I've always thought about it, it always gave me the feeling, but I never really delved into it: the design of Apple's new products, especially the Mac Pro, reminded me too much of the classics of Brown. It was always something unconscious, until days ago I started a mini-investigation to support or discard the idea.
And nothing more than a google search was enough to confirm, little by little, the suspicions. And the investigation ended because someone had already written about it: in Gizmodo they published an excellent article where they thoroughly analyze the phenomenon, with images as eloquent as the one we have above.
The point is that the influence of Diet rams (Braun designer in the 50's and 60's) on the Cupertino design director, Jonathan Ive, it's huge. Rams was one of the most important representatives of the Gute Form movement, which continued the idea of rationalist design promoted by the Bauhaus and the Ulm School, whose general concept can be summarized in the precepts "less is more" and "form follows function".
So are we to understand that Apple is basically plagiarizing Braun's products, without truly innovating? It's hard to answer that question, but there's no question that the apple owes a lot to Braun's design.
But there is another point. How is it that Apple, an avant-garde company, bases its designs on the ideas of a movement that began to have a lot of rejection from the 80's, when it was already considered that objects designed with the sole idea of functionality were boring and that things should not only work, but should also create an affective bond with the user? How is it that Apple's objects are based on functionalist ideas and yet create so much addiction?
I think the answer is a paradox, the paradox of which is that it is not a paradox: the key is in good form, which is what gute form ultimately means.
The article in Gizmodo | 1960s Braun Products Hold the Secrets to Apple's Future