Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [26]
Likewise, the packaging of the Apple II in a friendly plastic case transformed the personal computer from a build-it-yourself project for geeky hobbyists into a plug-and-play appliance for ordinary consumers. Jobs had hoped the Apple II would appeal to software junkies, rather than only hobbyists interested in tinkering with electronics, and so it did. A couple of student programmers from Harvard, Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, created VisiCalc—the first spreadsheet—which soon became the Apple II’s “killer ap.” VisiCalc allowed tedious business calculations to be automated. Business ledgers that used to take hours to calculate by accountants were suddenly trivially easy to maintain. VisiCalc—and the Apple II—became a must-have for every business. Sales of the Apple II went from $770,000 in 1977 to $49 million in 1979—making the Apple II the fastest-selling personal computer of its time.
Jobs Gets Design Religion
With the runaway success of the Apple II, Jobs started to get serious about industrial design. Design was a key differentiator between Apple’s consumer-friendly, works-right-out-of-the-box philosophy and the bare-bones, utilitarian packaging of early rivals like IBM.
In March 1982, Jobs decided Apple needed a “world class” industrial designer, a designer with an international reputation. Jerry Manock and other members of Apple’s design team didn’t fit the bill. In the early 1980s, design was becoming a major force in industry, especially in Europe. The unexpected success of Memphis, a product- and furniture-design collective from Italy that dominated design during that period, convinced Jobs that the time was right to bring the flair and quality of high design to the business of computers. Jobs was especially interested in crafting a uniform design language for all the company’s products. He wanted to give the hardware the same design consistency that Apple was starting to achieve in software, and make it instantly recognizable as an Apple product. The company set up a design competition, instructing candidates plucked from design magazines like I.D. to draft seven products, each named after one of Snow White’s dwarfs.
The winner was Hartmut Esslinger, a German industrial designer in his mid-thirties who, like Jobs, was a college dropout with strong drive and ambition. Esslinger had gained notice designing TVs for Sony. In 1983, he emigrated to California and set up his own studio, Frog Design, Inc., providing exclusive services to Apple for an unprecedented $100,000 a month, plus billable time and expenses.6
For Apple, Esslinger crafted a distinct look that came to be known as the “Snow White” design language, which would dominate computer case design for a decade—and not just at Apple, but throughout the whole computer industry.
Esslinger’s Snow White language was characterized by the clever use of chamfers, bevels, and rounded corners. A good example is the Macintosh SE, an iconic all-in-one computer with an upright case and a screen like a face. The machine was elegant, but had a distinct, approachable personality.
Like Jobs, Esslinger had an eye for detail. One of his signature motifs was the use of vertical and horizontal stripes, which cleverly broke up the bulky lines of cases, making them seem smaller than they were.
Many of these stripes also doubled as ventilation slits, precision-crafted into S-shaped cross sections, which prevented objects like paperclips being poked inside. Esslinger also insisted on using the highest quality manufacturing processes, and talked Jobs into adopting a specialized molding