troubled by the outcome and deep down knows the accusations are true.

When they come back, move them off campus, away from the noise and the scrutiny of the trial. This group will be in charge of coming up with a clear point of view that will be consistent across product lines, unmistakably Samsung, and undeniably great.

Apply that point of view to three products: a smartphone, a tablet, and a laptop. Give them carte blanche to whatever they need to do their job, but with one key limitation: it has to be ready to ship by Fall 2013. That means they’re probably looking at a 4-6 month development window starting… now.

Here’s the important part: Build on what they do the next year. And the next year. And the next year. Don’t scrap everything and start new all the time, just keep making it better. Build on the story over time. If neccessary, bring in respected outsiders periodically to help critique the work and push the team to new heights. 

Pretty simple right? The secret of innovation is that it’s not magic. It’s a long grind. It’s an investment in time and discipline.

I have no doubt Samsung can be great. They just need to choose to grab this opportunity.

I’m going to do my best Armin Vit impression, but you should definitely check out his take on the new logo when he undoubtedly gets to it tomorrow. Until then, here are my thoughts.

What does the new Microsoft logo say about Microsoft?

1. Windows.

2. Metro… but don’t forget Windows.

3. Windows.

There wasn’t anything wrong with the old Microsoft logo. It’s been used since 1987 and honestly they could have used this for another 25 years and no one would have batted an eye. It wasn’t earth shattering design work, but it was perfectly fine. I kinda liked the way the o and the s in the word mark tied together. (OS. Operating system. Get it?)

Similarly, there’s nothing wrong with this new logo either. It’s a little generic, but nice looking. It’s clean and simple. It looks the way you would expect a Microsoft logo from 2012 would look like. Most people won’t know there was change. That’s a good thing.

That Microsoft felt compelled to change their logo at this point in time is interesting to me. It may only have been because they wanted to modernize it a bit, but I would like to think its because they see this as a defining moment of change for the company.

Surface tablets are around the corner. Windows 8 is coming out soon. Windows Phone is trying claw its way back into the mobile game. It does seem appropriate to mark the occasion as the relaunch of Microsoft.

But in typical Microsoft fashion, they can’t seem to make a real decision. Windows 8 is both Metro and Windows. The Windows RT tablet breaks from the past, but there is also an identical looking “full Windows experience” version complete with a trackpad.

I get the feeling that there is a big cultural war happening within the company. The “new” guys are at war with the “old” guys. The old guys were winning for awhile, but the new guys are making moves. The new guys want to sweep away the cruft and bring focus. The old guys want to keep doing what got them to #1. Since they are no longer #1, the old guys are willing to make some concessions.

The concessions are what make Microsoft so maddening right now. You watch one of their product launches and they get 75% right. Really right. The last 25% makes you slam your head into a wall. They get so close and then fall back into the old traps.

So what this new logo says to me is consistent with what we have seen from Microsoft for the past three or so years: They are trying to be all things to all people. They can’t fully let go of the past and they can’t fully embrace the future. Given a choice between A and B, they choose “Yes”.

iResQ has released pictures of the dock connectors for both the next iPhone and the iPad mini/air. The biggest confirmation is the dock connector is a nine pin design and is reversible. I went ahead and updated the original dock connector post for better context.

The most interesting thing is all of the earlier iPad mini/air leaked photos had a headphone jack at the top of the device, but this component puts it at the bottom next to the dock. Because of Apple’s CNC manufacturing, it’s easier to make a change to the outer housing than it is to the components. When in doubt, believe what the components tell you.

Other things to note:

1. The dock and headphone ports are molded in both white and black to match the color of the device.

2. On the iPad mini/air components, you can see that the headphone jack is rounded off at the end. This is so it can fit flush against the contour of the outer aluminum housing. The radius doesn’t look as deeply set back as it is on the 2012 iPad. It’s more rounded than tapered.

3. The headphone ports for both the iPad mini/air and the iPhone are located at the bottom of the device, to the left of the dock connector. This was an interesting detail for the unibody iPhone, but since it’s showing up on the iPad mini/air and was already in place on the iPod touch, it has me thinking that this decision was not made just for the sake of internal space.

Perhaps there is a change of thinking on where the headphone jack should be located on all iOS devices? The simplest explanation is that since most people hold their iPhones and iPads in a vertical orientation, it makes sense to have the headphone jack at the bottom of the device so the cord doesn’t have a chance to drape over the screen. It also keeps the headphone port closer to you so it feels like the cord is longer.

Off on a tangent here: Would it make sense to create a dock that has both headphone and dock connectors? In other words, when you dock your device, you would align connectors to both the headphone and dock ports. It could help with stability, but would be a pain to line up correctly. Or maybe just a headphone dock?

Update 8.20: Ben Sargent on Twitter suggests that the bottom headphone jack might be needed for audio on a converter for legacy docks. Admittedly, I’m not an electrical engineer, but this sounds very plausible. New docks probably wouldn’t have this issue, but it could be one for legacy docks, where you would be converting data from 9 pins to 30*. If you added in the TRRS headphone jack that would be an additional 4 pins to play with.

*Take a look at the pinout for the iPhone 30 pin connector. A lot of those pins are either unused since the original iPhone or no longer needed. Firewire pins for example. 

Did you like reading about The Unibody iPhone and The Foolproof Dock Connector, but also wanted to listen to a recorded discussion about said topics? Well, you’re in luck. On this week’s Tech Block podcast, I talk about those things with Abdel Ibrahim and Jon Dick. We also talk about App.net.

Download Podcast / Subscribe in iTunes

How can you improve on Apple’s nine year old 30-pin dock connector?

You might start by reducing the size. Ever shrinking gadgets need smaller connectors. You could also reduce complexity. A simpler design would be easier to use, easier to make, less prone to failure, more sustainable, and cheaper.

If those are the two big improvements, add one need: Longevity.

You have to design a connector like this for the long term. No technology can last forever, but the stakes are really high for this part. Last quarter alone, Apple sold close to 50 million iPhones, iPads, and iPods. This was in a quarter that many (crazy) people considered to be a disappointing one. All of those devices came with 30-pin connectors. Over the next ten years, Apple will need to make a billion of these new connectors. 

It has to be used across multiple product archetypes. These days its smartphones, tablets, PCs, and MP3 players, but you need to take into account things you might invent in the future. The iPhone was four years away from existence when the first 30-pin connector shipped. Needless to say, designing for longevity is the hardest part of creating a new connector. 

So, reduced size, reduced complexity, longevity.

Great design briefs aim for something more than just listing requirements. They try to have one succinct and clear thought that can be the rallying cry for the whole team. A headline. Something that can carry over to the marketing of the product. When you tell someone that headline, they instantly get it. Boom. Of course that would be the goal.

I think the goal of this leaked part is this: Design the foolproof dock connector.

Let’s start by thinking about connectors in a very elemental way: A post is inserted into a hole, which results in two metal ends touching to create a circuit.

As it turns out, most connectors for electronics are physically more complex than that. When you insert a connector into a port, you think you are inserting a post to a hole, but usually you are aligning a post inside of that hole into a hole that is inside of the post. This is a simplified cross-section of what it looks like:

Usually this works OK, but it does makes it harder to line up the two parts and can sometimes cause damage. Think bent VGA pins or how many times you have to spin a USB connector around until you get it to fit. The current 30-pin dock connector is designed like this. 

A better, simpler design would do exactly what we think we are doing. Inserting a post into a hole. Like this:

Some connectors are designed like this. Headphone jacks for example. Reducing complexity reduces the chance for error.

The connection of the metal ends needs to remain constant to maintain a signal. That means connectors and ports are generally designed so a firm, solid metal piece comes in contact with a flexible metal piece. The flexible piece tightly hugs the solid piece, preventing signal loss. The flexible parts can be anything from pogo pins to just a thin piece of bent metal that physically flexes, like inside the 30 pin connector.

The solid parts are stronger because they’re solid. The flexible parts are weaker because they can move. Because the flexible parts are weaker, you want to make sure they are recessed so they can be protected.

The first thing you notice are the eight gold pins. They’re small, racetrack shaped, and flat. They look like the connectors you would see on a SD card or even Apple’s OS X USB install stick from Lion. In other words, the stronger, solid pieces of metal are exposed, which means the weaker, flexible pieces of metal are probably concealed inside the port end of the device.

The solid gold pins are separated from each other within in a white rectangular piece of plastic. That plastic rectangle is at the end of what looks like a flat silver post. The post appears to be solid. No posts with holes to align with holes with posts like on the 30-pin connector. This is a very simple “post in hole” design.

Those two design choices, exposed solid gold pins and a solid flat post, make this connector tremendously more durable than the 30-pin design. Again, the simpler you make something, the less prone to failure it becomes. Its almost as simple as a headphone jack, which I think is the best analogy to this design. 

(Update 8.19: iResQ has gotten their hands on both the iPhone and iPad “mini” dock ports. They show eight flexible pins and a simple port design like you would expect. The shape of the port also matches up with the leaked iPhone pics as well as the shape of the flat metal post.)

Let’s dig a little deeper. The pins appear to be mirrored on both sides of that flat silver post. Meaning, you see pins on one side and it you flip it over, you would see an identical set of pins on the other side. It’s hard to confirm this without video, but I think that this is true.

The mirrored pins could be implemented in two different ways:

1. 16 pins - 8 pins on the top and 8 different pins on the bottom.
2. 8 pins - The 8 pins on the top and bottom have mirrored functionality.

Wait a second. 9to5 Mac noticed that iOS 6 betas have references to a hardware feature called “9Pin”. The hardware feature is widely presumed to be a new dock connector featuring 9 pins. That rules out the 16 pin option, but what about the 8 pin option? Kyle Wiens of iFixit has a possible answer to that: the silver post might act as a big grounding pin. There’s the ninth pin. (Coincidentally, USB 3 Standard A and B requires 9 pins. I’m not saying this is USB 3, it could just be an interesting coincidence.)

Regardless of the number of pins, this connector looks perfectly symmetrical, which means you can probably insert it in either orientation and it will work. That would solve the issue of inserting the connector incorrectly and causing damage. Yet another simplification and a win for users.

(Update 8.19: The leaked ports show eight pins plus metal divot clips, which could act as the grounding connector. In other words, it adds up to nine pins in the port. Since the pins are only on one side of the port, it confirms that the mirrored pins are for reversibility.)

That flat silver post looks like it sticks out a bit. I think the extra length would help it adapt to a setback radius like you see on the iPad 2 and 3. It’s hard to tell from the picture just how far it sticks out, but if you look at one of the disassembled pieces, you can see a light grey plastic thing attached to the metal. I think this plastic will sit flush with the white plastic housing, giving you a rough idea of how long the post is. 

On the edge of the silver post, there is a divot. The divot is most likely mirrored on the other side of the post. This looks to me like a locking feature. A spring loaded clip inside the port could snap into the divots, giving it a nice audible click or locking sensation when you plug it in.

(Update 8.15: Matthew Panzarino suggests that it could be a spring loaded ball bearing acting as the clip in the port. That sounds right.) (Update 8.19: iResq’s pics show what looks like a flat metal clip.)

Most connectors have sharp right angles at the end. The silver post on this design is rounded off. This could be helpful for docking. Instead of carefully aligning the connector with the port, you might be able to drop your iPhone into a cradle without having to aim it, preventing both damage to the connector and scratches your to device’s housing. 

It’s impossible to know from these pictures if this connector is magnetic like MagSafe, but based on the length of the connector, the locking divots, and the fact that it’s rounded at the end, I’m going to guess its not.

That brings us to the white plastic housing. This is the area you grip when you insert the connector into your device. Its racetrack shaped, like the dock port we have seen on the leaked unibody iPhone images which would be a good visual cue. Match this shape to this shape. Nice and obvious. The circular hole out the back of the housing is for the cable and looks roughly the same size in diameter as the current 30-pin connecter cable.

One thing I am really curious to know about is how that flat silver post was made. I don’t see any seams that would indicate that it was stamped and folded like USB connectors typicaly are. It could have been machined from a solid piece of metal. It also could have been cast or injection molded.

Here’s some wild speculation: Liquidmetal can be injection molded. I’m not saying this part is made with Liquidmetal, I’m saying this is a good application for it. According to Wikipedia, Liquidmetal atttributes include: “…high tensile strength, excellent corrosion resistance, very high coefficient of restitution and excellent anti-wearing characteristics…” Good features to have on a part that takes the amount of abuse that a iOS dock connector does. 

Let me put it another way, after the “Unibody iPhone” piece came out, a few people asked me if that design was made out of Liquidmetal. I think its more likely that this connector is made out of Liquidmetal than the unibody iPhone.

I can’t say for sure that this is the new iOS dock connector, but my gut feeling says that it probably is. Even if it’s not, we can at least agree that this design has some pretty smart features baked in. A “job well done” to its creator.

Thinking about what the new connector needs to do: Reduced size, reduced complexity, longevity… this design would seem to touch all the bases.

It’s much smaller. Solid pins and a symmetrical post and hole design are a simpler physical design. My guess would be that for the first year of manufacturing this part, it will be more expensive than it is to make the 30-pin connector. As Apple gets better at making it in scale, the cost will go down and eventually it will be cheaper than the current design. Its also important to remember when factoring simplicity that less material means less cost and more sustainability. Stronger parts mean reduced repair costs. Less repairs equal happy customers. Over time, the savings could be huge. 

Longevity is impossible to determine not knowing the tech specs of what we’re looking at. All we can tell from the physical attributes of this part is that it is small, robust, and could connect to both shallow and deep ports. That’s about it.

What I like about this design is that it doesn’t look like what you would expect a connector to look like. It looks like a consumer product. Refined. Finished. Non-threatening. Everything about it leads me to think it was designed by industrial designers and not electrical engineers. I’m sure engineers were involved with its creation, but ID drove it. That’s rare for a project like this. At most companies, this would be considered to be a “technical” problem led by the engineering team with design input, not a “design” problem led by the design team with engineering input. Apple is not most companies.

Why does Apple need to invent their own connector? Why not use mini or micro USB? They’re smaller than the 30 pin connector. They’re standards. They’re likely cheaper. They already exist. 

Part of it is control. We are about to witness one the fastest connector adoptions in history because Apple created and completely controlled their own standard. I would be really surprised if it took more than 18 months for the entire iOS line and accessory market to adopt this connector.

I don’t think Apple’s motives are control for the sake of power. They want control to make the best thing they can. Go back to my imagined design brief headline. Design the foolproof dock connector. Give eight different companies that brief and you would get eight different solutions. Now try to get those eight companies to agree on just one solution. After several years of fighting over inane details, you would end up with a watered down, sad version of an foolproof connector. If Apple could design a connector from scratch, without having to cooperate and compromise, it could very well end up looking like this.

Prior to today, everyone has assumed that when the iPad mini is released, it will look roughly the same as an iPad, just a smaller version of the iPad. A 4:3 ratio screen with an even proportioned bezel all the way around. Other 7” tablets that are already on the market, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 for example, take a similar approach: scaled down versions of 10” tablets.

Now Seth Weintraub of 9to5Mac, Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web, and Rene Ritchie of iMore are all reporting that the iPad mini will actually have a thin bezel on the sides, with a wider bezel at the top and bottom. John Gruber deftly breaks it down:

But if you shrink the device enough, and reduce the weight enough, would such a device still need a bezel surrounding the display of the same proportions as the iPad-as-we-know-it? Maybe not.

The iPad 3 — the whole device, not just the display — measures 241.2 × 185.7 mm. Divide and that comes out to roughly 1.3, which is very close to the aspect ratio of the iPad display (1.333…). In other words, the aspect ratio of the iPad as a whole is very close to the aspect ratio of the iPad display. You don’t even need to work out the math — just look at it.

That’s not true for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The iPhone 4S is 115.2 × 58.6 mm; divide and you get roughly 1.97 — far different proportions than the 1.5 (3:2) aspect ratio of the display. Again, just look at it.

Should not the iPad Mini fall somewhere in between? Not as close to the aspect ratio of its display as the iPad-as-we-know-it, but also not as far away from its display aspect ratio as the iPhone. You might need more thumb-rest room on the sides than you do on the iPhone, but not nearly as much as you do on the full-size iPad.

Smart. Obvious even. That’s why all other 7” tablets already in the market have a very thin bezel on their sides right? Wait. They don’t?

The best design is obvious, but only in retrospect. It takes a lot of hard work, testing, failing, pain, expense, self-doubt, and challenging well worn assumptions to arrive at obvious.

This thin bezel is obvious now, but it wasn’t yesterday. What makes an iPhone, an iPhone is obvious now, but it wasn’t so obvious in 2006 and that’s why Apple is fighting to protect it.

The entire NFL has an all new jersey construction this season, thanks to Nike taking over as uniform sponsors. In typical Nike fashion, they’re lighter, tighter, and more flexible for the players. They end up looking mostly the same as last year’s jerseys, except for one glaring, pull your hair out and gnash your teeth detail. Those horrible collars.

The collars look different because of Nike’s Flywire technology, which is supposed to help keep the jersey from moving too much on the shoulder pads. A good idea, but 1) it makes the collar about double the normal width and 2) the collar is now constructed of two pieces: a v-shaped piece in the front and a piece the makes up the rest of the collar.

The old collars were thinner and made of one material. Lots of teams would make them separate colors from the rest jersey to stand out as a design detail. Translating that idea to the Flywire design… well take your pick of what it ends up looking like: fangs, a 70s disco collar, 80s style neck rolls. It looks terrible. Who seriously thought this looked good and okayed it?

The only way to really deal with it is to make the collar the same color as the jersey so it blends in a little better. Many teams have done this: the 49ers, Colts, and Lions to name a few. Others, like the Packers and the Patriots, decided to forgo the Flywire collar all together and stick with a more traditional collar.

The Ravens, Bills, Broncos, Saints, Chargers, Redskins (pictured above) as well as the Vikings, Buccaneers, Rams, Bengals, and Dolphins (not pictured) all opted for the bad implementation.

I think why this gets under my skin, is that Flywire is a good idea, but because it is implemented so poorly, it looks like a bad idea. This is a classic design problem. How you introduce a new concept is extremely important. It may be the best idea in the world, but if you present it in a way that turns people off, no one will like it. Think tablets pre-iPad.

But why it really gets under my skin is that it so goddamn ugly. On top of that my beloved Bills JUST. FIXED. THEIR. JERSEYS. Literally. For eight seasons I had to suffer watching crappy teams in crappy jerseys and then last season they redesigned them using all of the best elements of their vintage jerseys. Now I have to look at Fangwire collars all season long. Ugh.