If Apple copied the "sunbeam" or "spinning wheel" icon from B&O, who did B&O copy it from? The mayans?

That's really a symbol that has been around for almost forever in some form.

Steffen wrote:

soundproof wrote:

But I'd say that Apple's present generation of devices has borrowed extensively from the B&O expression that Jacob Jensen created and David Lewis therefore hated.

I'm not so sure that Lewis hated the Jacob Jensen design. 😕 One of the first audio products that Lewis designed -the Beocenter 2200 was very much inspired by Jensen. And f.ex. the Beosound 9000 looks like it could have been designed by Jensen. 

 

I am.  😕

1. Inventor of the GUI

2. Inventor of the Click wheel

3. Inventor of the most perfect and high-quality music codec

4. .....

5. .....

Couple more and I'm sure you can get him canonized into the Roman Catholic (or Zen Buddist equivalent) Church.

10

Mr10Percent wrote:

3. Inventor of the most perfect and high-quality music codec

By what measure (or am I being stupid while you're being sarcastic)???

I'm not on board with what 10% writes.

Apple does have numerous inventions under its belt, but what they are extremely good at is to improve upon existing interfaces and placing them within relevant contexts that add value to the customer experience. Jobs was obsessive about the customer experience, just as Jensen was.

Look at Jacob Jensen's products - most redefined the category they were in, not just through form, but through function that adapted to the user, and that was extremely sophisticated in relation to competitors' products in its category. These threads that home in on a little visual in an Apple product that may have had a twin on a B&O product are indicative of B&O's problem today - where it's the form/exterior design that is given precedence, over the unique customer experience delivered by the product.

Jensen made the products under a very Apple-like marching order from management: make it the best in its category, and simple to use.

Beolab 5000 amplifier - still an amazing product, simply out of this world when it was launched - so much so that Kubrick put it in Clockwork Orange, as something belonging in the future. And with features that are missing from most of today's amplifiers, though some are returning.

Beogram 4000 - while B&O had simplified the setting up of a turntable with the ingenious ST-tonearms, there were still a number of manual, customer experience unfriendly steps to perform. Together with Pramnik and his team, Jensen and B&O engineers were able to surmount those, in another "out of this world" touch-panel equivalent. Tangential tracking, touch-panel interface, brilliant suspension system, astounding speed control.

I'm not going to go through all the products - but B&O had Apple's spirit back then, and it translated into astonishing product/customer experiences. It was a given that B&O would apply remote controls, provide superior sound/image, interface all the peripherals through an analog hub.

What Apple did, and B&O should have done, is to apply the same philosophy in the digital domain. But B&O was comfortable with having a significant portion of its customers locked in behind the Masterlink fence, and uncomfortable with innovating after Betamax - even making it company "philosophy" to stop trying to lead the way ...

I hope Mantoni can kick-start B&O into embracing the future again. All it has to do is to emulate itself during the Jacob Jensen years and remember the customer friendly UI that B&O used to deliver. B&O now strangely insists on the furniture quotient of its product delivery (the cabinet makers regained power when Jensen left). The official site still states colors as a technical specification, and gives the size of the product before anything else.

And the challenge of "interfacing" with B&O products, particularly together with other peripherals? It's been a ten year battle to get B&O products to do what customers want them to do, and now that they are it's translating into sales.

Of course Jobs copied B&O - he seems to have copied everything the company did while it was successful: B&O used to be at the intersection between technology and the humanities; it led the categories it was in through intelligent application of integrated technologies and design; it created its own stores to have control of the initiate's product experience and create brand cachet.

I don't know whether there is a copy on this site of the 7 CICs that B&O developed in 1971. They were the "Corporate Identity Components".

Authenticity
Autovisuality
Credibility
Domesticity
Essentiality
Inventiveness
Selectivity 

It's Apple's philosophy, down to the fingerprints at the end of the poster.

For those wanting a nice laugh. Point number 4 in the CICs is Domesticity. That paragraph ends with:

"Our aim is also to harness technology in such a way that it becomes completely subservient, tame and familiar to man in his home environment."

37 years later (!) you launch Beo5. And let's commiserate with the poor souls who had to enter the program-information from 400 CDs into their BeoSound 3200s, character by character, using a Beo4.

If B&O had stuck to their own Corporate Identity Components ...

soundproof wrote:

I'm not on board with what 10% writes.

Apple does have numerous inventions under its belt, but what they are extremely good at is to improve upon existing interfaces and placing them within relevant contexts that add value to the customer experience. Jobs was obsessive about the customer experience, just as Jensen was.

Look at Jacob Jensen's products - most redefined the category they were in, not just through form, but through function that adapted to the user, and that was extremely sophisticated in relation to competitors' products in its category. These threads that home in on a little visual in an Apple product that may have had a twin on a B&O product are indicative of B&O's problem today - where it's the form/exterior design that is given precedence, over the unique customer experience delivered by the product.

Jensen made the products under a very Apple-like marching order from management: make it the best in its category, and simple to use.

Beolab 5000 amplifier - still an amazing product, simply out of this world when it was launched - so much so that Kubrick put it in Clockwork Orange, as something belonging in the future. And with features that are missing from most of today's amplifiers, though some are returning.

Beogram 4000 - while B&O had simplified the setting up of a turntable with the ingenious ST-tonearms, there were still a number of manual, customer experience unfriendly steps to perform. Together with Pramnik and his team, Jensen and B&O engineers were able to surmount those, in another "out of this world" touch-panel equivalent. Tangential tracking, touch-panel interface, brilliant suspension system, astounding speed control.

I'm not going to go through all the products - but B&O had Apple's spirit back then, and it translated into astonishing product/customer experiences. It was a given that B&O would apply remote controls, provide superior sound/image, interface all the peripherals through an analog hub.

What Apple did, and B&O should have done, is to apply the same philosophy in the digital domain. But B&O was comfortable with having a significant portion of its customers locked in behind the Masterlink fence, and uncomfortable with innovating after Betamax - even making it company "philosophy" to stop trying to lead the way ...

I hope Mantoni can kick-start B&O into embracing the future again. All it has to do is to emulate itself during the Jacob Jensen years and remember the customer friendly UI that B&O used to deliver. B&O now strangely insists on the furniture quotient of its product delivery (the cabinet makers regained power when Jensen left). The official site still states colors as a technical specification, and gives the size of the product before anything else.

And the challenge of "interfacing" with B&O products, particularly together with other peripherals? It's been a ten year battle to get B&O products to do what customers want them to do, and now that they are it's translating into sales.

 

 

Of course Jobs copied B&O - he seems to have copied everything the company did while it was successful: B&O used to be at the intersection between technology and the humanities; it led the categories it was in through intelligent application of integrated technologies and design; it created its own stores to have control of the initiate's product experience and create brand cachet.

I don't know whether there is a copy on this site of the 7 CICs that B&O developed in 1971. They were the "Corporate Identity Components".

Authenticity
Autovisuality
Credibility
Domesticity
Essentiality
Inventiveness
Selectivity 

It's Apple's philosophy, down to the fingerprints at the end of the poster.

 

GREAT Post !!

I understand this is a B&O enthusiast forum but there is such a thing as constructive criticism and B&O needs some. This type of post and I hope it is read by B&O people/management or stakeholder is what will help push the company forward.

I like B&O but I am far from a fanboy. I find it utterly bizarre that in these days and ages it is sooo difficult to interface B&O with other products. I also find the emphasis on style not on performance or function, disturbing as pointed so judiciously in the quoted post, colors and dimensions in specs.... I will quickly add that the last speakers from B&O are the real deal, witht he Beolab 5 seducing moore than an unsuspecting audiophile, yet try to interface it with anything non-Beo or anyhting purely digital .. Ohhhh!  the agony . B&O is missing the boat on the digital revolution. I do find the Beosound Encore a beautiful product but what does it do that a PC running the countless of free software PLus an iPad/any Tablet really don't do? Really? I can go for example on the rebadged Panasonic Plasma screen B&O sells for a brutal premium and that scarcely add any value to the original proposition, IOW what should I but the 103" Beovision rather than the Panasonic? could it be the moving stand ? SOmthing that amkes NO sense in my opinion once you go past 50 inch? I understand the emphasis on style but performance and function must be there and this is what Apple does regularly... 

B&O can lead as proven brilliantly with the IcePower design .. They have chosen to follow in their consumer business .. this could come to be their downfall.. They are becoming more and more irrelevant with this direction ...

Mr10Percent wrote:

1. Inventor of the GUI

2. Inventor of the Click wheel

3. Inventor of the most perfect and high-quality music codec

4. .....

5. .....

Couple more and I'm sure you can get him canonized into the Roman Catholic (or Zen Buddist equivalent) Church.

 

10

 

When you've revolutionsed the computer industry ( Apple 2 , Mac etc ) , the mobile phone industry ( iPhone / iOS ), the film industry ( Pixar / Disney ) , the music industry ( ipod / iTunes ), the publishing industry ( Desktop Publishing , iBooks ) , the retail industry ( Apple stores ) and the entire internet ( Tim Berners lee invented the whole thing on a NeXT computer - which morphed into os-x ) , get back to me 

👍

On the subject of good product invention, versus patent lawsuits filed by Apple, here is an example of how aggressive Apple can actually be:

Flappo wrote:

Mr10Percent wrote:

1. Inventor of the GUI

2. Inventor of the Click wheel

3. Inventor of the most perfect and high-quality music codec

4. .....

5. .....

Couple more and I'm sure you can get him canonized into the Roman Catholic (or Zen Buddist equivalent) Church.

 

10

 

When you've revolutionsed the computer industry ( Apple 2 , Mac etc ) , the mobile phone industry ( iPhone / iOS ), the film industry ( Pixar / Disney ) , the music industry ( ipod / iTunes ), the publishing industry ( Desktop Publishing , iBooks ) , the retail industry ( Apple stores ) and the entire internet ( Tim Berners lee invented the whole thing on a NeXT computer - which morphed into os-x ) , get back to me 

👍

I feel enriched - not!

I think some people should get out more and get a life.