Has Apple's new iPhone hit the limits of industrial design?

I really hope not: "The touch-screen is a fixed element of its design; for at least the next decade, you can expect the front of every new model to be dominated by a flat sheet of glass, the same as on every previous model."<p>I disagree. I can understand why it is easy to make that assertion, but there is no imagination in that statement nor due respect for progress and advancement in technology or industrial design.<p>For instance, as silly as this may seem right now, who is to say that for at least the next decade there will assuredly be a "front" on the device? Is it not possible /likely that within a decade front/back won't matter just like how portrait/landscape/upside-down/right-side-up do not today on iPhone and iPad?<p>Just a thought...

Have a look at this Titanium PowerBook[1]. And now take a look at Apple’s current MacBook Pro[2]. Do you notice anything? They look remarkably similar! It’s immediately obvious that Apple is now in its ninth year of selling essentially a laptop with the same design.<p>That’s not bad. That doesn’t show that they reached the limits of industrial design. It shows a relentless dedication to perfection.<p>Good design is timeless. Good design has to be timeless, especially when you are technology company. How else could you perfect the design of something in a industry where you have to update your product every year?<p>The iPhone is still a bit confused (what with the flashy chrome bezel and all) but I’m pretty confident that it will settle in sooner or later. The leaked design seems a step in the right direction (something timeless you can perfect), some details are off, though (seams?).<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PowerBook_redjar.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PowerBook_redjar.jpg</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/</a>

If you think about innovation over time, you see big, quick jumps separated by long, shallow periods of improvement. Apple can't blow your mind all the time; they can't innovate exponentially.

I think that industrial designers have reached a limit within our current technological and manufacturing capacity.<p>There are many concepts that are great examples of "form meets function" that we cannot produce due to these limitations.

This seems a little silly to me. Any hardware features Apple adds and new technologies will force them to rethink their industrial design, and I'm sure there will be new additions in the next decade. (front-facing camera is one addition)<p>If you put it that way, flip phones should have hit the limits of industrial design a long time ago, but phones like the RAZR changed things pretty substantially.<p>It is also Apple's choice to maintain one consistent look for a product line for several years (think iPod, iMac, MBPs...)<p>Also, I wouldn't say that the original iPhone and the 3G/3GS looked the same at all...

I really enjoyed this bit from the Jhonatan Ive: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0fe800C2CU#t=1m49s" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0fe800C2CU#t=1m49s</a> (1:49-2:25)

There's still plenty of room to innovate in phone design post-iPhone, just as there has been plenty of room to innovate in PC design post Xerox Alto (<a href="http://www.davidstringfellow.com/parcimg/GUI.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.davidstringfellow.com/parcimg/GUI.jpg</a>). The problem is not innovation, it's that platforms exert a conservative effect on hardware.<p>Our PCs today still looks <i>recognizably</i> similar to the Xerox Alto in 1973, the reason is every piece of software is written with the assumption of a screen, keyboard &#38; mouse. Any attempts to deviate from this, the microsoft tablet for example, has tended to fail because of the sub-optimal experience of using a pen for software designed for mouse &#38; keyboard.<p>We're used to phones looking different all the time because nobody has ever built a true app platform for the phone. Now that we have, we should be seeing about the same amount of innovation in phone design in the next 37 years as PC design since the Alto.<p>I wrote a blog post about this a while back: <a href="http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/technological-progress-happens-via-simulated-annealing/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/technological-progress-happens...</a>

I think the Nintendo DS shows that there are always other possibilities.

I'd say the only limiting factor is what designers can imagine.