Good Weight
Everyone talks about the way Apple's equipment looks, but the feel of the iPod is what really sells it. It's small, it's polished, and it's solid. You pick it up and it fits your hand, yes, but also you know that you're holding something substantial.
After all, you are.
Semiotics have been let loose and run wild, Anthony Dunne points out in his brilliant Hertzian Dreams. Your average electronic gizmo, if it's designed at all, is designed as a sign -- a symbol of itself. Symbols are all well and good, but sometimes you just want the thing itself. iPod says, "I'm small, but I sure am solid."
"I like your computer," she said. "It looks like it was made by Indians or something."
Chia looked down at her sandbenders. Turned off the red switch. "Coral," she said. "These are turquoise. The ones that look like ivory are the inside of a kind of nut. Renewable."
"The rest is silver?"
' "Aluminum," Chia said. "They melt old cans they dig up on the beach cast it in sand molds. These panels are micarta. That's linen with this resin in it." -- William Gibson, Idoru'"