The computer itself is different because it's just the space where the application lives. Complaining about the duality is like complaining that Dieter Rams' radio doesn't burst into fire whenever someone tries to play The Beatles on it.
The radio, the computer, the modern art museum are very different from their contents. They may be achievements of design by themselves, but are ultimately meant to disappear and give way to the content -- music, software, art. The content may well be kitschy (why not, I think in 2012 we're way past the 'kitsch is bad' presumption), but it doesn't mean the space should be -- in fact, the space might be the one place where kitsch is an objectively poor idea.
Think brutalist architecture covered with overgrowth. In my opinion, minimal shines in present of the fancy, and vice-versa. And personally, I like the permanent to be minimal, and the fancy to be transient.
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The computer itself is different because it's just the space where the application lives. Complaining about the duality is like complaining that Dieter Rams' radio doesn't burst into fire whenever someone tries to play The Beatles on it.
The radio, the computer, the modern art museum are very different from their contents. They may be achievements of design by themselves, but are ultimately meant to disappear and give way to the content -- music, software, art. The content may well be kitschy (why not, I think in 2012 we're way past the 'kitsch is bad' presumption), but it doesn't mean the space should be -- in fact, the space might be the one place where kitsch is an objectively poor idea.
Think brutalist architecture covered with overgrowth. In my opinion, minimal shines in present of the fancy, and vice-versa. And personally, I like the permanent to be minimal, and the fancy to be transient.
> Complaining about the duality is like complaining that Dieter Rams' radio doesn't burst into fire whenever someone tries to play The Beatles on it.
Not strictly - Rams didn't DJ at the radio station, but Apple is in charge of both the hardware and the software.