Apple’s announcements Tuesday served to verify disturbing rumors from Apple that chief designer Jonathan Ive is completely out of ideas.
According to sources, the rectangular shape of the iPod Hi-Fi fits a pattern Ive has fallen into of resorting to products shaped like simple rectangles.
“The iPod? Rectangle. The G5 iMac? Rectangle. The Cinema Display? Rectangle.
Ive apologists have pointed to the Mac mini.
“When you look at the Mac mini from above, it’s a square,” said Kurt Rickenbacker, president of the Jonathan Ive Fan Club. “A square is not a rectangle.”
Sadly, the rules of geometry in this universe do not agree with Rickenbacker.
“A square is a kind of rectangle,” said Steve Howes, Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
After a long silence Howe said “Um… sorry?”
Sources within Apple product development say Ive has struggled lately to come up with solid designs that aren’t rectangles.
“Working on the iPod Hi-Fi was a trying time for Jon,” one source confided. “He spent hours holed up in his office, hunched over the drafting table, tossing one crumpled up piece of paper after another over his shoulder.
“Finally he came out and said ‘Ah, screw it. Let’s just make it a rectangle like everything else.”
Ive’s review, written by CEO Steve Jobs and forwarded to Crazy Apple Rumors Site by disgruntled Apple human resources personnel, reads in part:
Jon needs to work on more shapes. For the past two years it’s been rectangle, rectangle, rectangle. We’d love to see Jon come up with a product shaped like, say, a rhombus or other parallelogram and then build his way back into non-linear shapes.
Ive has reportedly taken to staring at curved objects for long periods of time, hoping for inspiration.