kz on Cool
Levy, Steven. (2006). Cool. In The perfect thing (pp. 75-106). New York: Simon & Schuster.
Gangsta pants aside, there’s usually consensus about what is cool and what is not. But what makes something cool? Can cool even be defined? Can cool be replicated with a formula incorporating the cool factor? Levy attempts to answer these questions by exploring the phenomenal success of Apple’s iPod. Many of the reasons behind the iPod’s creation, design and subsequent success are the same reasons that Mac users are often described as having an almost cultish devotion to the company.
One phrase captures Apple’s corporate culture and raison d’être: when the author asked Steve Jobs if he tried to make the iPod cool, Jobs replied, “No, we try to make it great. We try to make it great.“
User experience is at the heart of Apple’s development and design. During the vast cultural shake-up that was the seventies, Steve Jobs envisioned the personal computer as a way to empower people; Bill Gates focused on ways to make a lot of money. The ideology driving each company persists to this day and is reflected in the products they create.
Apple insists on usability intricately intertwined with design. The iPod may be trendy, but that’s not why it’s successful. Levy explains, “the iPod’s coolness comes not from clever marketing or tribal mentality, but from what it is” (87). He quotes Virginia Postrel, author The Substance of Style, who explains, “More people in more aspects of life are drawing pleasure and meaning from the way their persons, places, and things look and feel. Whenever we have the chance, we’re adding sensory, emotional appeal to ordinary function” (89).
British-born Jonathan Ive, Apple’s lead designer, wanted to work for the company because of its values. When he first used a Macintosh he was “blown away.” He continues:
I remember being astounded at just how much better it was than anything else I had tried to use…I was struck by the care taken with the whole user experience…I started to learn more about the company, how it had been founded, its values and its structure. The more I learnt about this cheeky almost rebellious company the more it appealed to me, as it unapologetically pointed to an alternative in a complacent and creatively bankrupt industry. Apple stood for something and had a reason for being that wasn’t just about making money (93).
Ives says that despite the obsessive attention to design and aesthetics that characterize Apple products, when creating the iPod, the music was more important than design– in other words, the user experience was primary. The iPod is recognizable at twenty feet, he explains, not because that’s what Apple was going for, but “because of the consequences of the more important goal–just to try to design a product that was efficient, elegant, and simple” (98).
Efficient, elegant, and simple… characteristics you find in every Apple web page and every innovative product they make. Cool.
If you have seven or eight minutes to spare, these parodies (and one real) are amusing; the last is about how Microsoft would redesign the iPod box.
YouTube – Ipod Parody – Ivisible
YouTube – MadTV – iPad (iPod Parody) correct aspect
YouTube – New Apple iPod Nano ad – 1234 by Feist
