In 1999, a new kettle changed everything.
It was blue, bold, and sold at Targetnot in a design boutique, not in a museum shop, and not in a luxury department store. This wasnt just a new product launch, though. It was the beginning of a seismic shift in how design, retail, and brand partnerships operate. This was the first time a high-end design firm joined hands with a mass market retailer. Suddenly, Design for All wasnt our tagline; it was a new strategic ethos.
Today, nearly every major retailer has experimented with design collaborations. But despite the proliferation of partnerships, only a select few have truly moved the needle. Why? Because great collaborations dont start with a product. They start with a shared philosophy and deep strategy.
The blueprint: What we learned at Target
Michael Graves Designs groundbreaking partnership with Target wasnt successful just because the products were beautiful and affordable. It worked because both organizations came to the table fully committed with complementary strengths: Target had retail scale and marketing mastery; MGD brought world class design and user empathy. Together, we created something neither could have done alone.
This wasnt about “us and them;” it was about we and together. We were both going to Design for All. MGD wasnt a vendor. Our designers became extensions of Target, embedded within their merchandising, sourcing, product development, and marketing workflows. That cross-functional integration was radical at the time. Today, its more widely understood as essential.
Collaboration is a structure, not a slogan
At Michael Graves Design, weve taken what we learned and turned it into a method that we use with all partners. Our Direct-to-Retail Partnership Guide outlines a rigorous, multi-phase approach, from early benchmarking and ethnographic research to final prototype approvals and packaging integration. Often, MGDs role is to demonstrate to siloed organizations the importance of cross-functional collaboration throughout the entire product development process. This approach leads to enhanced efficiency, broad cultural buy-in, and authentic innovation. Five key elements of our process include:
Shared discovery: We start by collaborating with our partners merchant teams to identify product categories and individual items ripe for innovation, using methods like in-store interviews and ethnographic research to recognize product opportunity gaps. We involve marketing teams in the consumer research to ensure that the consumers voice makes its way into marketing messaging.
Integrated ideation: Retail merchant teams weigh in on the hero products and feature sets for each category, becoming the primary focus for our ideation and presentation. To make selections among alternative design directions, we use mood boards, sketching, 3D modeling, 3D printing, and renderings.
Collaborative vendor engagement: All product designs change during the design-for-manufacture (DFM) phase, driven by manufacturing optimization methods. Design deliverables include detailed 2D and 3D documentation, specification packets, and brand books to eliminate ambiguity; but once the factories get involved, designs always evolve. As the design partner, we ensure design intent and innovation is maintained. Ideally, we loop in vendors and factories early, to partner in feasibility and optimization, and account for factory capabilities, tariff efficiency, vendor matrix, and other factors. With early engagement, factories become true partners, open to experimentation and spurring innovation.
End-to-end packaging and messaging: From dielines to social media standards, we ensure the design voice carries through every marketing touchpoint, the true genius of so many national retailers.
This process works because its designed around learning, trust, cocreation, and an established division of responsibility, emphasizing each partys truest strengths.
Retail today: The stakes are higher than ever
Retail today is hypercompetitive. Consumers want products featuring original design and functional enhancements reflecting their own values. This is a high standard, which means standing out is harder and more important now. Legacy retailers are not just competing with one another; theyre competing with direct-to-consumer brands, Amazon, and global marketplaces that redefine convenience and choice. This is why design collaborations remain essential for retailers.
When done right, exclusive design collections carry meaning beyond price. They create items that shoppers cant find anywhere else, brand differentiation, drive repeat foot traffic, and foster deep emotional connections with consumers. Thats where a direct-to-retail design collaboration becomes a powerful strategic asset. It delivers the prestige of a national brand with the economic structure of a private label. Design brands bring national brand cache, elevated aesthetics, and the cultural relevance of good design, while enabling factory direct sourcing that supports retailer margin goals. It allows retailers to tell the marketing story with gusto.
This hybrid model provides retailers with tools to build customer experiences that are both inspiring and financially sound.
What most collaborations get wrong
Too many collaborations fail because theyre either surface-level PR plays or hierarchical vendor relationships dressed up as partnerships. A true design partnership means sharing a vision and committing to it, listening to each others expertise, and building something together across all departments for both partners.
It also means that a design partner is not a vendor in the traditional sense. They are an extension of the merchant and product development team. It is a modern model where external creativity and strategic insight enhance efficiency and relevance. That requires a new mindset, especially for legacy retailers accustomed to more transactional models.
Design for All, still
As consumer expectations evolve and the retail landscape transforms again, the question isnt whether to collaborate. Its how. And the answer, we believe, still lies in the art of the direct-to-retail design partnership, because when design and retail truly partner, something remarkable happens.
Ben Wintner is CEO of Michael Graves Design.
Could it be that the anti-woke movement has become so organized and influential that brands are now building strategies around it? If weve reached that point, then woke-baiting could emerge as a cheap but effective way for companies with stagnant growth to draw attention and change their fortunes.
Anti-woke people increasingly seem to vote with their dollars more than woke people. We just saw it go down with Cracker Barrel in August.
When Cracker Barrel changed its logoand removed an elderly man sitting judgily in a chairTrump weighed in and it affected the stock.
Cracker Barrel and Budweiser: A case study
One could argue that Cracker Barrel used woke-baiting as a marketing strategy, though Im not. I do not know what was said in Cracker Barrel meeting rooms about any plan to wokefy the new logo, nor if the executives had any idea that Donald Trump Jr. and President Trump would publicly weigh in on their decisions.
They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity, the president wrote after Trump Jr. spotlighted the companys logo switch on August 20th, shortly after the market closed.
The stock market hated the new supposedly DEI-driven logo. Before Trump Jr. made his comments, the stock closed at $59.02. But on August 21, the day after the Trumps criticized the logo, Cracker Barrels stock dropped over 7% to $54.80.
Anti-woke people did the same thing when Budweiser featured transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in its ad. The company lost an estimated $27 billion over this. Or consider Target reporting its first quarterly sales drop in 6 years after the 2023 anti-woke response to the retailers Pride clothing collection. The company has faced extended struggles with the CEO recently resigning and the stock down 37% in the last year.
Woke consumers dont speak with their money
What these instances have in common is proving that anti-woke people arent afraid to speak with their dollarswhether in the stock market or in the grocery store aisleto make their point heard.
But woke people dont act in the same way.
If woke people wanted to support wokeness, they could do the same thing and vote with their dollars. Woke people could have bought Budweiser beers after the Dylan Mulvaney ad. Woke people could have bought Cracker Barrel stock after the initial logo change. But they didnt. In fact, when Cracker Barrel announced it would change the logo back to the original, anti-woke people again made their voices heard in the stock market, and by the close of that day the stock was at $62.33, or 5.6% higher than before the logo change.
If woke consumers dont consistently support causes with their dollars, why would marketers feel any incentive to further those causes? At a certain point, woke-baiting may become the only rational reason to lean into what many in this country believe to be important progress. Because when brands appear to act in earnest, they often end up being left out to dry. To me, it raises the question: Why do these causes seem so important to some in the political sphere, yet they dont appear willing to, say, buy Budweiser stock to actively support the ideals they champion?
Take Cracker Barrel as an example. If its recent marketing move was intentional woke-baiting, it worked. By sparking outrage, the company generated headlines, conversations, and relevance at a time when its sales have been stagnant.
Now, its unlikely that Jensen Huang of NVIDIA will be dabbling in any woke-baiting gambits anytime soon. But the broader takeaway for executives might be this: For companies with flat growth, a risky, lightning-in-a-bottle strategyprovoking media, influencers, and even politicians through woke-baitingcould be worth the gamble to capture attention and, ultimately, increase company value.
George Kailas is CEO of Prospero.ai.
Creativity has never been in higher demand, yet agency margins are collapsing.
An industry built on the promise of differentiation risks drifting into a sea of sameness, squeezed by automation, technology, and efficiencies. The paradox is clear: As creative agencies are becoming commodities, they are falling victim to the very market forces clients pay them to escape. From my vantage point, the only way out is innovation.
Transient advantage: The new norm
I was recently introduced to the work of Columbia professor Rita McGrath, whose 2013 essay on transient advantage in Harvard Business Review helped crystallize what Id already been feeling in our industry. Her premise is simple but urgent: Advantages no longer last. What once endured for decades may last only months.
Success doesnt come from defending a moat, but from riding a wavespotting opportunities early, scaling them quickly, and having the discipline to abandon what no longer serves. McGrath frames innovation as a cycle: launch, ramp up, exploit, reconfigure, disengage. Repeat.
In practice, when growth slows the instinct is to cut. Trim overhead, automate tasks, streamline workflows. But you cant cost-cut your way to relevance. Cuts may buy time, but they dont build a future.
Brands that made innovation an operating model
Chewy began as a pet-supply e-commerce site. But margins in retail are razor-thin. So they moved into care, not just commercelaunching televets, pet insurance, and vet clinics. By owning the pet lifecycle, Chewy expanded beyond boxes of kibble into services.
A24 could have remained just an indie studio. Instead it built a direct-to-consumer engine. AAA24 turns films into membership, merch, and magazines. Content fuels commerce, commerce fuels community, and the flywheel spins.
MUBI carved out a space in streaming by fusing curation with vertical integration. Beyond its niche platform, it acquired The Match Factory, expanded festival acquisitions, and added theatrical distribution. MUBI is more than a streamerits a self-sustaining ecosystem of discovery and distribution.
Each of these companies refused to mistake early success for permanence. They reinvented themselves before the tide went out.
Scale hurts, independence helps
Large holding companies are engineered to squeeze every last drop from an old model, not retire it. Investors punish operating model shifts. Systems designed for predictability deter reinvention.
Independent companies, by contrast, can pivot faster, test freely, and shed legacy models when they no longer serve. Agility beats scale in a world of transient advantage.
A call to action
At MOCEAN, were making innovation our operating model. Weve launched an Office of Innovation with dedicated leadership, time, and resources to continually test, scale, and retire approaches as the market evolves.
Thats also why Im attending the Fast Company Innovation Festival, joining leaders across industries who are wrestling with the same challenge: How to escape commoditization when the old playbooks no longer apply.
From where I sit, the era of permanent advantage is gone. Reinvention must be systemic, not cosmetic. Independent agencies like MOCEAN have both the freedom and the responsibility to show what that looks like. Because in the end, the choice is simple: innovation or irrelevance.
Michael McIntyre is CEO of MOCEAN.
Back-to-school season is here, and with it, comes a decision that will define the next decade for K-12 education. Do district leaders adopt curriculum-connected AI that builds on progress toward high-quality, standards-aligned instructional materials? Or do they rely on a mix of standalone tools that risk undermining that progress?
This might seem like a technology choice. But in schools, curriculum isnt just a set of books or lesson plans. Its the roadmap that makes sure every child in every classroom is taught to the same high standards. States and districts have spent a decade working toward this reality by strengthening instructional coherence: When each lesson connects those high standards, students are building knowledge in a logical sequence rather than starting from scratch. Now, AI stands to either strengthen those hard-won gainsor unravel them.
Thats why this moment is so consequential. Choosing which path to follow is a strategic decision that will shape coherence, teacher capacity, and student outcomes for years to come. The right move could turn AI into a powerful, trusted classroom ally. The wrong one risks fragmenting learning by generating random, disconnected activities with no link to what students or teachers actually need.
As the CEO of an education technology company, I have a stake in these choices. And as a parent, I understand the impact it will have on families and students alike. What I see most is the potential for AI to serve as an assistant that can give teachers newfound insights on their students learning progressand then help create activities, materials, and communications aligned to those needs. In the process, it can give teachers hours back in their day that they can spend deepening their relationship with students. But only a few systems can connect all these pieces; plenty of others can devise a lesson, but do so in a vacuum.
The real choice for district leaders today isnt AI or no AI. Its whether to invest in a coherent AI strategy that puts student learning first or in patchwork apps that meet short-term needs.
The patchwork trap
From the outside, giving teachers a menu of standalone tools might look like flexibility. In reality, it comes with steep hidden costs paid in time, trust, and potentially in student achievement.
Weve seen this before. During the remote-learning era, when schools were flooded with apps, coherence sufferedand students paid the price. Teachers were overwhelmed with training on new systems. Student data got trapped in silos. IT teams (often composed of teachers working double duty) juggled duplicate contracts, inconsistent privacy standards, and rising security risks.
While todays learning environment may look different, similar problems still persist. Many AI tools are pumping out generic worksheets or lessons with no connection to a districts curriculum. Others continue to raise red flags on privacy, asking teachers to paste in sensitive student work or data without clear protections. In both cases, the results are the same: The tools lack context, undermine coherence, and create more problems than they solve.
The case for curriculum-connected AI
There is another way, one that treats AI not as a grab bag of tools, but as a strategic layer within a coherent instructional system.
Curriculum-connected AI flips the script on patchwork selection. It doesnt just generate content; it aligns instruction with what teachers are already teaching. It personalizes next steps by drawing on real-time student insights. And it keeps students’ data secure within education-specific boundaries. Its not just responsive, its relevant. And that approach is what builds teacher trust, not burnout.
Ask any new teacher what it feels like to sift through hundreds of student responses on a test, and theyll tell you its overwhelming at best. Spotting patterns in all that data in real time is nearly impossible for just one person. Curriculum-connected AI can change that. By analyzing students work, AI can instantly highlight which skills most students have mastered, where a few need extra support, and what lesson comes next in the curriculum. That gives teachers the time back and the insight they need to personalize instruction without losing the curriculums throughline.
The future belongs to districts that think like systems leaders. Districts that embrace an integrated approach are making a bet not just on technology, but on quality, coherence, and scale. Theyre recognizing that the future of AI in education isnt about how many tools you have; its about how well they work together to serve the teacher-student relationship. Curriculum-connected AI scales what works: quality instruction, real-time insight, and a secure, sustainable AI strategy.
This fall, district leaders will face countless decisions. This is a pivotal one. The path they choose will determine whether theyre building for short-term convenience or long-term impact.
Jack Lynch is CEO of HMH.
In 2017, Apples then-newest iPhone foreshadowed the most significant design shift in the devices history. With the iPhone Xs debut, Apples smartphone ditched its iconic home button so it could transition to an all-screen form factora design that was ultimately destined for every iPhone model. That transition was finally completed in 2025 when Apple scuttled the last iPhone with a home button, the iPhone SE, and replaced it with the all-screen iPhone 16e, finally bringing all-screen uniformity across the entire iPhone lineup that the iPhone X ushered in eight years earlier.
When I look at Apples newly unveiled iPhone Air, I cant help but think it signals the beginning of the end for the single-screen iPhone. The Airs thinness is impressive, but the real story is what it foreshadows: a future where every iPhone comes with at least two screens.
The iPhone Air feels like half a phone
The iPhone Air Apple introduced today makes me feel like Im looking at just half of an iPhone. Thats a compliment. At just 5.6 millimeters thick at its thinnest point, the iPhone Air is the slimmest iPhone Apple has ever made. Its an engineering marvelno doubt about that. That Apple could fit storage, RAM, circuit boards, and such a large battery inside such a small form factor is indeed awe-dropping, as Apples event today was dubbed.
Still, it feels incomplete. Like it should have something else attached to it. Say, oh, I dont know, another iPhone Air, bolted onto its side by a hinge, so when you open it up, you get an iPhone with a massive display.
Of course, thats exactly what I think Apple had in mind when designing the Air. Not a thin phone for its own sake, but a trial run of a device that had less of the consumer in mind and more of Apples future iPhonesthe foldable ones with two screens.
At 5.6 millimeters thin, Apples engineers have proved they can make a ridiculously thin iPhonewhich means they could fuse two of the ridiculously thin iPhones together to create a compelling foldable iPhone that, even when folded shut, is still not much thicker than the iPhone 17 Pro of today.
It’s why I can’t help but feel the Air is clearly an intermediary step between the mono-screen iPhone weve known for nearly 20 years and the foldable iPhones that will define the next 20 yearsa future where each and every iPhone family member eventually has two screens: one on the front and a larger one inside.
But that multiscreen device that Apple is ultimately transitioning the iPhone to become wont be ready until next year. And it feels like Apple thought that, in the meantime, if it could release half of its future devices to the public now to juice sales and make the single-screen iPhone look less 2010s in 2025, then thats what it should do.
And now it has. The iPhone Air is a great stopgap until we get to the real next-generation iPhone next yearthe first one with two screens, which I feel, like the iPhone Xs all-screen design back in 2017, will ultimately become the norm for every iPhone over the next decade.
More consumers are ditching mono-screen phones for dual-screen foldables
And Apples transition from the nearly two-decade-old single-screen bar or slab phone design to a dual-screen foldable cant come soon enough.
Samsung has been making foldables since 2019. I used to make fun of them until I tried a Galaxy Z Fold5 a few years ago and had a sort of nostalgic epiphany. When I held the companys glorious dual-screen foldable in my hand, I had flashbacks to the thoughts I had the first time I held an original iPhone back in 2007: This is the phone of the future.
Samsungs new Galaxy Z Fold7 (and Galaxy Z Flip7) are even better. Googles new Pixel 10 Pro Fold also makes me think the future of smartphones is dual-screen foldables. And the numbers are showing that, increasingly, consumers do, too.
A report from Grand View Research last year found that interest in foldables has skyrocketed since the first ones emerged from Asia in 2018. By 2023, when foldables began catching on worldwide, they had an annual market cap of around $27.79 billion. In 2024, that number jumped to $34.7 billion.
By 2030just five years from nowthe market cap of foldable phones is expected to nearly triple, to over $74 billion per year.
As for why, foldable phones with dual screens are simply more versatile. These smartphones can switch between a compact form and a tablet-sized display, providing users with more screen space for multitasking, gaming, and media consumption without compromising portability, Grand View Research noted in its report.
That portability is compromised even less when the unfolded phone is made super thinsomething Apple has now shown it can achieve with the launch of the iPhone Air.
Which is why the iPhone Air feels less like a finished product and more like a preview of a radical design shift still to come. In that future, all iPhones could be dual-screen foldables, and the single-screen model may one day join the home-button iPhone as a relic of the past. The Air Apple announced today is a step toward that future, not the destination itself.
Fast Companys creative director, Mike Schnaidt, breaks down the Manuka Slab typeface and explains why it was chosen for the summer issue of the print magazine. If you’re looking for a bold serif with personality, Manuka Slab might be just the font you need.
Nepals prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli, resigned on Tuesday after youth-led protests sparked by a government ban on social media in the Himalayan country left nearly two dozen people dead and hundreds injured, CNN reported. That ban has since been lifted, per Reuters.
Protesters reportedly set government buildings, police stations, and the houses of politicians on fire Tuesday, a day after police fired tear gas at and used rubber bullets on protesters storming parliament in the capital, Kathmandu, per Reuters.
The protests, led by Nepal’s Generation Z, aged 13 to 28, come after the government blocked Facebook, X, and YouTube, saying the social media platforms failed to register and comply with necessary oversight.
What started as an outcry against a social media ban has grown violent and expanded into widespread criticism of the nation’s political elite and poor economic prospects for its citizensespecially young people, who are frustrated by their lack of opportunity, according to the Associated Press.
Unemployment among Nepal’s youth is staggeringly high at 19%, according to the International Labor Organisation (ILO), with thousands estimated to be leaving daily to seek work elsewhere.
Last Thursday, Nepals minister for communication and information, Prithvi Subba Gurung, said about two dozen social media platforms were repeatedly given notices to officially register their companies. TikTok, Viber, and three others were allowed to continue operating because they had registered. Critics argue it was an attempt at censorship.
On X, where Nepal is trending, one user wrote: “Nepal protest is primarily against corruption and misgovernance. Social media ban was just the tipping point.” Others posted video of Nepal’s parliament burning and Gen Z protesters in the streets.
The clashes are the most deadly Nepal has seen in decades, and come after a long period of turbulence marked by a dozen different governments once it became a republic, following the end of the monarchy in 2008 and a decade-long civil war.
Nepals prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli, resigned on Tuesday after youth-led protests sparked by a government ban on social media in the Himalayan country left nearly two dozen people dead and hundreds injured, CNN reported. That ban has since been lifted, per Reuters.
Protesters reportedly set government buildings, police stations, and the houses of politicians on fire Tuesday, a day after police fired tear gas at and used rubber bullets on protesters storming parliament in the country’s capital, Kathmandu, per Reuters.
The protests, led by Nepal’s Generation Z, ages 13 to 28, come after the government blocked Facebook, X, and YouTube, saying the social media platforms failed to register and comply with necessary oversight.
What started as an outcry against a social media ban has grown violent and expanded into widespread criticism of the nation’s political elite and poor economic prospects for its citizensespecially young people, who are frustrated by their lack of opportunity, according to The Associated Press.
Unemployment among Nepal’s youth is staggeringly high at 19%, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), with thousands estimated to be leaving the country daily to seek work elsewhere.
Last Thursday, Nepals minister for communication and information, Prithvi Subba Gurung, said about two dozen social media platforms were repeatedly given notices to officially register their companies. TikTok, Viber, and three others were allowed to continue operating because they had registered. Critics argue it was an attempt at censorship.
On X, where “Nepal” is trending, one user wrote: “Nepal protest is primarily against corruption and misgovernance. Social media ban was just the tipping point.” Others posted videos of Nepal’s parliament burning and Gen Z protesters in the streets.
The clashes are the deadliest Nepal has seen in decades, and come after a long period of turbulence marked by a dozen different governments since it became a republic, following the end of the monarchy in 2008 and a decade-long civil war.
Amid the uncertainty around tariffs earlier this year, some companies had delayed their plans to go public. But despite the typically sleepy end-of-summer season, the initial public offering (IPO) market has been heating up again heading into the fall. Investors appear to want in after recent successful listings from companies like Figma, Bullish, Circle Internet Group, and others.
In fact, this week is expected to be one of the busiest weeks for IPOs in years, with a number of well-known companies expected to list their shares on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq.
Here are five of the IPOs were watching this week. (Note that the expected dates are subject to change.)
Klarna Group (KLAR)
Founded in 2005, Klarna Group is the Swedish fintech startup known for its buy now, pay later services.
The startup exploded in popularity during the early days of the pandemic when online shopping was at its peak, reportedly reaching a peak valuation of $45.6 billion in 2021. However, that figure declined after stay-at-home restrictions were lifted.
After announcing its target IPO share price last week, the company is expected to list on Wednesday, September 10, with a share price of $35 to $37.
Legence Corp (LGN)
Legence Corp, a San Francisco-based engineering and maintenance provider backed by Blackstone, is expected to list on Friday, September 12, with a share price of $35 to $37.
Via Transportation (VIA)
Via Transportation is a tech startup working to change public transit across cities. The company filed for an IPO earlier this month and is expected to list on Friday, September 12, with a share price of $40 to $44. The offering is being led by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Allen & Company, and Wells Fargo Security.
Black Rock Coffee (BRCB)
After it was reported back in July that the Arizona-based coffee chain filed confidentially for an IPO, Black Rock Coffeea fast-growing rival to chains such as Starbucks and Dutch Brosannounced its target pricing last week. It is expected to list on Friday, September 12, with a share price between $16 and $18.
Gemini Space Station (GEMI)
Gemini Space Station, Inc. is a cryptocurrency exchange company founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. After recently securing a $50 million from Nasdaq, it is expected to list on Friday, September 12, with a share price of between $17 and $19.
Some say there are no new ideas. When it comes to the iPhone Air, maybe they are right.
Announced today, the iPhone Air will debut on September 19 for $999. Its selling point? The iPhone Air is 5.6mm thick. Except for the camerathat part still sticks out.
Truly amazing and unlike anything you experienced before, according to CEO Tim Cook, the iPhone Air is Apples attempt to reignite excitement in the iPhone business, which hit a 6-year low in new activations last year as people decide to stick with their perfectly adequate phones for longer.
On one hand, a thinner iPhone seems to be a page right out of the playbook of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive. This is classic Apple! you might think. Thinness was a gimmick during Apples golden age, but it was a beloved one. Apple might have advertised thinness as a feature, but it didnt define the design unto itself. Thinness was but one advancement that enabled it to rethink entire product categories.
[Image: Apple]
Apple was always about more than thin
Apple’s obsession with thinness started in 2001 with the iPod. The first iPod was remarkable compared to anything we’d seen. It squeezed a thousands songs into something the size of a deck of cards. But it was still a hefty thinga modified laptop hard drive that was still a third of a pound in your hand.
[Photo: Apple/Getty Images]
Over several generations, the iPod thinned out significantly, to the point where its entire effect felt less like a cleverly packaged computer component and more like a product with its own uncompromising design language. (Biased, but the third generation iPod will always be a personal favorite for its almost jewelry feel and glowing orange buttons.)
[Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
Still, Apple kept going. It introduced the much smaller iPod mini in 2004 (with a unique, 1-inch microdrive hard drive). It was more diminutive, but also more expressive in candy colors. It edged toward some platonic ideal of what music in your pocket should be.
[Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
That thought experiment culminated with the first generation iPod Shuffle. The iPod, at the end of the day, could be nothing more than the clickwheel control living on a clip that needed no pocket at all. But that didnt stop the release, in 2005, of a ridiculously enticing object: the thin and tall iPod nano (so much smaller thanks to flash storage). This cadence of releases was parodied by SNL, but at the same time, we couldnt get enough. Smaller, lighter, cheaper iPods democratized the platform and drove its profits to new heights. And critically speaking, you only needed to scope out the latest iPodeach a tantalizing new technological wonderto realize its justification to exist.
The introduction of the Macbook Airthe iPhone Airs namesakein 2008 didnt create as long and branching of a design lineage for Apples laptop line, but it was radical all the same. Its core innovation was a smaller motherboard developed in conjunction with Intel. The new design wasnt just about a third of an inch thinner than earlier Macbooks overall: It featured an elegantly tapered edge that gave it motion and harkened to its own implausibility.
[Photo: Tony Avelar/AFP/Getty Images]
Oh, and it was also a full 2lbs lighter.
Perceptually, the weight was what made it feel like something worthy of that Air namesake; as if we fast forwarded ten years into the future overnight. It was the difference between a 5 lb laptop and a 3 lb laptopthe difference between grabbing it with one hand or two.
Like the iPhone Air, the Macbook Air’sbattery life and processing power didnt keep up with Apples bigger models. But the gulf between its standard laptop and the Air was wide. It was so wide that it wiped out the budget mini laptop market at the time (a wave of tiny-screened laptops introduced by the Asus Eee), and prompted the entire PC industry to launch a wave of ultraportable thin laptops based upon much of the same core architecture.
Yes, incremental thinness drives the entire portable electronics industry. But in Apple’s hands, it’s often meant more. It’s been a tool for immediate and long term categorical disruption.
[Image: Apple]
The iPhone Air is engineering, not design
Apple, at its best, used thinness to redefine what a product was and where it could go next. But the iPhone Air isnt defining a new category of thin phones. (Incidentally, Samsungs S25 phone already offered an ultra-thin approach to disappointing sales.) Apples most loyal fanbase is concluding that, if nothing else, the Air is a peek at the future of thinner phones, or even a preview for a folding iPhone to come.
I dont mind that Apple introduced a thinner iPhone. They do so every year. This one just happens to be thinner than usual. But I do mind that it failed to release a smaller iPhone before prioritizing other ideasand that the iPhone Air does nothing to push forward the greater experience of using an iPhone.
Why didnt Apple resurrect the beloved iPhone Minia phone that fits into pockets and has a smaller screen that can be easier on a thumb? I also cant help but wonder: If Apple is re-entering its gadget era, why arent we seeing explorations into the Mini/Nano/Shuffle versions of what the iPhone can be?
Maybe those explorations would be silly and misguided. But at least theyd be different. And at least theyd be interesting.
To me, the most notable hardware announcement of the day is that the Airpod Pro is getting a heart rate monitor, negating a major advantage of an Apple Watch, and pointing to Apples greater ambitions in what an AI-infused headphone will be in just a few more years. The second is that the iPhone’s camera has a new sensor so that you can take a landscape photo in portrait mode, so media is just media, no matter how youre holding the iPhone.
With the iPhone Air, Apple did not present a concept car of the future, which challenges the status quo or ushers in a new design language for the company. It didnt imagine how AI and industrial design could merge into a radical, or even notable, new idea. Instead, it’s selling three iPhone models that are all ostensibly the same thing in different thicknesses.
Even if Apple purely wanted to focus on aestheticsif it saw this as a moment to truly merge its industrial design with the UX of Liquid Glassthat could be interesting! Maybe functionally unimportant, but at least its a product with a point of view.
But the iPhone Air is like so much of what we see coming out of Apple these days: not made from the heart of innovation, but responding to the demands of shareholders curious when theyll offer the same lineup of hardware we see from Samsung, Google, and Meta.
With the iPhone Air, Apple feels like its cosplaying Apple.
