Comments on: iPhone price cut a costly call for Jobs?

By: Wayne Smallman

Wayne Smallman — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 06:16:00 +0000

Hi David, visual design is a good example.

I sit between both 2d & 3d design, so I get to see how either side is justified.

From a product / industrial design point of view (3d) you have much less room to be pretentious about your work. Although that didn't stop Philippe Starck.

So part of the reason that the London Olympic logo went so awry is because the designers dressed it up as art, with some utterly vacuous justification that means very little, but cost a fortune to produce.

Typically, this would involve some "research" element, whereby they send their designers off to some mountain top hot spring in Japan for a week or six to find their inspiration.

In reality, there's very little room for out-and-out art as design in product design...

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:46:00 +0000

Designers are famous for the enormous mark-ups…just look at the mark-up on that 2012 Olympics logo. Maybe you’ve set your rates too low Wayne!

By: Wayne Smallman

Wayne Smallman — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:00:00 +0000

Hi Debbie! Thanks for the comment and thanks again for the contact on MyBlogLog.

I just think Apple got the timing wrong on this one.

It's a shame, because it's created some degree of bad faith, not helped by the bad press.

But, we live and we learn, eh?

By: Debbie Dolphin

Debbie Dolphin — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 15:49:00 +0000

Perhaps, the iPhone popularity paid the Design Engineering Costs sooner than Apple expected even though $200 seems to be a high mark-up for Design costs!

By: Wayne Smallman

Wayne Smallman — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 23:01:00 +0000

Hi Brian, I think the timing has been a little poor, to say the least.

My feeling is, the iPod Touch has been over-shadowed by the iPhone, not least because of the cost-cutting debacle.

I'm sure Apple could have split these two items up in separate events.

An example of this over-shadowing is the lack of commentary on the wireless edition of iTunes.

Hardly anything has been said about that, which is a shame...

By: Brian Heys

Brian Heys — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:43:00 +0000

I would have been pretty gutted if I had shelled out an extra $200 just to say I was one of the early adopters.

It’s almost as bad a slap in the face as having an improved version released. I wonder how long it will be before Apple spring that one?