I hadn't thought of it like this before, but the cargo cult metaphor is spot on. It reminds me of when I was studying sculpture and one of the tutors said that there were plenty of people "making things that look like art," but those things weren't true artworks, as if they lacked a soul of some kind. It now feels like Apple are "making things that look like Apple products," but aren't delivering the deep quality which that used to entail.
The latest trend of adding iPhone X-style display notches, even by companies that mocked that design when it came out, supports the "cargo cult" theory.
In other words, they just want to claim a general trademark on "it looks good". Apple fanboys will disagree, but I think it is ridiculous and is part of what makes me dislike Apple with a passion.
There definitely is an obsession with Apple in a subset of the "design community" - I've seen lots of aping of aesthetics with no functional justification (such as web sites with brushed aluminum and linen textures which became popular after OS X releases that featured the same cues)
Might be one of those "designed to look good and sell more units, not for actual users" Apple ideas. There was a post about it on HN a few weeks ago. Edit: linked below
I think it's intentional. I don't think anyone in the company said "this is great design let's do this" but more like "this is unconventional (in Apple words, "takes courage") and rad, we know people will call it ugly but let's be unique this way and do it".
Which, in my opinion, works.
That seems to be taking a page from Apple design philosophy--oversimplify to make things 'look' easy. Their target audience is the person who wants to buy an Apple product and sees someone using it.
You can blame Apple... they convinced everyone that design was important, so now every shitty company in the world is ineffectually trying to push the boundaries to create something "iconic."
I agree that there's too much absurdity around these types of product launches in general. That being said, Apple has always enjoyed lambasting the competition as being aesthetically challenged. Apple has probably more than earned the blow-back for this rather lame design.
I would argue that this visual identity is Apple's, and it is its own personality, and I am quite sure they are not too happy about everyone copying it.
pinstripes, brushed metal, linen; one could follow the trends by looking at cargo-culting designers were setting as the background image on their blogs. I'm sure they thought it looked good when viewing on their freshly updated Macs.
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