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and his designers pay close attention to materials and material science. For many companies, materials are an afterthought in the production process. But for Ive and his design team, the materials come first. The first iMac, for example, was always intended to be “an unashamedly plastic product,” Ive has explained. But plastic is usually associated with cheap. To make the iMac classy instead of chintzy, the team decided to make the computer’s shell transparent. But initially they encountered problems with spotting and streaking—the clear plastic cases weren’t coming off the production line uniformly clear. To ensure color consistency, the design team visited a candy factory, where they learned about mass-production tinting processes. (What other company in the consumer electronics industry takes cues from candymakers?)

Later, Ive and his design team would become interested in other materials, particularly aluminum. From the get-go, Ive showed an unusual commitment to working with the metal. Talking about the aluminum foot of the recent-model, flat-panel iMac, Ive said, “I love that we took one raw piece of material—a thick piece of aluminum—and achieved that sort of utility: you bend it, stamp a hole into it and anodize it. . . . We spent time in Northern Japan talking to a master of metal-forming, to get a certain kind of detail. We love taking things to pieces, understanding how things are made. The product architecture starts to be informed by really understanding the material.”33

As well as materials, Ive and his team are keen students of new manufacturing processes. The team is constantly on the lookout for new ways of making things, and some of Apple’s most iconic designs are products of new manufacturing techniques. Several early generations of the iPod, for example, had a thin transparent fascia bonded to the top of its plastic body. This thin coating of transparent plastic gave the iPod the appearance of extra heft and depth, without actually adding extra heft or depth. It also gave it a much more sophisticated look than a simple flat plastic surface.

The thin sheet of transparent plastic is the product of a plastic molding technique known as “twin-shot,” a difficult, expensive process in which two different kinds of plastic are injected into a mold simultaneously and bond together seamlessly. As a result, the iPod’s front appears to be made from two different materials—but there are no visible seams connecting them.

“We can now do things with plastic that we were previously told were impossible,” Ive told the Design Museum. “Twin-shooting materials gives us a range of functional and formal opportunities that really didn’t exist before. The iPod is made from twin-shot plastic with no fasteners and no battery doors, enabling us to create a design which was dense and completely sealed.”34

Before the iPod, Ive’s team had been experimenting with these new molding techniques in a series of products made from clear plastic, including the Cube, several flat-panel studio monitors, and a speaker and subwoofer set for Harman Kardon. The iPod appeared fresh and new, but its look was actually the result of several years of experimentation with new molding techniques. “Some of the white products we’ve done are just an extension of that,” says Ive.

The ability to make seamless objects led to a design decision on the iPod that’s been bitterly criticized by consumers—the inability to change its battery. The iPod’s battery is tightly sealed inside the device’s body, inaccessible to most owners unless they are willing to prise off the metal back. Apple and several third-party companies offer battery replacement services, but at extra charge.

Apple has said the battery is designed to last for many years, often longer than the useful life of the iPod, but to some consumers the sealed battery smacks of planned obsolescence, or worse—it makes the iPod seem disposable.

Apple’s research into other consumer electronic devices, primarily laptops, shows that very few users actually change their device’s batteries. They might like