Writing, ” If you don’t understand or cannot grasp how perfect Ive’s austere Power Mac G5 design really is, it would be best to just be quiet and not make a fool of yourself,” MacDailyNews’ own SteveJack lauds Jonathan Ive’s design “genius” in our Opinion section today.
Full article here.
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jon ives is my favorite brit
Ive’s accent rocks.
While I agree it’s an incredible convection cooling system. It’s modular approach maximizes airflow while making acces to necessary components extremely intuitive. This doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Must form take priority over function? Could they have not addressed the massive cooling issues of the 970 processors without negating a second optical drive?
Why only two rear USB ports? While I know PC designs offer more ports through shared controllers I don’t understand why Apple can’t give us more of what we need such as 4 USB ports in the rear each with independent controllers. Hubs are a pain in the ass and don’t work well with high drain USB devices.
With the proliferation of Digital Imaging this would have been an incredible opportunity to show the Computer industry how to design an integrated multi-format media card reader. Help me reduce desk clutter and unnessary cables. Perhaps this would have been best done on the iMac/iBook. Then again I’m sure the G5 ships with iPhoto.
Don’t get me wrong I like the potential of the new PowerMac G5 and all it will bring to the Mac platform. But be truthful. The new PowerMac G5 case design, while being a marvel in thermal dynamics, doesn’t offer a compelling reason for me to drool over it and not my existing G4 case. Here are the Pro’s/Cons as I see them
PowerMac G5 case Pros (features that can’t really be full utilized at this point):
Firewire 800
Serial ATA
Digital Optical Audio in/out
PCI-X (only on 1.8 and dual 2.0 GHz models)
The one Pro I’ll actually use:
Front connections
Cons:
No internal support for second optical drive
No internal support for Legacy Hard Drives (have a 250GB, 7200RPM drive I’d like to keep)
One less PCI slot
No apparent dust filtration in cooling system (correct me if I’m wrong)
Access to internal components is more difficult than amazing G3/G4 case design.
And come on Apple, USB2.0 and you only offer USB 1.1 on the keyboard USB ports and either include a multi-button mouse or stop charging me for the “pro” model.
Why must this design be several steps forwards and then a couple steps back.
It’s just called progress. If Apple hadn’t gone ahead and used more of the lastest standards, then they’d be criticised.
No 2nd Optical drive. I think that’s a shame too, but it’s just not a big deal for most people. An external one can be added if necessary. (I know this appears to be more expensive, but it’s not. If a 2nd space was available in the case, everybody would have to pay for it). I do concede that more wall-warts and cables is a problem here though.
Legacy hard drives. Tough. This is a whine. I have the same problem, but they can’t stnad still. The answer is to get an external firewire enclosure for your hard drive.
One less PCI slot. Do you use all of them on your G4 ? the S/PDIF probably negates the need for one card straight away.
Dust filtration. This does look like a potential problem.
Access. I had to unplug a lot of cables to be able to move my machine into a position where I could open the door. The only things to add/swap are the hard drives, whic just slide in, the PCI cards, which may be a tiny bit more fiddly, but not much and RAM. OK, so it’s maybe not quite as easy to get at than in the G4, but do you think it’s really a huge problem ? Is there a single PC case design that is better for this ?
I shared a lot of your concerns earlier this week, but the more I think about it, the more it all makes sense. The images that Apple use are always odd. They almost never do justice to the designs until you see them in the flesh and until you’ve sat back and thought about them. this was true of the iPod, the eMac, the iMac LCD and I’m alsmost certain it’s true of the new Powermac.
No it’s not perfect, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Steve Jack, you drool like a fangirl.
I would warn you to not open your mouth, but since you have what is the point? Youve already made a fool of yourself.
Ives design is nothing more than a self congratulatory trek through the imaginary world of what is perfect design, since there is absolutely no such thing. Design is compromise, pure and simple. Ives approach fails to take into account the realities of life and how people use things. The G5 is all very nice an neat and tidy, but genius it is not. Though this is a FAR cry better than that idiot-designed “puck” mouse that this very web page raved about opon its conception.
For those who have not seen it in person. The G5 is HUGE, more than 3 inches taller than a G4. Yet for its massive size, its cooling system precludes the possibility of future expansion or upgrading. Just what will happen when a new video-card/hard-drive/processor throws the “custom calibrated” cooling fans out of whack? I dont know, but I’ve been told by Apple people that other than memory and HD replacements, upgrading this machine will be next to impossible for this very reason. But thats OK because despite its size, the G5 is much less expandable than the G4 : compare 4 3.5 inch drive bays with 2, 2 optical drive bays with 1, 4 (open) full-lenght PCI slots with 3.
The point is that this machine, disregarding its technology for a moment (which Ives had nothing to do with) offers less in a larger case than its predecessor. This is not genius design. Good perhaps? Not really, though It depends on how much heat those G5’s really put out – which could have constrained the design.
Given this, I find it very hard to believe anyone considers this genius. If so they are either uneducated in design, have simply not considered it long enough, or are just raving “everything Apple does is perfect” fanatics. Whether you like the case or not is irrelevant. Oddly, the best thing about the G5 design are the front mounted connectors, which Ives “stole” (in popular Mac accusation) from Compaq. Yet no one mentions those.
In short, wrapping something in a minimalistic post-modern case is all good an well, but the real genius in design is doing so while maintaining the functionality of that which you are replacing. In this respect Ives has failed.