It was 1998 when the Mac was presented to the world as a revolutionary object not only for technology but also for aesthetics. From here the iconic book "Designed by Apple in California", launched in recent days and dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs, is a volume that contains 450 images of the designs by the Cupertino company taken by photographer Andrew Zuckerman.
From the design to the final product, this picture book presents Apple's past and present history and documents the techniques and the materials used by the design team in the course of two decades. But it also talks about human capital, values and objectives of the people at the centre of production in the heart of Silicon Valley. There's no shortage of illustrations of the iPad, iPod, iPhone, iWatch or other iconic objects of the company that changed the history of computing and technology.
Apple, now the richest company in the world with 533.20 billion dollars of capitalisation, was founded in 1976 by Jobs and Steve Wozniak and became world famous in the '80s thanks to the wide range of Macintosh computers. The name comes from the first prototype of the machine put on the market, a computer with advanced features for its time: the first one could be connected to a TV and was also equipped with computer memory that made it much easier to start. The assembly of the computer (the first order was 500 pieces) was done in the Jobs' family garage.
The book was printed in two sizes, small for $199 and large for $299, on knurled paper, ad hoc coloured and linen-bound with a hard cover. It took eight years to get this result, above all for the great photographic work and research that the famous company did with such professionalism, always putting design, aesthetics and user experience at the centre of its business. At the moment, the book is not being sold in Italy, only in the United States, Australia, Korea, France, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, United Kingdom and Taiwan, and in some selected Apple Stores. "The idea of trying to really do something great for humanity was Steve's motivation from the beginning and remains our ideal and our goal for the future of Apple," stated Jony Ive, Chief Apple design Officer. Another way to follow the famous slogan "Stay hungry stay foolish" that Apple followers love to repeat like a mantra, passing on the lesson that Steve Jobs gave in his 2005 speech to Stanford students.