Some fascinating insights about the Apple design process as quoted in various articles this week:
“We have a very clear focus that all the development teams at Apple share, a focus around trying to make really great products.
“That can sound ridiculously simplistic, almost naive, but it’s very unique for the product to be what consumes you completely. And when I say the product I mean the product in its total sense, the hardware and the software, the complete experience that people will have. We push each other, we’re very self-critical and we’ll take the time to get the product right.”
It’s a process where they discover the product through constantly creating new iterations. A lot of companies will do six or seven prototypes of a product, because each one takes time and money. Apple will do a hundred — that’s how many they did of the Macbook. Steve Jobs doesn’t wake up one morning and there’s a vision of an iPhone floating in front of his face. He and his team discovered it through this exhaustive process of building prototype after prototype.