Interesting article this morning from Ashley Highfield (head of BBC Future Media & Technology) talking about possibilities of the BBC getting more involved with Apple now that they’ve released a time-based system of DRM in their new movie rentals feature within iTunes:

… Apple’s (long anticipated) move to a rental model means that we can look to getting BBC iPlayer onto this platform too, as we should be able to use the rental functionality to allow our programmes to be downloaded, free, but retained for a time window, and then erased, as our rightsholders currently insist.

Personally I think this would be really good, I think it’s a big problem that alot of video sharing sites also seem to have their own media library - what would be really great is let people download content which can be used in the player of their choice?

I was gonna do a post about the new Macbook Air, which is undoubtedly very cool, however I thought this was quite interesting - article in Gizmodo comparing Jonathan Ive’s work at Apple to the product designer Dieter Rams who worked at Braun during the 50’s and 60’s:

When you look at the Braun products by Dieter Rams—many of them at New York’s MoMA—and compare them to Ive’s work at Apple, you can clearly see the similarities in their philosophies way beyond the sparse use of color, the selection of materials and how the products are shaped around the function with no artificial design, keeping the design “honest.”

This passion for “simplicity” and “honest design” that is always declared by Ive whenever he’s interviewed or appears in a promo video, is at the core of Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design:

• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is consequent to the last detail.
• Good design is concerned with the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.