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Turbulence: You know you can not live without Glass Rectangle latest Apple

Philip W. Schiller, (AAPL) Apple vice president of marketing, walking on stage in San Jose California Theatre last week extolling the virtues of the new Apple products. As he stroked the last iMac personal computer, referred to as thin - five millimeters, 80 percent thinner than the previous. Then he said, with an air of surprise, as if he thought it would only be: "Is not it amazing how something new to make it look just before before?"

Umm, yes, Mr. Schiller, the design of your product like this. This part of the strategy that Apple has perfected. How someone can convince people of the company to change its iPhone either, iPad, iMac and another year iEverything?

In the past, the electronics manufacturer to convince the consumer that the design is different, as it actually is. The first iMac, for example, a blue bubble. After something of a desk lamp, and now a rectangular sheet of glass into electronics hidden behind it. Design IPod has changed, too, from time to time, before they are smaller pieces of glass.

Definitely makes adding features like a better camera or software tweak - Siri and notepad on the iPhone is an example of Apple - persuade people to upgrade. But in recent years, consumer electronics began to share a property, no matter who makes them, all are rectangular. Today, companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google would have to persuade consumers to buy a new box every year.

"Extraordinary things are happening on TV manufacturers a few years ago it started to look the same:. Flat on the wall, "said Donald A. Norman, author of "The Design of Everyday Things".

Consequences for manufacturers of disaster. "Customers do not have to buy a high-end model of Sony, but they can get a cheap Chinese," said Norman. "This is what the company is frightened off the screen on a smartphone or tablet. They look the same. They just rectangles. '

Every year, Apple and other companies seem to put boxes in a vise, flatten slightly, changing the exterior dimensions and display it as a big deal, or a little later. (Apple did not comment on the design approach.)

Not always the case. As a kid I remember father Minolta film camera - a camera mid-1950, his father gave him. Even if the film camera is now obsolete for the most part, you can bet that the camera can take 36 pictures without any problems.

But you can imagine, 10 years old, a child who gave a mini iPad, Apple's latest gadget? They claim, as people now when they look older - iPhone version - two or three years.

There's a term for this: "planned obsolescence", popularized in 1950 by Brooks Stevens, an industrial designer specializing in the manufacture of new vehicles. Quickly adopted by the industry of consumer goods postwar American strategy was persuaded to sell his 1955 Cadillac 1956 Cadillac tail fins have talked to them, and then in the 1957s with more fins flared, and then "the 58s, '59s , and so on.

Mr. Stevens The term is often misunderstood to mean things that are designed to disintegrate on a regular schedule. But he believes that the appropriate changes and improvements in the design is that people will want to buy the latest. Even right now, when the consumer should be careful manufacturers quackery. If you do not upgrade to a new iPhone or iPad, you're afraid you can look dated and part no idea, even of their rational brain says: "It is a device, right hand."

Consumer electronics company, Mr. Norman said, adopted the same marketing strategy perfect decades of automotive makes. Introducing luxury updates at the top and then, every year, pushing the product from the bottom levels. Thus, customers of all levels feel the need to buy a new version. "This is a trick for a long time - not invent anything new," he said. "But it hurts the consumer and the environment, but it may be for the benefit of our shareholders."

He added: "For Apple, forgot the trick: Change plugs" While the rest of the electronics industry has adopted a micro-USB port, Apple recently changed the port itself and connects all the latest devices - laptop, iPad and iPhone.

Documentary, "The Light Bulb Conspiracy" showed how past industry has been a major effort to reduce the life of the product - the product can not often designed to look like another. The bulbs are made to burn faster and socks afternoon hook.

Still, my first iPod is playing music. My laptop four years ago can still surf the Web. And my first e-book reader can still show.

It seems that most consumers are starting to feel tired of renovation. No elevator in PC sales, and people are. A report of Recon Analytics, a market research firm, found that people around the world are waiting to buy a new phone. In 2007, Americans upgrade their mobile phones every month an average of 18.7, three years later, that number will be extended to 21.1 months. In Finland, people are now waiting to update 74.5 months compared to 41.8 months in 2007.

Perhaps Mr. Schiller commented on the iMac is not how consumers see. Instead, people began to realize that these products are updated only flat rectangles that do not really offer much more than the previous model. Like the tail fins on a '56 Cadillac.

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