Macbook & Macbook Pro
Apple finally let the new Macbook’s and Macbook Pro’s out of the hat. The new product design is built from a block of aluminum, which makes them sturdier then adding pieces of aluminum together piece by piece. This also allows for a reduction in price. Priced lower for each line, they seem to be much more competitive then before as well, offering a great deal of value for the consumer.
Being a Graphic Designer, what is interesting is, with this new refresh, the new design approach becomes clear. Apple has unified mostly all their new product line with a similar aesthetic. Gone are all the white and clear looks from previous years. The new trend is glass and glossy screens, with a black border while having an aluminum finish for the rest of the body. It seems to be a great “clean” and professional look that the products give off. Even the lower-end products (iMacs and Macbooks) have the same look and feel as the professional line. The inside hardware specs are now what separates a pro from the standard line.
iPod Nano
With the release of the Macbook’s and Macbook Pro’s, we now have the iPod Nano, iPhone, iPod Touch, iMac, and the new Cinema Display all sharing the similar black border with aluminum feel. It’s impressive they even give options to the new Macbook to have the same feel. It seems instead of reinventing the look of Apple’s products in a drastic way, Apple decided that the name of the game is refinement. Apple realized that the overall design of their products have become fairly optimized and now only tweaking is involved. Instead of getting drastic changes in iMac designs that we used to get, we now have a design that works.
It seems this new refinement design idea started actually started with their Leopard operating system. When many consumers expected Apple to do a drastic user interface overhaul to Leopard, Apple simply polished the OS in subtle ways to make Leopard much more refined. They carried this to the rest of their product line as well. The iMac and Macbook Air were the previews with what were to come with the rest of their products. The current Mac Pro seems to fit this aesthetic just fine, being in the aluminum casing that it is coupled with a new Cinema Display.
New Black Border
It seems like with this new refresh of their laptops, Apple will now focus their energy to come up with the next innovative designs and technologies. Which is a great thing, next year’s Apple conferences are going to be set to astound if this theory holds. My guess is that their 2009+ line will focus where the iPhone left off. Making multi-touch displays and a totally new operating system that will be focused on touch, rather then the conventional mouse and keyboard. We’ll see what happens!
