Posted at 22:20 on Friday, 11 June 2010
TECHNOLOGY 
It seems to me, through hearing countless anecdotes and general whispering, that Apple CEO Steve Jobs expects nothing less than perfection in the fruit of his company — at least in the aesthetic sense.
Looking back at the progression of the design of something like the iPod or the iMac, one can assume his perception of what ‘perfect’ is has evolved in a iterative fashion as his design team exceeds these expectations far enough to bring a new model to market. I can’t really think of many times where Apple have released a product that has stopped short on the path to cosmetic perfection in favour of functionality.
Much of the time, functionality enhancements appear only when partnered with industrial design innovations, a prime example of this being the introduction of the currently standard ‘unibody’ MacBook Pro enclosures nearly 2 years ago. The ability to fashion a laptop chassis out of only a single piece of aluminium brought forth a computer that was considerably sturdier than it’s plastic predecessors, much lighter, more environmentally friendly but — perhaps above all else — they looked gorgeous, no doubt exceeding the expectation of ‘perfection’ relative to Steve Jobs circa 2008.
But earlier this week Apple unveiled the newest iteration of the iPhone that featured some very un-Applelike seams around the casing. Pictures of this phone leaked a few months before the official announcement, at which time the seams were either being regarded as ‘just a beta hallmark’ or were leading people to outright deny the device’s authenticity based solely on the disbelief that Apple would make such a departure from aesthetic perfection.
The seams, in reality, served a much greater purpose than interrupting the smooth metal band outlining the phone. They exist, in fact, to facilitate external antennae without the fear of metal (or to a lesser extent, plastic) blocking any of that cellular juice which is all-too-important to the iPhone. As they themselves fully acknowledged it is a departure from Steve’s usual cosmetic doctrine – although honestly, I’m glad I can bet on the fact that they would never go far enough as to bring back the stubby, telescopic antenna protruding from the top of your device to improve reception!
While the unibody MacBook construction could have been lauded as equal parts form and function, the decision to create these ‘out-of-body’ antenna chasms has certainly tipped the ratio, at least a tiny bit, in favour of just making the damn thing work better. I sincerely hope this is a trend that will continue.
Not too long ago, I was approached by one of my colleagues to write an article or two detailing the basics of IronRuby (from the perspective of a classic Rubyist wanted to get started with it) for publication on the very large technology community website, 
