Hasta La Ideas

Suffice it to say that the Mac Pro was easily the best thing Apple did this year.

Core77 2013 Year in Review: Top Ten Posts · Furniture, Pt. 1 · Furniture, Pt. 2
Digital Fabrication, Pt. 1 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 2 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 3 · Digital Fabrication, Pt. 4
Insights from the Core77 Questionnaire · Maker Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Future · Food & Drink
Materials, Pt. 1: Wood · Materials, Pt. 2: Creative Repurposing · Materials, Pt. 3: The New Stuff
True I.D. Stories · High-Tech Headlines

The preponderance of Jony Ive-related headlines this year suggests that technology and design are as deeply connected as ever, and we certainly saw a fair share of interesting innovations from Silicon Valley and beyond. That didn’t stop Quartz’s Christopher Mims from boldly asserting that “2013 Was a Lost Year for Tech, though I felt that he overlooked the implications of Google Glass as a sign of the times. Even so, his suggestion that it “doesn’t count” due to its “tone-deaf design” only underscores the importance of industrial design in the technology sector (more on Glass below). IDEO’s Tim Brown, on the other hand, offers rather more positive outlook—and a telling follow-up to Mims’ optimistic 2012 year-end roundup—at least to the effect that iterative feedback loops and decimal-pointed-versioning hold the promise of exciting new developments in 2014.

If Toymail demonstrates the power of the Internet of Things from an early age…

Based purely on anecdotal / qualitative data, it seems that the ‘Internet of Things’ has surpassed ‘Digital Fabrication’ as the Next Big Thing—wearables, in particular, have taken on the buzz of 3D printers before them. But unlike the broader domain of digital fabrication, the connected devices have more commercial potential than the 3D printer’s cousins—open-source CNC mills, wire benders, etc.

Of course, 2013 will mostly be remembered—at least in the short term—as the year that Google Glass came out, not least for the subsequent backlash to the limited launch of the eyeglass+HUD form factor. Mat Honan’s chronicle of his year with Glass offers at least a few insights into the actual experience of the $1,500 device (though his refusal to wear it on public transit, when he’s out for dinner or drinks, at movies or around kids speaks to Mims’ point that it’s inherently alienating), but its impact as a novel cultural artifact. And in some ways, Mims is right in dismissing Glass as a gamechanger: Frankly, I still can’t help but do a double-take each time I see it in public, and it’s simply too soon to tell how significant Glass will be in the long run.

From L to R: Google Glass, Melon, No More Woof

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