Get Your Swede On

CAP & DesignRush out to your local newsstands and get a copy of CAP & Design magazine — that is, if your local newsstand is in Sweden, as it’s a Swedish language design publication. The latest issue features a rather shockingly large feature article on me, along with a rather shockingly large photograph of me sitting in an East Village café, with a silly grin on my face. The article is about my design career, my thoughts on design, and of course my early experiences as Design Director at NYTimes.com. If you can read the language, I’m sure you’ll find the article, written by Swedish journalist Pierre Andersson, to be very illuminating. English-only readers will have to wait for my forthcoming, full-length profile in The New Yorker. Be prepared to wait a while.

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A Glass House on Fifth Avenue

As an Apple fan, I think the company’s retail stores are awesome in theory, but I’m not the kind of guy to spend hours hanging out within them, nor the sort to make dutiful treks to their openings, like many Apple fans do. Still, I thought it was worth stopping by this evening’s grand opening for Apple’s new flagship store on Fifth Avenue, here in New York. It’s not exactly on my way home from work, but the fact that the company had decided to put such a huge, public stake in the ground in such a high-end retail district, and with such a prominent architectural statement… well, my curiosity was piqued.

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Why Didn’t They Call It the MacBook ?

As replacements for Apple’s iBook line of consumer notebooks, the just announced and released MacBooks look like they’ll do nicely. They update yet another spot on Apple’s product matrix to Intel-based technology, and they’re quite attractive, to boot. That’s true especially in the super-sexy black model, which has a seductively evil look to it — more K.A.R.R. than K.I.T.T., if you know what I mean.

Like a lot of people, though, I’m disappointed that Apple has effectively mothballed the idea that their professional notebooks ought to ship in a compact form factor too, as there’s nothing in the current product line that inherits the niche filled by the now obsolete 12-inch PowerBook.

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Why Didn’t They Call It the MacBook Amateur?

As replacements for Apple’s iBook line of consumer notebooks, the just announced and released MacBooks look like they’ll do nicely. They update yet another spot on Apple’s product matrix to Intel-based technology, and they’re quite attractive, to boot. That’s true especially in the super-sexy black model, which has a seductively evil look to it — more K.A.R.R. than K.I.T.T., if you know what I mean.

Like a lot of people, though, I’m disappointed that Apple has effectively mothballed the idea that their professional notebooks ought to ship in a compact form factor too, as there’s nothing in the current product line that inherits the niche filled by the now obsolete 12-inch PowerBook.

Continue Reading …

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