Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging

This is supposedly an MS-produced parody of it's marketing efforts. It's very old now (I think it uses a 1st gen iPod?) but is still worth a laugh: [VIDEO] Thankfully MS have learnt a lot of lessons since.

It's just a few lines of text complain about Windows, and some windows UI screenshots copied onto a max desktop. Not worth 2 minutes of video. The original "Microsoft iPod" video from 2006 is much better [VIDEO]

Many tech products are still sold on feature lists. Few people care any more. This great (short and funny) internal video from Microsoft was supposed to be a wake up call, but nothing really changed: [VIDEO] The fact that Apple doesn't really play that game seems to drive some people wild.

It's over 19 years old, but this video is a brutal but hilarious commentary on Microsoft's inherent dysfunction when it comes to product naming and packaging. Still on point decades later. [VIDEO]

> They could show the product in use. This line was part of a classic critique of Microsoft's packaging design. [VIDEO]

One example of this effect is the packaging parody [VIDEO] which was made by a MS team as an illustration of their frustration.

That Apple could do it doesn’t mean they will, and the article doesn’t present much actual evidence it will. In Apple long-running saga with Ads it’s always seemed like Apple hates ads because it’s other companies content (and so priorities, aesthetic, and feel) jammed inside an Apple product. And Apple hates anything that ruins the Apple Experience :tm: Paying to be the first App Store entry is great, because it’s Apple showing off the normal Apple content (an app card) within a search list of app cards. But in an app that cuts to some cheap, ugly, non-Apple aesthetic ad - that’s pretty unappealing and ruins the Apple Experience. It’s tougher to craft that Apple type experience while also selling out. I think they’re also aware of the implicit value to their business of being the non-Ad driven eco-system. It’s all part of being premium. Selling to the users who also pay for Netflix premium, Hulu ad-free, etc. It’s built into their business model. In some ways it’s been like that for years - PC laptops come coated in ads from the Intel Inside stickers and pre-installed crapwear, to the design and logos on the product boxes themselves. I’m reminded of this: [VIDEO] I think Apple sorta, maybe wants Ads because it’s so lucrative, but also recognizes those challenges are real, and tough, and destroy their brand quickly.

Actually I don't think most programmers are capable of designing something like spacex.com - every image on the site fits the minimalist theme (and there are hundreds). The photos are always dark in the appropriate areas so the text is readable, and they're dynamically cropped/resized with good positioning for all breakpoints. - the front page appears to be simple, but if you click through the site there are actually a ton of dynamic illustrations and charts like this: [LINK] The key thing is that the aesthetic is executed consistently and with restraint. This video is a bit old now but it's as true now as it's ever been: [VIDEO] Minimalism is the most difficult aesthetic to pull off, because it's easy for the end result to look unfinished, cheap or lazy. I think the problem is not that coders can't be designers, but that coders generally don't really care about design, and I say that as a coder. If you gave the spacex project to the average coder, you'll probably end up with something like sap.com or fortinet.com Web design has converged a lot in the last 20 years because people don't want to learn a new UI for every website they visit. This makes good web design harder , because now if you want to create something memorable and distinctive, you'll need to do it in spite of the navigation and functional parts looking identical to every other site.