On the Record with Apple Industrial Designer Eugene Whang

‘We don’t really talk about design a lot around here, we talk about how things work,’ he said a year after the iPod’s debut. ‘Most people think it is how they look, but it is not really how they look it is how they work.’

Taste figures much more prominently when it comes to Apple Music and other similar endeavors. The DJ-focused Beats 1 “radio” station, for example, is clearly intended to make certain songs popular, not simply identify popularity after it is already attained. This in particular is a natural fit for Apple, and is the part of Apple Music I am most int... See more

The deeper you get into the process, the more you realize this idea of man and machine — of disappearing into the computer — becomes a form of automatic writing. Sleight of hand. You almost don’t feel conscious when you’re working. For me, that’s the tipping zone into the man-machine idea. When I got into electronic music, I recognized early on tha

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One such curator is Derrick Gee, a former online radio d.j. who lives in Australia. I first encountered Gee on TikTok and was pulled in by his architect-ish look: thin wireframe glasses and stylishly baggy, often monochrome outfits. He records videos of himself talking into a microphone in a low, soothing voice, breaking down trends in contemporary... See more

As all forms of media have moved into streaming, when everything seems to be a single click away, it’s easy to forget that we can also have physical, non-algorithmic relationships with the pieces of culture we consume in our personal time. We store books on bookshelves, mount art on our living room walls, and keep stacks of vinyl records. When we w

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