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Apple's $300 coffee-table book filled with iPhones, Macs

Technically Incorrect: How far does your Apple love go? Here's the perfect Christmas gift. It's beautifully designed.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


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Beautifully pricey.

Apple

Apple is 40.

It's time for museums around the world to offer retrospectives. It's time for Apple's design principles to be taught in the universities of the world.

Here, then, is another step in the deification of the Apple brand. The company on Tuesday released a coffee-table book.

It's called "Designed By Apple In California." It's full of sumptuous pictures of its meticulously crafted products of the last 20 years.

Everything's shot with only perfection in mind. Each product flaunts its best angle. And of course, every page has a glorious white background. Even the cover is a pure white.

Some might find the price a little less pure. It's $300. You could see that as a bargain. It's roughly 67 cents per picture.

If you want to drive a better (but smaller) bargain, there's a mini version of the book for a mere $199.

You might still want to whisper to yourself in Jony Ive tones about the care that's gone into this book's design.

Apple's blurb offers that the book is "printed on specially milled, custom-dyed paper with gilded matte silver edges, using eight color separations and low-ghost ink."

How often are you going to have gilded matte silver edges in your life? How often are you going to buy a book that Apple says was 8 years in the making?

Ive himself insists in the foreword to the book that it's "an objective representation of our work that, ironically, describes who we are."

Ironically, some might see this tome as a swansong. No, not because Apple's design isn't what it used to be.

President-elect Donald Trump has already suggested a ban on Apple products. He's already insisted he'll force Cupertino to produce its products where they're designed.

What if Apple rebels? Perhaps the company will become a national pariah, sent underground for its un-American ways. Where, then, will we get design perfection?