Everything Apple is can be summed up in its Smart Cover.
Forget for a moment that Steve Jobs made a surprise visit to the stage to announce the iPad2. Forget the iPad2 altogether, in fact. I want to call your attention to the cover that Jobs revealed. Yes, the simple piece of Chinese-built polyurethane with two magnets.
It's damn brilliant. Take a look at the video (you'll have to cue it up yourself, weirdly Apple doesn't enable sharing of its videos).
Roll it back to reveal the screen. Roll it into a triangle to prop the iPad up so you can type. Flip the iPad up and use the cover as a base anchor so you can watch a movie.
That's what Apple designers did with a cover. Watch the video. Little happy plucks of the violin as we watch the cover work in a field of white. I want one. I must have one. I am more impressed with the design of the cover than I am with the new iPad.
Apple redesigns something that's been around for a long time -- and then backs it up with a whimsical commercial. So Apple.
Now, there are some downsides to the Smart Cover: it's absurdly expensive and doesn't do everything you want it to do.
Dvice (note we're owned by the same parent company) points out the Smart Cover doesn't protect anything but the front of the iPad. Apple has chosen minimalism over actual need.
And the prices? Absurd. 10 cents worth of plastic and two magnets will run you $40. Seventy bones if you want leather. Really?
Brilliant design, whimsical commercial that gives you an irrational desire to buy, minimalist design that doesn’t do everything you need it to do, and all for an artificially high price? They did it again.
