Member-only story
Apple Event
Are iPads the future of product design?
Apple turns its cheaper tablets into a powerful design tool. Will it convince the industry to start using it more?

I used to work on an ugly, beige box. Every morning I pulled my swivel chair from under the desk, crawled into the hole underneath and pushed the oval, cyan button that said “POWER”.
After a series of whirrs, clicks and pops, Windows 95 (then 98, then XP) loaded and I could launch Photoshop or Flash and begin work.
Luckily turning it off was a tiny bit more convenient, as it only required a few clicks in the Windows UI.
Evolution of design workspaces
Before that clunky PC era, many of the great industrial designs happened on paper, using specialised drawing tools, special desks and so on. But that was before my time, so let me share that evolution (and where I think it’s headed) starting where I started.
Like all the tech giants, my freelance web design career started in my parent’s basement, right next to the garage. But to be fair, I have to say that it was mainly because there was a second phone line there, so I could use my 33.6kbit modem and connect to the internet.