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Transparent House creates "Anatomy of Apple Design" iPad tribute

San Francisco 3D design and visualization studio Transparent House has created a visualization entitled "Anatomy of Apple Design" as a tribute 34 years of Apple design, starting from the Apple I and leading up to the new iPad.

The studio used Autodesk 3ds Max and Chaos Group V-Ray to develop two minute video, which took around ten days to finish as a completely artificial but photorealistic rendering.

The video jumps from the 1976 Apple I to the original 1984 Macintosh, skipping the company's breadwinning Apple II series and its first significant flop, the Apple III.

It presents the 1989 Macintosh Portable, 1991 PowerBook, and 1993 Newton Message Pad, skipping generations of desktop Macs (including the iconic iMacs and the elegant but slow selling Cube) to highlight the clamshell 1999 iBook and white 2006 MacBook, but not the Titanium PowerBook nor other pro notebooks.

The visualization highlights the 2007 iPhone and the new iPad, but skips the iPod line and other current products such as Apple TV.

"We wanted to show the products in Apple history that in our opinion were best related to the nature of the iPad," the group explains on its Vimeo page. "There were also time limitations - we just couldn't get every product in." Direct link to YouTube.



38 Comments

floccus 19 Years · 138 comments

That's some pretty nice animation, and surely shows how popular the Mac/iPhone/iPad platforms are that a company would spend that much time to essentially advertise someone else's products. Not that they aren't making the case that they'd be a good design studio for someone who's looking for one.

woohoo! 14 Years · 271 comments

Just a short trip down memory lane, but very entertaining, excellent detail.

Notice no ugly beige machines...would have been nice to see my old Mac II friend in fresh detail instead of covered in dust like it is now.

psych_guy 15 Years · 486 comments

Oh, to see my beloved Apple machine from 1984 again. I can't tell you how well that computer got me through college.

sippincider 20 Years · 410 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider

"We wanted to show the products in Apple history that in our opinion were best related to the nature of the iPad,"

Strange choice to omit the iPod, the device that got Apple into the compact consumer electronics market.

The original Macintosh will always be an industry design landmark. But the build-your-own Apple I... ???

Anyway it's still a great effort. How many spontaneous MS tributes have ever appeared?

anantksundaram 18 Years · 20391 comments

Eeww. Some of the older designs (e.g., toilet seat Macbook) look sadly dated. Don't hold up well at all.

I wonder what we'll think of the iPhone/iPod/iPad design five years from now.........

PS: Also, a word to video camera people: You don't need to zoom and pan constantly. Very irritating on the eyes.