Jony Ive's first gadget design since leaving Apple is… a $64,000 Linn turntable.
$64,000 record player?!
It’s hard to imagine a bigger U-turn for Jony Ive. After designing some of the world’s most advanced consumer gadgets, Ive, along with his design company LoveFrom, has designed a turntable for venerable Scottish record player company Linn. Is it white? Check. Is Ive using aluminum? Check! Is there a single, hard-to-read button? Check, check, check!
Apple is a unique place to be a designer, especially one as detail-oriented as Ive. During his reign over Apple's design department, Ive was able to use the company's billions of dollars to research and invent new metal alloys and new manufacturing techniques, all the while coming up with bold new justifications for removing yet another useful button or port. Those days are gone, but Ive's signature look is not. Let's take a look at it and ask ourselves, who would buy something like that?
"It's interesting how people will spend so much money to reproduce music from a piece of vinyl that is far from accurate to the master recording. Imagine not only $60,000 for the turntable, but also the preamps and amplifiers and speakers that are connected to it. The total price tag is unreal. To play music from a piece of plastic," tech and Apple enthusiast Dmylrea said in a MacRumors forum thread that Lifewire participated in.
