- Samsung’s new Galaxy Buds3 Pro look extremely familiar.
- Apple’s designs often seem to be the only way to make things.
- Good design requires lots of work and lots of money.
Why do Apple’s designs—the clamshell laptop, the glass-slab smartphone, the stemmed EarPods/AirPods—seem so inevitable, like the platonic ideal of each gadget type? And why does everybody copy them?
Samsung is no stranger to gadgets that look suspiciously similar to Apple’s designs, and the new Galaxy Buds3 Pro are a fantastic example. At a glance, they’re shameless copies of the AirPods Pro, complete with the Stormtrooper color scheme and the angled stems. Even the charging case is the same shape. It’s easy to understand why Samsung clones the most popular rival products, but what is it about Apple’s designs that make them seem like there’s no other way to make them?
“Apple design also adheres to the philosophy of ‘form follows function.’ That is, they don’t put decorative elements on their design. Decorative elements introduce complexity so this amplifies the perceived simplicity. The simplicity is made to look friendly and safe by not having sharp edges. Look at and Apple design and compare it to the Tesla Cybertruck. Which looks friendlier?” Tony Fernandes, the CEO at EUGroup and the head of Apple’s Software Human Interface team “back in the day,” told Lifewire via email.
Inevitable Minimalism
One method of design is to work out what you need, then keep taking things away until you cannot take away anything else.
“…perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away,” wrote Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
It’s the opposite of the Homer’s Car school of design, where you keep throwing in features that make the others harder to use. Under design chief Joni Ive, minimalism was the game, and even if he sometimes went too far in his war on buttons and removal of ports, Ive’s designs showed the power of trimming away everything but the essential. Even the spelling of his first name is minimal.
This has led to designs that seem to be the only natural evolution of a product. There were plenty of portable computer designs before Apple made the PowerBook, and ever since then, every laptop has used the same clamshell design. And before the iPhone, smartphones had buttons, keyboards, flip-out sections, and more. But then Apple made a slab of glass and metal that instantly became the model for all other smartphones. It’s like no other options ever existed.
Hard Work
The other side of this is that Apple is willing to put in the work to make these designs. Simple designs may look easy, but they are often the hardest to get right. The fewer design elements that make up a product, the more any oddities stand out.
“Above all else, the reason why Apple creates really good looking designs is because they are willing to put the engineering effort into making it happen. It is easy to engineer something really ugly. You need high-precision lathes, high-quality molds, and high-quality materials. The competitors don’t want to go there unless they have to because it is expensive and takes a lot of work,” says Fernandes.
By focusing on the design and taking the time and money to explore the options, you end up with some truly surprising designs that seem obvious the moment you see them. Take the original AirPod charging case, for example. Of course, you get a little case to keep your wireless earbuds together! And, of course, it has a battery to keep them charged up.
And what about the iPad’s Magic Keyboard, with its floating cantilever design that prevents the whole package from tipping backward when in use and is also way more compact and easier to use on train and airplane seat trays?
Steve Jobs once said that “design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” This is true, but design is also what it looks like. You can make things as minimal and functional as you like, but they can still be hideous. The attention paid to the radius of the corner curves on a MacBook’s screen, for example, is all about aesthetics, and that’s another reason we love Apple’s designs so much and why they are so tempting for other manufacturers to copy: They just look so hot.
“Truly innovating—crafting shapes that similarly tap deep into human behavior—is the key to designs as irresistible as Apple’s,” Altraco owner and contract manufacturer Albert Brenner told Lifewire via email. “Samsung copied the AirPods’ shape, hoping to capture their popularity and premium appeal. It’s a shortcut to an emotional connection with customers, even if the product itself lacks originality.”
To sum up, Apple’s designs are popular because they are exquisitely well-designed and built. Which is expensive to do. So it’s a lot easier to just knock off a design than it is to make a similar effort. Which is how we end up with Samsung’s Galaxy Buds3 Pro. They even copied part of the name.
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- What Makes Apple's Designs So Inevitable, So Copiable?
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