David Bolton Strikes Again

With a longstanding interest in the architecture and design worlds (as well as an obvious interest in software versions of each), a fashion director fiance, and many creatively rich friends, it hasn’t surprised me to find that I’ve got some level visual sensitivity. But I’d never really pushed myself to appreciate design in the technology world. I’ve owned many boring beige boxes, and the closest I got to design was the beautiful black ThinkPad I had a couple of years ago — though even that was only aesthetically pleasing the same way an army tank is.

Since I switched to a MacBook Pro in the middle of last year, I’ve been increasingly exposed to sensible design. While I’ve owned an iPod for a couple of years, it wasn’t really till I also had the laptop in my clutches that the quality of Apple’s design really became evident to me, and the dearth of good design in the PC world, from the hardware to the software, and in Microsoft’s software in particular, was made clear. Jeff Atwood writes an excellent piece on this: There Are No Design Leaders in the PC World. Then old friend Andre Pang came up with this: Design and Taste in Open-Source Software.

After reading these, I realised that the quality of the experience has become very important to me. I’d always tried to distance myself from enjoying the aesthetics of technology — as a programmer I felt that I should be able to separate the function from the design — but then obviously, if I enjoy programming to a clean API, why shouldn’t I enjoy programming on a beautiful laptop? Or why shouldn’t I enjoy a user interface? My previous stance of “function over form” seems more than a little limiting in my new world view. Now I want function AND form.

(Could be time to update the look of this blog then!)