Everything’s A Rectangle

The NYTimes BITs blog has a post about the evolution (or maybe devolution) of design in smartphones and tablets. As they note, designs have increasingly converged on a key shape: the rectangle.

In the past, electronics makers could convince consumers that the design was different, because it actually was. The first iMac, for example, was a blue bubble. Then it looked like a desk lamp, and now it’s a rectangular sheet of glass with the electronics hidden behind it. The iPod designs changed, too, over time, before they became progressively smaller sheets of glass.

Certainly makers add features like better cameras or tweak the software — Siri and Passbook on the iPhone are examples of that for Apple — to persuade people to upgrade. But in the last few years, consumer electronics have started to share one characteristic, no matter who makes them: they’re all rectangles. Now, companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google need to persuade consumers to buy new rectangles once a year.

This trend only reinforces the concerns we have with a firm locking up specific shapes via design patents. Now, one might quibble and say, copying is the reason there is so much sameness–it is all “me too” designs. But I think that is only part of the story. Slim rectangles have a major advantages, both for ease of carry and for use as a media consumption devices. As the Times story goes on to note, the rise of similar designs in TVs ultimately drove prices way down. That’s a nice feature too.