The idea for the iMac G4 came from this Italian lamp - or did it?

While we're on the topic of inspiration I want to show you a couple of pics than a reader from Australia sent me. He was in this high end interior design shop in Melbourne, Geoffrey Hatty Applied Arts, which has quite a reputation as I'm told. Anyway he spotted this rather curious white Italian lamp. The base is painted timber - or wood, for my North American readers - and it's a half-dome shape, similar in size but smaller than the base of the iMac G4.

A lot of people - I included - referred to the design as being like a sunflower. Think about if for a minute and see how similar a sunflower and a lamp are. They're different enough but similar enough to make things interesting don't you think?

Now your job is to ponder over whether we got the inspiration from this lamp or whether it's a coincidence. There are no wrong answers... because I'm not telling you!


And besides, the point is that there is inspiration everywhere. Sometimes your mind is ignited by things you see and sometimes it's ignited by things you don't - from the beyond. It can be difficult to determine which exactly has happened on a given occasion, but it's important to remember that ideas come from both places.

How not to be inspired by nature

Spiral? Beautiful. Dopey looking snail shell? Not so beautiful.

How nature inspires us

Nature makes the best medicine, did you know that? Well, you do now! But nature doesn't make computers (well...) or passenger aircraft. So we have to invent them. But we find that sometimes our machines work better if we do more than simply apply the mere laws of nature (read physics). Sometimes we have to step back from the fundamentals (technical laws) and see the big picture. Leonardo da Vinci saw how powerful and inspiring nature was, and so do many designers and engineers. Nature can be baroque, it can be minimalistic, it can be abstract, it can be surreal. So we have a lot to choose from.

So how does nature inspire us here at Apple? Well, it's not always obvious. But have a look at this 'hockey puck' mouse we did back in '98 for the first iMac:



We based that on something so simple you'll probably gasp: a drop of water at rest. Brilliant or what? But the problem was that due to its regular shape, the user had to keep looking at it to ensure it was correctly oriented (we made a similar mistake but in a different way some years later - can you guess?). I don't mind that we had to change it. But the worst thing was hearing it referred to as a hockey puck. Nobody in the popular press has ever called it the 'water drop' mouse. Which would have been brilliant because a couple of years later the company released OS X and its interface was called... Aqua.

Time for a new car?

You know, I like my Aston Martin DB7. But in recent years, AM has released a few nice cars that are even more beautiful still. So it might be time to upgrade. What do you think?

Here's the DB7:



And here's the DB9:



I think the DB9 looks nicer. Smoother and more aggressive at the same time. Better proportions: notice the nicer, more solid front end of the DB9 and the flimsy one of the DB7 with its headlights set further back. The DB7 is trying to be an E-Type but without the grace - and the E-Type is a little over-rated anyway. Actually it sometimes reminds me of the current Jaguar XK - nice enough but not as nice as the new AMs.

But you know, you do get used to your car after a while and even though you can afford a nicer one, you start thinking how annoying it is to go through the process of test driving and filling in papers and updating your insurance company and all that malarkey.