Jonathan Ive’s Earlier Work

Jony Ive started his career at Apple in 1992, although Steve Jobs only returned to Apple in 1998.

These were patented by Jony before the return of Steve Jobs in 1998:

1. Handheld Computer Housing (D366463). Applied for in 1994.
Most fanboys will recognize what this is:

2. Stylus for a handheld computer (D368079). Applied for in 1994.

3. Cradle for a PDA (D373121). 1994.

4. Computer Printer (D386519). 1996.

5. Computer Display (D372023). 1995.
I hated this something rotten. I hate the white noise it emitted. It turned me off Macs for years to come. Okay, yes I know we can’t blame the casing designer for the internal workings.

6. Another Computer Display (D373120). 1995.
This one sucked too:

7. Computer Enclosure (D368254). 1995.
Another white noise emitting headache inducer:

8. Computer Housing (D372019). 1995.
Nnnnooooooo:

Then Steve Jobs came back. Jony Ive was inspired. So he designed these… woo:

D456023:

D413105:

D461187:

And thus concludes my current obsessing with Jonathan Ive’s patents.

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English(wo)men in New York (Or wherever)

English(wo)men in New York (Or wherever)
(Or whichever part of The USA they may find themselves)

There’s no doubt that Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial design at Apple Inc, is a highly successful designer. Leaving the shores of Jolly Old England was a great idea for him as it led to him being ranked as ranked by The Sunday Times as one of Britain’s most influential expatriates.

This said, it makes me curious about other Brits who’ve dabbled their hands in the American markets and succeeded. So naturally, I did a search for US granted design patents held by British based inventors, and got this list:

1. Martin WF Dean
A designer for Wolverine World Wide. (i.e. the company that makes Hush Puppies, Caterpillar boots and other work-related footwear brands as well as military boots).

2. Sandra Choi
A designer for the renowned (Malaysian Born) British shoe designer Jimmy Choo. Her most cited shoe is the “coupe” she designed in 2004 (D513846) which is also referenced by designers from Stuart Weitzman.

3. Manon Belley
Another designer for Wolverine World Wide.

4. Grant A Urie
Yet another designer for Wolverine World Wide.

5. James Dyson
A household name in the UK (awful pun intended). Any self respecting product designer in the United Kingdom should be familiar with the works of James Dyson. Most famous for his iconic bag-less cyclonic vacuum cleaners.

6. Anthony Dalby
Nokia Corporation. Designer of many of Nokia’s many mobile handsets, including the N90 design.

The co-designer that Anthony Dalby has worked the most with is Ingve Holmung.

Anthony Dalby had also designed a futuristic looking design for a street cabinet that houses telecommunications equipment; assigned to Nortel. Figure this one out yourselves:

7. Deborah H Andersen
Yet YET another designer for Wolverine World Wide. This American company sure uses a lot of designers from the UK.

8. Pape John A
John Pape registered a number of designs related to baby and toddler toys for Hestair Kiddicraft Limited. His most cited design is for a teether/rattle toy for babies he conceptualized way back in 1987. Recognize it?

9. Thomson Harry S
Another designer for Hestair Kiddicraft who has worked alongside John Pape.

10. Jonathan Kelsey
Another shoe designer for Jimmy Choo. His most cited design is an open toed shoe (D501709) which has oddly been cited by a Nike design (D544691).

So there they are. Britain’s top 10 US design patent holders, by volume, as of date.

By the way, in case you’re wondering. Jonathan Ive has 327 US design patents, all assigned to “Apple Computer.” I guess with a US$1m a year pay packet he doesn’t really need to work for anyone else.

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iPad Adoption Pattern in Singapore and Technology Diffusion Model

All this buzz about people buying iPads and queueing up for an iPhone 4 brings me to think of something I often talk about when discussing innovation and technology intelligence. The ‘Technology Diffusion Model’ by Beal, Rogers and Bohlen. It looks something like this:

Just for fun, I imagine how this roughly interprets to Singapore’s iPad adoption:

Innovators. You bought the iPad directly from the USA around the original launch date. People love you and love your technological gadgets. Some even stalk you over it. There’s also a high chance you’re an Asian American who works for a multinational software company in the day and owns a sushi bar by night (and name begins with ‘H’ etc etc).

Early Adopters. This would refer to the hoards of people who queued up in Singapore last week to grab an iPad. This week, you’ll be stocking up on accessories such as little cute bags to protect your precious toy and screen filters because once you got it home you realized how reflective the surface is. You’re probably reading this from Starbucks right now.

Early Majority. Those that missed out on the great iPad grab are probably feeling quite sore right now; but. You’ll pretend that you never get one; but one fine day you’ll let your guard down when one winks at you seductively from a shop window.

Late Majority. (I think I fit here) You’re probably sat cursing that everyone you’ve seen with an iPad this week is a douche, or worse: a douchePad. You’ll be getting one though as soon as 1) the price goes down considerably 2) everyone else has one and you need to share applications/files with them and 3) you can impress people (whose wives won’t let them buy one) in meetings.

Laggards. At some point, you’ve said something like the iPad “it is just a big iPhone/iPod touch.” You’re probably going to get an iPad in a years time or so when they come free with new Singtel Mio/Starhub packages… and you know it.

So which one are you?

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Quotes – Lyman Bryson on Intelligence & Experience

“The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence.”

- Lyman Bryson

WordPress blogs discussing Bryson’s works here and here.

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The Concept of a ‘Smart’ Mob

Remember the scene from Gladiator?

“Whatever comes out of these gates, we’ve got a better chance of survival if we work together.”

Well it seems that mobs can use that principle too; only that they can now make use of an expansive repertoire of communication methods to co-ordinate themselves.

Found on: Holy Kaw!

Read more at: How Stuff Works

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More lessons from literature

[This side of paradise. The egotist becomes a parsonage] F. Scott Fitzgerald

“If you’d have gone to college you’d have been struck by the fact that the men there would work twice as hard for any one of a hundred petty honors as those other men did who were earning their way through.”

“The idea that to make a man work you’ve got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long we’ve forgotten there’s any other way. We’ve made a world where that’s necessary. Let me tell you” — “If there were ten men insured against either wealth or starvation, and offered a green ribbon for five hours’ work a day an a blue ribbon for ten hours’ work a day, nine out of ten of them would be trying for the blue ribbon.”

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Lessons on Delegation from Tom Sawyer

Owing to some late night escapades on a Friday night, Tom Sawyer’s mother ensured that his Saturday would involve a day of hard laborious punishment for Tom Sawyer.

Whitewashing the fence was a far cry from the excitement that was possibly being had by Tom’s friends and Tom Sawyer wanted to get out of this chore quickly. Looking at his worldly possessions of a few bits of toys, marbles and some trash: prospects for buying his way out of it by bribing some other boys to share his task seemed bleak.

Then it struck Tom. Ben Roger’s taunts about Tom rather working seemed to brush right off him:

Ben: “Say, I’m going in a swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course, you’d druther work, wouldn’t you? Course you would! … Come now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

Tom: “Like it? Well I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

Ben stopped nibbling his apple.

Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth — stepped back to notice the effect — added a touch here and there — criticized the effect again, Ben watched every move, and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:

Ben: “Say Tom. Let me whitewash a while.”

Tom considered.

Ben: “… oh come now; lemme just try, only just a little. I’d let you, if you was me, Tom”

Tom gave up his brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart.

The retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by and munched on an apple. Boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy fisher for a kite in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with; and so on.

When the middle of afternoon came, from being a poor poverty stricken boy in the morning Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He’d amassed twelve marbles, part of a Jew’s harp, a blue piece of bottle glass, a spool-cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog collar, the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel and a dilapidated old window-sash.

… and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it.

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What will be the major concern of the knowledge revolution?

Dodig-Crnkovic (2003) states:

The industrial revolution was concerned with the utilizing of energy.

The information revolution, is concerned with the utilizing of information.

With these in mind, what will the knowledge revolution be remembered for?

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Masters of Tacit Knowledge (Ayrton Senna)

A quote from Ayrton Senna. Tacit Knowledge? Grok?

“I was already on pole, then by half a second and then one second and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel. Not only the tunnel under the hotel but the whole circuit was a tunnel. I was just going and going, more and more and more and more. I was way over the limit but still able to find even more.

Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down. I drove slowly back to the pits and I didn’t want to go out any more that day. It frightened me because I was well beyond my conscious understanding. It happens rarely but I keep these experiences very much alive inside me because it is something that is important for self-preservation.”

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Knowledge, Intelligence, Wisdom and … Grok

From Robert A. Heinlein‘s novel ‘Stranger in a Strange Land:’

“Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man.”

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