[vjk2005]

I agree with most of your thoughts except the 'fashion company' bit. What fashion companies do is 'frivolous' design, a shirt is a shirt is a shirt. What Apple does is on a totally different level - mouse is not a scroll wheel is not a multi-touch sensor. They are all fundamentally different ways of interaction that change the things you _can_ and _cannot_ do with the device - you can't have the precision of the mouse on the iPhone but you can't do the iPhone's multi-touch gestures with the mouse. The design fashion companies do, doesn't have the same impact. Totally on-board with you on the rest of your thoughts.

As an aside, for people who are interested, at MacWorld 2007, Steve summed up the whole thing in just 1 slide... http://i.imgur.com/gMIjp.jpg

To a lot of people 'design' means white/gray rounded rectangles, but that's really not why Apple is where they are today. As Steve said 8 years ago - “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

[api]

I disagree that fashion is frivolous. A shirt is not a shirt is not a shirt. One whole half of the human brain seems dedicated to aesthetics. Are you saying that one half of the totality of the human intellect is worthless and frivolous?

Aesthetics are practical.