God's way of telling you that you have more money than common sense

Hey Major Tom - the ENIAC! Now we're talking computers!

I think the move away from vacuum tubes ruined computing. I mean, you could see the electrons! (sort of)

Randy
 
paradoxbox said:
it's for charity. you guys bashing this are a real great bunch.
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It has something remotely to do with Apple, so let the bashing begin.

I think the design of the RED camera is not exactly a triumph for Ivey, but he did donate his efforts, as did the engineers at Leica, so I think they all deserve a pass on this one.

For the target price, I am sure Leica will throw in a free M240 to the successful bidder, so they have a camera they can actually use.

Regarding Apple and design, I am a computational scientist, and I have used too many computers (not including the ENIAC) to have anyone tell me that Apple has not made significant contributions on the technical and usability fronts. OS X introduced UNIX to the broad consumer market, quite a feat. The original Macintosh blew other machines out of the water, at least for people who used the computer for something more than making a spreadsheet. As for Steve Jobs, I doubt I would have liked him as a person, but the history of Apple and its succession of CEOs provides an empirical test of the influence that an individual can make, and Jobs certainly made a difference in the world.

If nothing else, he gave the creativity of engineers and designers (like Ivey) a prominent position at Apple.

Randy
 
Eniac is way too modern before that was Colossus

Colossus.jpg


All hail Tommy Flowers and the Post Office Research unit savers of many lives.
 
Bille said:
"A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of unprecedented insight."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius

We are all inspired by everyone, no problem, but I rarely call "genius".
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Like I stated genius isn't Necessarily being the first with an idea, a genius can also be someone who exploits someone else's ideas.
Look at Peter Behrens (AEG) who influenced Dieter Rams (Braun) who in turn influenced Jony Ive; a man who Rams says is one of the few people in the world that doesn't devalue the term 'design'– praise indeed!
Think of Ford wan't the first with a motorcar, his genius was to take that idea exploit it though others ideas of mass production and make it popular.
Ive wasn't the first to design an MP3 player he just made one that worked better than others available at that time.
Wikipedia links :)
 
seriously guys the proceeds go to charity ... CHARITY CHARITY CHARITY
if someone wants to donate $500K to cancer research and get an odd looking Leica for it, i don't really see the issue
 
Photo_Smith said:
Eniac is way too modern before that was Colossus

Colossus.jpg


All hail Tommy Flowers and the Post Office Research unit savers of many lives.
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Hi,

You should be there when it's running; all that lovely relay chatter and you get a warm glow as well. Well, you do with the current post production one at Bletchley Park.

Regards, David
 
"It's fer CHARIDEE" is not a universal get-out-of-jail-free card.

It's easy to imagine a "Charidee" auction that most of us would regard as immoral: selling the right, for example, to execute a (disputably) convicted criminal.

This is of course very different from anything of that kind. Even so, there must come a point when we say, "At what point is the perpetuation of shallow, trivial, cash-only celebrity culture even for charidee sufficiently disgusting that we voice our disapproval?"

Leica selling a camera for charity? No problem. Wonderful. Good on 'em. This travesty? Um...

ADDENDUM: Yes, it's got lots of paper/pixels/publicity. In that sense it's worked, whether we approve of it or not. This does not however mean we should shut down our critical faculties.

Cheers,

R.
 
I'm conflicted about Jony Ive.

The man knows what he's doing.

He's made industrial design the centerpiece of a company: unusual in the consumer electronics market, where each generation of reiteration rarely retains anything from the last, even though things haven't changed in any paradigm-shifting way. He's making the incessant reinvention of the wheel look much prettier than it actually is.

A good guy working for a mediocre cause, I suppose, which can't be entirely helped. So while I won't say Ive is a bad designer by any stretch, I'm not eager to praise his work, either.

This is of course, a camera not designed to be a camera but according to extraneous factors, none of them having to do with taking a photograph. The entire point of minimalism is to be essential, not arbitrary.

Minimalism is so badly implemented in design because of its innate aesthetic appeal.

A Tizio desk lamp will look nice on a corporate executive's desk and it's range of function will suit the attendant tasks just fine, but it will never be as functional as the ubiquitous clamp mount, articulated desk lamp that is still around to this day for a reason: it hasn't been improved upon.
 
Wow... This is one sour and bitter thread. Way uglier than most designers could make any camera look.

Let's complain about 500k going to a good cause while bashing a designer that has made a name for himself as one of the most influential designers of our modern time.
Obviously it's possible to not to like a design. But why this whole crusade?

Surely there are more deserving causes to get so upset about?
 
pieter said:
Wow... This is one sour and bitter thread. Way uglier than most designers could make any camera look.

Let's complain about 500k going to a good cause while bashing a designer that has made a name for himself as one of the most influential designers of our modern time.
Obviously it's possible to not to like a design. But why this whole crusade?

Surely there are more deserving causes to get so upset about?
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If you think you've seen a pointless crusade here, you haven't seen the other related thread yet. Or failed to notice something there.

And to be honest it just comes with the territory. No sense crying before you're hurt.
 
This does not however mean we should shut down our critical faculties.
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It seems to me that some people find discomfort in the critical faculties of others. I find it interesting, though, that the response comes across as aggression, rather than an appeal to the better nature of those with whom they disagree.
 
pieter said:
Wow... This is one sour and bitter thread. Way uglier than most designers could make any camera look.

Let's complain about 500k going to a good cause while bashing a designer that has made a name for himself as one of the most influential designers of our modern time.
Obviously it's possible to not to like a design. But why this whole crusade?

Surely there are more deserving causes to get so upset about?
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Highlight: No, it's a thoughtful thread that you disagree with. This is not quite the same as "sour and bitter".

Also, you fail to distinguish between "bashing a designer" and "bashing a design". I really had no opinion on the fellow until I saw this "design statement", a rehash of his own ideas (some but not all of them now old and tired) and others' ideas (some but not all of them now old and tired).

No-one, surely, is against the raising of large sums of money for charity, and no-one can deny that this "camera" has generated a good deal of publicity, in which sense it has succeeded immensely. But does this mean that no-one is permitted to raise questions concerning (for example) the nature of charity as distinct from publicity seeking, or about whether in fact this "design statement" is worth two farthings as a "design statement" as distinct from a very successful publicity stunt. A cynic might even argue that by turning a Leica into a third-rate Apple clone, he has provoked more discussion than might have been possible if he'd designed a usable camera.

I am delighted that Leica is helping to raise money for this cause. But as someone else pointed out, they're doing it by raising awareness, not by flogging an effectively unusable camera riddled with Apple design clichés.

Cheers,

R.
 
To be fair Roger you have been a little excited about a design that will have no consequence to you, I, or anyone else here. Twice you've linked anyone who likes Apple products with being in thrall to celebrity culture, quite why the link I have no idea. What does celebrity culture have to do with this particular design?
 
bobbyrab said:
To be fair Roger you have been a little excited about a design that will have no consequence to you, I, or anyone else here. Twice you've linked anyone who likes Apple products with being in thrall to celebrity culture, quite why the link I have no idea. What does celebrity culture have to do with this particular design?
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Entirely fair comments, but hold on: is this not consistent with a distaste for "celebrity culture"? He has repeatedly been referred to as a great and even celebrity designer. No. He's done some good designs. I've even owned a few (a very few) Apple products. But a near-worship of all he designs smacks to me of "Apple as religion", those who believe that Apple (and by extension, Ive) can do no wrong. As I said in post 24, " even if someone has produced good designs before, it does not mean that his/her subsequent designs are necessarily good." Those who do not see this as a good design (and I am among them) can only conclude that his fame/ notoriety/ celebrity explain why he was asked to do this.

Cheers,

R.
 
But why are you passionate about this subject in particular?

Oh, and to be honest I fail to see in what way this design, the motivation behind the design and the context of the design are being discussed in a thoughtful way. There are much more productive ways to evaluate a design imo. But we can agree to disagree on that I guess.

But really, I'm still surprised at the amount of passion you seem to have about this subject. At least that's the way you come across to me. And maybe I have misconstrued that as bitterness, in which case I'm sorry. But help understand just what part of this whole thing is what is the most important to you.
Is it really the design? And it seems to me a bad design can be easily ignored? It seems to me the world is full of things that are way worse designed than this thing. But why is this design so important? Does it mess with something that shouldn't be messed with? Is it that it fails to show proper respect to previous M camera designs? Or are you afraid its design will have consequences for future cameradesigns?
Or is it the money involved? Do you feel the money should be donated without getting a camera back for it. Does the camera somehow taint the money given to charity?
Or is it the motivation behind the whole idea? Do you take issue with this particular way of raising awareness or do you feel the energy put into this project is somehow wasted and could be put to much better use?

Help me understand whats wrong with raising some money for a certain cause by making a one off design of something, and with worse designs daily being employed for worse and more selfish causes (imo), why are we still discussing this one?
 
pieter said:
But why are you passionate about this subject in particular? . . .
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The simple truth is, I'm not exactly passionate, just idly interested. I've spent a lot of the day working on a cook-book, about which I am a lot more passionate. I fear you take for passion what is merely a distaste for what I see as sloppy thinking and hero-worship. It is merely that I tend to express my views slightly more forcefully than some and (I hope) slightly more clearly than others.

You can also look at it from a political point of view, in that a hypertrophy of the cash nexus is being substituted for common humanity. But look, this ugly, design-clichéd, barely functional camera really is not that important to me: as someone else pointed out, I ain't gonna be buying it. There are almost certainly better ways of expressing my political views, so there is probably no point in pursuing this further here.

Cheers,

R.
 
Given that the guy is probably the most prolific contemporary designers of the last 15 years in terms of numbers buying and using what's come off his drawing board. I would say he keeps a remarkably low profile, I don't think I've ever seen him interviewed.
Regardless of his success, you've every right to dislike what he's produced, but the tag 'celebrity designer', seems to me to be an unfair label.
The camera I see as being like a concept car at a motor show, an exercise, all be it one that should put a chunk of money into a good cause.
 
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