A Letter To:- Steve Jobs
Hey Steve,
It’s Tom, sorry iTom (I keep forgetting about the new employee naming convention), from the Apple design team here. With the media storm around the iPad it’s clear that now is the time to push forward with the plans for the rest of the product line. Massively increasing the size of the iPod Touch and selling it at a marked up price is a ‘touch’ of genius.
We’ve had some thoughts about future projects you might consider. Generally they are along the same vein as the iPad, and we can guarantee success with your now proven formula:
So for example, when applied to the new iPad you can see how this works:
In a time when electronics developers are fighting to create small and innovative new products, Apple are daring to be different; and we salute you for your vision. With the right marketing we can become the World leaders in rehashed-old-tech-made-larger. So without further ado, I give you the new range of Apple products code-named “The Big Apple”.
1. Mac Mini
Everyone loves the Mac Mini, but sales have been dwindling and it’s time for a revamp. I therefore give you the Mac Maxi, retailing at £1530.
Fig 1. Concept for Mac Maxi RRP: £1530
Applying your formula for the iPad has brought us this 66cm x 66cm x 8cm desk top beast. You’ll notice we’ve taken away over half of the USB ports from the old model; this is to fit in with the loss of features prerequisite for new ideas. If you think we need to lose more features, we could also get rid of that (entirely unnecessary) disk drive. I’m afraid the conventional port sizes (USB, Ethernet etc) have had to remain the same, but the box itself is four times as big. You can bet sales figures will be four times as big as well!
2. iPod Shuffle
This was a difficult one. The Shuffle had such little functionality to begin with it was difficult to see how we could ultimately make this a successful product, but then genius struck once again. With the new iPad Kafuffle, not only can you not select the songs you want to listen to, now you can’t listen to them either because we’ve taken away the headphones port.
Fig. 2. Concept for iPad Kafuffle with advertising slogan “BIG is the new big”. RRP: £180
And remember, engraving will cost four times as much as we increase the size of that too!
3. The MacBook Pro
This is the design we are most proud of. We’ve taken the puny 17” screen of the MacBook Pro and quadrupled it to give us the new 68” MacBook Pro XL. By reducing the processing speed and slashing the memory capacity, we’ve also been able to keep the weight down to equal that of the previous model whilst reducing the functionality, as per your formula.
Fig. 3. MacBook Pro and prototype for MacBook Pro XL. RRP: £5667
We think there is a huge, untapped, unthinking target market out there for these products, we’re so confident that you’ll like them that prototypes are already in production and should be ready by the time the iPad is launched.
Kind regards,
iTom
Lead Design Consultant
Apple Inc. UK
Tom has been an avid gamer since his parents invested in a Commodore 64 back in the early '90s. Classics such as Goblin 3, Soccer Kid and Lemmings created an addiction from which he will never recover. Tom has been given the opportunity to write for GAME and EA, sometimes even treading foreign shores to bring you gaming words... Oh, and he's an Aquarius.
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That’s Hilarious
Wow amazing scoop we’ve got there. I can’t believe they managed to leak this! They’re usually so tight with their secrets!
I’m sure Steve will be happy with his new line.
Quality…..an incredibly accurate depiction of apple. The other one is.. take somebody else’s idea and just cover it in a white shell.
LOL
I can’t believe I’ve just got around to reading this. Shame on me!
Brilliant article and more than true (Where can I preorder an iPod Kafuffle, though. I fear I’ve fallen into that trap already).