Apple lands 2 of best 12 designs from past 100 years; Macintosh #1

“Is the much-loved Piaggio Vespa more iconic than the floppy disk? Is the iPod more of a design classic than the Airbus A380?” Monique Rivalland reports for CNN. “These are the questions we put to some of the world’s greatest designers when we asked them to nominate what they believe to be the most iconic industrial design from the last 100 years.”

“This Saturday, the international design community will celebrate World Industrial Design Day. To mark the event, CNN spoke to Gianfranco Zaccai, CEO of global design and innovation consultancy Continuum. Zaccai and his team have been behind some of the most well-known products of the last three decades — including the iconic Reebok Pump,” Rivalland reports. “CNN asked the celebrated innovator about his views on what constitutes good design at the turn of the millennium.”

1. Apple Macintosh: “When Apple Mac said hello to the world in 1984 it turned the computing industry on its head,” says Dick Powell, co-founder of design agency SeymourPowell. “It seamlessly combined outstanding software and hardware into an experience. Other than the Jobs-less years it spent in the innovation wilderness, it’s still doing it.”

Apple Macintosh
Apple Macintosh

2. Piaggio Vespa
3. The escalator
4. Virgin Galactic Space Plane
5. AK-47
6. The floppy disk

7. Apple iPod: The iPod, the product so iconic it defined a generation. Nick Rhodes, head of the Industrial Design MA at the University of London, nominated the MP3 player because “it so clearly demonstrates the benefits of collaborative efforts… This is no longer the province of a single ‘hero’ designer,” he says, “but rather the unified work of many practitioners.”

8. Herman Miller Aeron chair
9. Bang & Olufsen 2400 stereo
10. Airbus A380
11. Ford Model T
12. Jet engine

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: hello, gorgeous.

[Attribution: iMore.]


    1. It is sad that you see the tool of enslavement for much of the world as a device to bring ‘freedom’ to the world. Many of your posts are very insightful but this one is the absolute lowest. Guns are instruments of force. Freedom is a choice of the way we treat each other with the deepest of respect.

      1. Kumbaya. There will always be evil people in the world and there will always be people defending themselves against the evil. The AK is an abundant tool and accessible in Third World countries for low cost.

        It is unfortunate, but inevitable, that the evil people in the world persist in killing others for their own evil purposes, but you can either fight or be killed. I’ll opt for taking a chance.

        1. Gandhi didn’t agree with you and managed to free half a billion people from British rule. The freedom movement for the ‘black’ people in the US was won without the guns you think are a solution to the world’s problems.

          Just because someone thinks a gun is the solution to their problems doesn’t mean that it really is a solution.

          1. Sing it brother!

            I’m not anti-gun. They’re remarkably useful machines.

            But I am pro personal responsibility, as opposed to mass madness. A lot of diabolical shite has been perpetrated by the worst of us at the end of an AK-47. Killing off others of our own species is most certainly terrific for planet Earth. But it’s how we Homo sapiens sapiens, so-called, manage to eventually destroy ourselves as a species. We’re the ultimate nut jobs if we think we can’t and won’t overcome our penchant for hating and murdering ourselves. It has to end before we end us. No more singing Kumbaya or anything else.

            1. Yes, because we humans are so screwed up that we go around killing one another over some messed up ‘truth’ residing in our heads. Thanks for pointing out the pointlessness of getting our species to grow up and learn how to survive itself. – I know, harsh. But I’m endlessly sick of the excuses for keeping our status quo of self-destruction. It’s like we’re trapped on a train and refuse to jump off. 😛

            2. I applaud your idealism. Unfortunately, we do not live in an “imagine all the people” world. Good and evil is REAL.

              The human condition is certainly messy and has not changed much, how we treat each other that is, since we cooked in caves. Theo’s brilliant post points out, oppressors are everywhere throughout time and care nothing about human life. The “messed up truth” belief system you pointed out.

              I’m not trapped (conceal carry), but if I end up a victim one day, at the very least will go down swinging … to each his own.

            3. I know. And you hit the right word: Idealism.

              I just wish we could all become our best selves and leave the cave man primitive guy, and even the ape warring guy behind. I strive for the responsible positive. Thanks for the thoughtful chat.

            4. “Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

              “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

              What an impractical idealist! So foolish! Someone who believes those statements surely could never accomplish as much good in the world as the incomparable Wayne LaPierre!

            1. I would rather die than join in a stupid war that ultimately solves nothing. Obviously, mankind has learned nothing from a history filled with war after war and then counter wars and vengeance wars and ‘proactive’ wars etc. There are other ways. Mankind needs to be educated so that we all have the skills to deal with our differences without violence. Respect is a virtue that can be emulated and taught. Tolerance can help us deal with our mistakes, forgiveness (when asked for) can solve many issues. We need to develop a better world rather than destroying it.

          2. 313c7ro… let me get this straight… you think black people were freed in the U.S. without guns? Seriously? Over 750,000 people died fighting for the freedom of blacks in the United States. That was just the Civil War.

            Wars between freed men and ex Democrat slavers went on for many years afterwards. Blacks in the U.S. maintained their freedom with guns, not protests. The oppressors of blacks would often seek GUN CONTROL laws to keep blacks vulnerable.

            The history of racism in the United States is inextricably tied to the history of gun control, i.e. keeping guns out of the hands of blacks.

            When you’re sure that people have no guns, you can feel totally free to ride on up, drag them out of their homes, burn their homes, rape and kill their wives and daughters, and hang the men. If you think your cowardly ass might get shot, you’ll reconsider.

            This country was created in the minds of great men, and brought to existence with guns. Had there been no guns in the hands of the proto-American insurgents, there would be no United States.

            The brave and highly intelligent men (certainly braver and much more intelligent than most of us these days) who created the United States, were compelled by their own experiences and their immense knowledge of history to constitutionally protect the citizens from a government run amok, and thus sought to insure the people’s right to bear arms.

            The aggression of our own country against others has been fought off by insurgents with guns time and again. With our vast military, we are seldom able to easily squash guerrilla forces with AK47s. Over and over guns in the hands of people, from Vietnam, to Afghanistan, to Iraq have shown that an armed citizenry can secure and maintain its freedom. A disarmed citizenry is nothing more and cannon fodder, a people with no ability to defend themselves against their oppressors or each other.

            Gandhi was lucky. He faced a different kind of enemy than the oppressed peoples of today. He led a bloodless revolution against the British. The real defeat however came from the observation of the rest of the world.

            Today people are controlled by religious zealots and evil despots for whom there is no value of life. They cannot be shamed into relinquishing the power they have over others. He who has the guns has the power.



            1. By far one of the wisest, truest, and most articulate posts I have ever read anywhere posted by anyone.

              Electro I respect where you are coming from about non violence, and I too long for that day but I do not see that day coming soon, and it won’t occur by everyone holding hands and gathering flowers and pretending there are no ruthless, violent and predatory humans who will gladly take advantage of defenseless and weak unarmed citizens.

            2. “By far one of the wisest, truest, and most articulate posts I have ever read anywhere posted by anyone.”

              I don’t think you can say it any better.

            3. Your ass was handed to you more than once on this thread. But that nagging narcissistic position of yours ALWAYS has to HAVE the last word. Grow up.

            4. By the way, the contraction for ‘you are’ is you’re. Perhaps you’re not as capable as you would like me to think. If you’re a contrarian, at least some of the time you could be right by opposing commonly held erroneous beliefs but I suspect that you are just a nay sayer.

            5. Let me add to TM’s post. I’d suggest to anyone willing to take a bit of time that you should read “Racist Roots of Gun Control” by Clayton Cramer. It’s readily available on the Interwebs.

          3. 3l3c7ro glosses over some fairly significant points in his invocation Gandhi, particularly in that Gandhi was dealing with the British rather than, say, Russia or Germany of the period:

            – He understood and sillfully used the British press against British rule.
            – He used other anti-British rule leaders, such as Bose, who were willing to engage in armed opposition, to place himself as someone easier for Britain to deal with. It wasn’t the only tool he could have used, and if they hadn’t been in place he would have.

            Note this quote of his: “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” Here, it should be noted, he separated his personal choice to pursue nonviolence (he drove an ambulance in WW1) from leaving choice open to the nation as a whole.

      2. I assumed he was joking but clearly not. That weapon has enslaved far more than it freed and killed millions indiscrimtly in the process. Yes a design classic but not one to be proud of, makes me wonder if they included Fat Boy too, it killed far less.

        1. As for allowing the freedom of the oppressed the supply of arms to the Native American did nothing to save them from extinction from those very same citizen militias, who disgracefully exploited freed slaves to carry out their dirty work by promising to give them the indigenous people’s land while the American civil war only put an emphasis on a fight against slavery when European Powers threatened to break the blockade on cotton that was costing the lives of thousands of their workers. They could not be seen to be supporting a war protecting slavery having already abolished it. Seems there is not such a clear line on the re writing of history after all. As for the AK40s its the oppressors and their lackeys who sell them to the supposed freedom fighters.

    2. It’s on the list because it’s very great at what it does – but you have a screw loose if you think what it does shoot freedom. It’s kind like what Wolverine says, “I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn’t very nice.”

    3. It’s so weird reading something that freaking crazy on a Mac fan forum – it reads more like something you’d see in a written manifesto by a white male delusional psychopath right before he guns down a dozen kids at his nearest shopping mall.

    4. Agree 100%. Great to see guts staying alive. Ha, ha, ha, ha …


      — Shane, 1953

    5. The AK-47 was/is a very well designed machine. During the Vietnam war the M-16 jammed because of sand and mud so often the the U.S. GI’s would take the AK’s off the dead Vietcong and use them instead.

  1. Virgin Galactic Space Plane?

    Seriously? Over the Coca-Cola bottle, the Eames lounge chair and ottoman, the Anglepoise lamp, Raymond Loewy’s Avanti, and the iPhone and original iMac?

    No way. Sorry, I’m not buying that one.

    Branson must have paid a pretty penny to get onto the list.

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