“A series of tweets from noted photographer Kevin Abosch seems to have outed iPod inventor and former Apple executive Tony Fadell as the buyer of a one-of-a-kind Mac Pro and a set of solid gold Apple EarPods at last month’s Product (RED) charity auction,” Shane Cole reports for AppleInsider.
“The metallic red Mac Pro, which was estimated to bring in between $40,000 and $60,000, sold for an astounding $977,000, while the EarPods fetched $461,000 at the auction to benefit The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,” Cole reports. “If Fadell is the buyer, that would bring his outlay at the charity event to nearly $1.5 million. Of the Mac Pro, Abosch says Fadell is ‘already trying to hack it.'”
Read more, and see the photos, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Congrats to Tony Fadell, The Global Fund, Jony Ive, and all who participated!
Related articles:
First official new Mac Pro sold sets all-time record for most expensive personal computer at $977,000 – November 24, 2013
18 of the best designs of all time, as chosen by Jony Ive and Marc Newson – November 18, 2013
Jony Ive and Marc Newson create a sleek one-off aluminum desk – October 11, 2013
Jony Ive’s one-off Leica M camera revealed (with images) – October 8, 2013
Apple designer Sir Jonathan Ive to design one-of-a-kind single-edition Leica M camera for charity – September 18, 2012
Apple’s Jony Ive, designer Marc Newson, U2′s Bono team up to auction 18k rose gold EarPods for charity – September 9, 2013
Maybe I’m overthinking things, but I smell a conspiracy here. The conspiracy being the ouster of Scott Forstall. Scott won over Steve Jobs during the design phase of the iPhone to dump the scroll wheel solution sanctioned by Tony Fadell and to go for a multi-touch solution that organised the interface according to the app that was being used. As a result of Scott’s triumph, Tony left Apple.
Now that Jonathan Ive has engineered Scott’s ouster from Apple, Fadell feels a sense of vengeance being served and as a backhanded rewarded to Ive plonked down the money to buy the Mac Pro. I think Fadell must be rubbing his hands with glee when Scott was ousted.
My opinion is Ive is singularly unqualified to lead the iOS development team because iOS 7 looks like something my five year old niece would draw with crayons on her class assignment.
.. tell your five year old niece to stop using your MDN account to post childish comments.
Your posts are up and down, BLN. On the last article you were spot on. This post is not that great. Not only does it dwell on a fabricated conspiracy, it also focuses once again on the “look” of iOS 7 as its defining essence. Does iOS 7 work? Yes, it works well. Are some people unhappy with the flat icons? Yes, they are. Perhaps the icons will improve over time. If not, get over it. They are just icons.
I agree that there are a few interface flaws in iOS 7. Some buttons are more difficult to reliably select than before. But Apple is not standing still. iOS will continue to improve over time. Ive had very little time to work with iOS 7. I recommend that you withhold judgment until iOS 8 is released. iOS 8 will fully reflect Jony’s influence and design direction.
BLN’s posts are up when he is not in the scrotum but pushed up into the testicle sacs and down when he is back in the scrotum!
Simpoles. E&OI
So simple! Why didn’t I realize that? Gotta keep those balls cool man or they go sterile!
The up, then down posts are familiar with a few people here. Some folks ride massive mood swings, some swingers 😉 (like me) tend to prefer staying closer to sea level. The word for it at the moment is ‘bipolar’. But I swear we get some actual schizophrenic posts in here on occasion. At least BLN usually logs in here, so we know it’s really him. But for the generics, I never know who I’m really talking to. I’ve had great chats with ‘Mike’, then bad chats with ‘Mike’, whoever that is at any single moment.
I had a stalker here for months, a serious screw loose loon. From the crazy crap being foisted at me by ‘Shadowself’ this week, maybe my pet stalker is back again.
IOW: We get some serious nut jobs, be they Ballmer nuts or not, around here. It’s fun to argue, debate, contend, fake-wrestle around here. But then there are the crazies…
What buttons? Buttons are no more
I may be overthinking things a bit here, but I’m thinking that Tony saw a good opportunity to donate to a great cause, get a good write-off for 2013, and walk away with a couple of cool toys as well.
BLN, if anyone’s unqualified when it comes to anything to do with design decisions, it’s you.
As long as I’ve been coming on here, all you seem to do is whine and snivel like a bloody five-year-old, and just as tiresome.
BS. Jony Ive’s design team was working on multi touch before the iPhone. In fact they started working on what would become the iPad before the iPhone. It wasn’t until the decision was made to go multi touch vs iPod that Forstall was tasked with building the
OS.
He should have waited for version 2.
People leave Apple over the smallest shit. I’d be like, “Ok, you win. Next Project! I’ll beat ya this time!”
That RED Mac Pro… such a beautiful thing.
I am thinking that it would not be that difficult to paint or reprocess the outer shell of the Mac Pro. I am not sure how much of it is easily removable, but I see all kinds of opportunity in reworking it with anodizing, laser etching, painting, etc., to add color, designs, and so on.
This might be an interesting commercial sideline for some company…
I’m sure ColorWare will take a stab at it – they already do the iMac, Mac Mini, and the MacBooks (plus damn near everything else ever made).
Personally, I would only want it in black, “space” grey, or matte silver, but I appreciate that some people like things to be in bright colors. Most of the things on the ColorWare site are hideous to me personally, but my tastes tend to be rather “bland”.
I expect this might start another rant war, but:
Black is the best color for heat dissipation. I expect the shell is part of the computer’s cooling system in this respect.
yes black is the disipative color (flat black actually) however I don’t it uses the cover as a heat dissipator) from everything i’ve seen. The cover only contacts the chassis at the bottom, that would make for a very poor thermal sink. And with that massive fan pulling air right past it makes me think the outside cover of the mac pro will never become more than barely warm.)
My guess is you could paint, anodize, coat or laminate to your hearts desire and not adversely affect the thermal performance.
Through having said that they (Apple) are obviously going to a great deal of trouble (based on the videos of the manufacturing) to finish & coat the covers so, kind of like scraping the lacquer off and repainting a black Steinway…. you could, but would you really want to? 😉
I know it’s all for a good cause,
still if I had the dough I would have bought that Ive one of a kind Leica camera, the red Mac Pro is ‘just’ a Mac Pro with a different coat of paint (900k + for a paint job… )
It’s not painted. It’s anodized aluminum.
Its manufactured that way, you can’t get the same result by applying paint on top of Aluminum. But I agree the Leica.. wow.
“….already trying to hack it” What!?
To make a hoover or something?
Rubbish story