I love good tools. For me, there are few joys greater than working with a well-made tool – the way a good tool disappears into your intention, gets out of your way so you can focus on the act rather than the action.
Everything, in my current incarnation as an environmental designer, has been made on one tool, a Mac. The Mac, and it's extension the iPhone, are the only electronic devices that have ever achieved that "disappearance" for me. The tool should always be and extension of the act and not an act in itself, or, as Steve Jobs put it, "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works".
Steve Job's contribution to the tools Apple created was to think as a user. To identify the needs that the tool must address and then use rigorous and uncompromising design to meet those needs. Why else would you make a tool? People use Macs because they are made to be used – designed to be used. So few tool-makers understand this, so few designers understand this and no other computer company does.
Thanks, Steve. RIP.
