Apple thinks you’re an idiot

The book is a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years

Even by Apple standards, this is crazy. Today, the Cupertino tech company launches its latest product: a book.

A book with no words that costs US$300.

If you think I’m kidding, read it and weep. The book, pretentiously titled Designed by Apple in California, consists of 450 photographs of past and present Apple products. Aside from a foreword by Jony Ive, the book apparently contains no text. It comes hard-bound in linen, and is available in small (US$199) and large (US$299) sizes. In Asia, you can find the book on Apple’s website in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea.

Jony Ive calls the book “a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years.”



A gentle gathering of ads

Now, let’s be clear: Apple does have some pretty kick-ass designs. The book spans the past 20 years (presumably so that they wouldn’t have to include this), and there’s no denying that over that time, Apple’s team has been setting the trend for industrial tech design.

PHOTO: APPLE

That doesn’t make this book any less insulting, though. There’s no insight into Apple’s design philosophy. No background on why particular decisions were made. No detail on how Apple’s approach evolved over the years. The book is supposedly a tribute to Steve Jobs, but it contains no information about how Jobs influenced these designs. It’s literally just product photos. In other words, it’s a US$300 book of advertisements. It’s a branding vehicle. Pay US$300, and you can put a big fat Apple ad right on your coffee table!

Ive says he hopes Designed by Apple in California will serve as a reference to design students. Does he think students are all independently wealthy? What design student has US$300 lying around to drop on a book full of photos they could find for free on Google? Certainly, studying Apple’s design history would be a good use of time for any aspiring industrial designer. But you don’t need a book that’s linen-bound and printed on “specially milled, custom-dyed paper with gilded matte silver edges, using eight color separations and low-ghost ink” to do that. You don’t need a book at all.



This isn’t Apple’s design greatness

It’s baffling that Apple would even publish a design book. Part of the beauty of Apple’s industrial design is how functional it is. The point is not just that it looks good (although it does), but that it functions simply and effortlessly. Apple over the past twenty years has been one of the best examples of beautiful form effortlessly serving clear function. But of course, there’s no way to experience that function in a book. A book of Apple product photos is missing the forest for the trees: what makes the company’s product design so impressive is how form beautifully follows function. It’s not just about looks.

You already pay Apple a premium for its gadgets. Do not pay it US$300 to advertise to you.

And hey, isn’t Apple a tech company? I’m sure it could have created some cool book-like experience app that showcases all these same products while using interactivity to highlight the functional design triumphs. Slap a US$100 price tag on that and you’ve got a superior way of experiencing Apple’s design in what is probably an even more profitable form. I do see why Apple didn’t do this: you can’t put an app under the Christmas tree, and an app doesn’t have the exclusive, luxury feel of a ridiculously expensive book. But that’s kind of my point. This book is not really about celebrating the genius of Jobs or of Apple’s design. It’s about creating a highly profitable gift (that isn’t a gadget, since Apple fans probably already have those) just in time for the holiday season.

Yes, this book will be a commercial success. Apple thinks you’re an idiot, and it is right – I’m sure people will buy this book in droves. If it’s not sold out by Christmastime, I’ll eat my hat*. I have no idea what the profit margin is on a coffee table book, but at Apple’s scale, I bet it’s killer. This is a great move on Apple’s part; I’m not saying otherwise.



What I am saying is this: don’t buy it. I don’t care whether you can afford it. I don’t care how much you like Apple. No company’s pretentious, navel-gazing vanity project is worth US$300.

You already pay Apple a premium for its gadgets. Do not pay it US$300 to advertise to you.

This article originally appeared on Tech in Asia.