Certainly Gizmodo thought they were influenced by Rams [1] but that connections seems a bit stretched at points. I don't think Apple is a slave to his style. Ive is a talented designer in his own right.
That said, its not the design per se that made Apple so successful, it was Steve Jobs giving irrevocable support to the concepts he wanted built. In any other company, like here on HN, you can make an unequivocal positive statement about something and someone else will come out to tell you how wrong you are. They can be quite persuasive and influential too, and cause you to doubt your statement and lose your commitment to it.
I've been bouncing around the periphery of Steve Jobs wake my entire career, from dealing with folks from NeXT, hiring the previous head of the Newton division, "rescuing" people from advanced development jobs, working with Apple on their NFS port, etc etc. And you hear a lot of 'Steve stories' from folks. But I have never ever heard a story where someone told him, "Steve, I don't think your idea will fly." And he responded with even an ounce of doubt. In contrast I've heard lots of stores where people people said that and Steve told them they were an idiot.
Its a rare level of fearlessness that I suspect you can really only achieve when there isn't anything anyone can do to hurt you.
You see folks like Mark Pincus pull $200M out of Zynga which nets out probably north of a $100M and even at a sub-inflation return of 1.2% is $100K/month (tax free if its from treasuries). When you've got that sort of back stop, even if everyone hates you that is ok, they can't really touch you. Then all you have to do is be like Elon and be willing to throw it all away on something you believe in and people will take you seriously.
That said, its not the design per se that made Apple so successful, it was Steve Jobs giving irrevocable support to the concepts he wanted built. In any other company, like here on HN, you can make an unequivocal positive statement about something and someone else will come out to tell you how wrong you are. They can be quite persuasive and influential too, and cause you to doubt your statement and lose your commitment to it.
I've been bouncing around the periphery of Steve Jobs wake my entire career, from dealing with folks from NeXT, hiring the previous head of the Newton division, "rescuing" people from advanced development jobs, working with Apple on their NFS port, etc etc. And you hear a lot of 'Steve stories' from folks. But I have never ever heard a story where someone told him, "Steve, I don't think your idea will fly." And he responded with even an ounce of doubt. In contrast I've heard lots of stores where people people said that and Steve told them they were an idiot.
Its a rare level of fearlessness that I suspect you can really only achieve when there isn't anything anyone can do to hurt you.
You see folks like Mark Pincus pull $200M out of Zynga which nets out probably north of a $100M and even at a sub-inflation return of 1.2% is $100K/month (tax free if its from treasuries). When you've got that sort of back stop, even if everyone hates you that is ok, they can't really touch you. Then all you have to do is be like Elon and be willing to throw it all away on something you believe in and people will take you seriously.
[1] http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secr...