Two things needed to happen to make the personal computer reality. The hardware needed to look like an actual product that people (and not just nerds) would want to use, and the software needed to be understandable and navigable by normal everyday people. These tasks are very similar. Both demanded the creation of a casing.

 

First, the casing for the hardware. The electronic components were fragile and looked complicated. Wood was chosen to cover up the Apple I. (I like the idea of a computer encased in wood, it feels like something I would like today.) In the next versions, the Apple II, plastic was used, my first and only MacBook around 2011 was cased in metal.

 

Second, the casing for the software. A GUI – Graphical User Interface. Instead of seeing and writing lines of code, the user interacted with a digital surface that showed visual elements like symbols, buttons, and menus that could be accessed via a keyboard and later a mouse. To this day we use the later introduced basic framework of WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) on our PCs and changed-up versions of the same principle on our smartphones. Let’s come back to this in a second.

 

One line of logic seemed to be present everywhere: hide complexity, present clarity. In the late 70s, memory was scarce, and processors were sluggish. The first principle to grow out of scarcity was simplification. Every line of code compressed, every function stripped to its minimum. The same logic shaped hardware design: hide complexity, present clarity. Simplification was inherent to the process.

 

The second rule applies to what we just talked about, the GUI. Computer experts like Jobs and Wozniak could write code. A normal user, however, could not. Therefore, graphics that took inspiration from real life were displayed instead of code. Digital actions were mapped onto physical metaphors: drag and drop folders, single-click items to select, double-click to open. Feedback makes each gesture feel immediate; reversibility makes it feel safe. (This first happened with the Xerox Alto and was popularized with the Macintosh in 1984.) Let the second principle be: Naturalization.

 

Needless to say, the popularity of the personal computer grew quickly. Based on the principles of simplification and naturalization an entire new industry made people rich and powerful. Following the logic of the cold war, Apple and Microsoft continued the battle of the giants on the free market. It wasn’t about political ideologies anymore but about how buying a computer divided you into one of two camps: Microsoft was a safe buy, reasonable, rational, and represented the everyday working man. Apple was for the dreamers, the creators that shot for the stars.

 

Simplification and naturalization became the ruling thought of every new generation of computers. Their logic followed an underground current that was the base and final conclusion of both principles developed so flashy, so visible, it couldn’t be understood at the time that is really was about the opposite: The race for perfect integration. Legibility. Invisibility. Something that was so simple that it felt like nature.

 

Then came the mid-2000s and the wish for legibility was expressed by Apple with a new look that Jobs wanted people to “want to lick”. The Aqua design phase of Apple shot design into the new Millenia. Imitation of water, fruit, reflections. What followed was the Frutiger Aero phase of design that came to be imitated and hated in Windows Vista. Half-transparent menu bars imitated glass and its physical attributes with a live-calculated blur applied to the current background.

 

Naturalization and simplification, invisibility, was still important in Silicon Valley, although it was not technically required as it was 25 years ago. And that is important. People had adopted to using personal computers, they were in almost every home, yet the grammar of use tended to simplicity and nature instead of becoming something of its own. What once was technical necessity had become ideology.

 

It feels like it is no coincidence that right about that time the social networks came to life. I mean really to life. From simple chatrooms to a new giant: Facebook. It came to life not only by means of technical feasibility but also because Silicon Valley mentality that saw privacy as contrary to its core principle of simplification. Steve Zuckerberg was born after the first Apple computer saw the light of the world but grew up in a world of data and computing limitations. Maybe he is of the last generation to know these limitations. It is hard to say whether his ideology is driven more by necessity or imitation.

 

All, while in the background a new battleground was set up. With the portable mp3-player taking over the Walkman in the late 90s and early 00s, the iPod brought the design ideas of large computers to the small screen. What followed was the personal computer in one’s pocket: the first iPhone in 2007 brought the logic of the PC onto a portable phone. Sure, there have been “smart” devices before, the Blackberry and such. But they didn’t follow the logic of Silicon Valley yet: Simplification and naturalization. Simple touch.

 

I think for Steve Jobs the iPhone was a home game. He had all the logic he needed internalized to make it a hit. And while the design changed to flat design in the 2010s, the race for legibility, invisibility, continued in the new medium.

 

Steve Jobs died in 2011 with his last words being “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” Which I really like, it sounds like deep realization in the face of looking at one’s family for the last time. That they are the people with you in the last moment, not your coworkers, not your products. But then again, who knows.

 

Now comes the part of which I am not quite sure about. Did things really change after Steve Jobs death? Apple continued masterfully and to this day sets standards in design and quality standards for the whole industry. But to me their products feels different. Very cold and disconnected. There isn’t the tinkerer energy that gave the designs warmth. But that just might be my interpretation.

 

What gave me the idea to write this article was the announcement of Apples new design in 2025: Liquid Glass. Reminiscent of the early 2000s, of Aqua, Frutiger Aero, of Windows Vista, the design circles back to where we were back then. It tells us: “Something new needs to arrive, because we are out of ideas. We have been brought to our natural conclusion and now there is nowhere left to go, because we cannot become nature itself. We can only repeat the same cycle on a new medium.”

 

And maybe it is this fatigue of design that is also present in me. All this glass, this imitation of nature and feel, it is not a substitute. I don’t feel connected to the need for simplification and naturalization. They feel like lies in the face of abundance. And I see the faces of those lies in the news, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, they speak of slimming things down, they are the faces of Silicon Valley ideology. But for what?

 

There were material constraints (memory limits, processor limits, user limitations) from which arose principles of acting (GUI, invisible design). But then, when the material constraints fell away or at least became less relevant, what stayed were principles of acting. Something akin to a Simulacrum. We now live in this world that still follows rules that were made for conditions that do not apply anymore, and the result is grey boxes that use Frutiger Aero, Liquid Glass. The result is businessman acting like children because they cannot understand that the logic that made them much money does not work elsewhere in life. All the silicon faces we see on the news are a try for simplification, for naturalization by means of making a zombie, to give life to something that is dead.

 

I think the first try was a good idea. The Apple I in a case made from Hawaiian koa wood. The one thing that hasn’t been tried since 1976 is actually using natural products. Not just to imitate. To do. I don’t know how a phone could use a wooden case or if that would solve any problems. But maybe the time of imitation is over, and the time of hiding is done. If technology wants to live with us, it needs to stop pretending to be invisible and exist honestly by our side.