costs and appeal to price-conscious consumers,
the irm maintained a clear design from the
beginning. From the consistency of sound
across iOS, macOS, and tvOS through to the way
the case for your AirPods snaps shut, there are so
many design elements that are not only iconic
but uniquely Apple, transforming the way we
use devices.
The tactility of devices has always been a big
deal at Apple - clean lines, premium materials,
and packaging that’s designed to excite the
senses has always been what the company is
about. Let’s hark back to the AirPods case that
efortlessly snaps shut when you’re inished
using them. The same happens with the
individual buds, which slip into place when you
drop them into the slot - Jonathan Ive, Apple’s
former design oicer, was responsible for that. In
an interview with GQ Magazine, he revealed that
“There are color and form and the overall sort
of architecture, but then those more diicult-
to-deine and concept behaviors, like the noise
of a click and the force of a magnet that draws
something closed. I mean, for example, one
of the things that we struggled with was the
way that the case orients the AirPod as you put
them in. I love those details, that you’ve had no
idea how fabulously we got that wrong, for so
long, as we were designing and developing it,”
demonstrating that every aspect of an Apple
design, including every single touchpoint, has
been carefully crafted and considered.
There are, of course, far too many for us to
mention in this piece, but let’s go back 20 years
or so when Apple launched the iPod. At the
time, the company said it had gone to great
lengths to ensure its packaging was simple for