$1million for more Mac-like PCs

Intel is the latest big player in the PC market to launch a campaign encouraging PC manufacturers to make more sexy computers. In a press release it has announced its "Intel Core Processor Challenge", a $US1 million bounty for PC designers who are willing to "evolve the "big, beige box" [perhaps better described as the 'big silver and black box' these days] and help bring to market more stylish, small, quiet and cool-running PCs perfect for any room in the home". This prize comes hot on the heels of the Microsoft's new Hardware Design Guidelines which also encouraged PC makers to think more about the design of their products. What's driving this new thirst for PCs that look nice? What's making the big beige/black/silver box, once a proudly functional, handsome work-horse into a liability? Apple and its many, many beautiful products, that's what. BusinessWeek recently described Apple's mutli-award winning chief designer Jonathan Ive as "Apple's Man Behind the Curtain":

While Jobs sets the direction and provides the inspiration, Ive melds Apple's unique creativity with the nuts-and-bolts required to make beautiful things. Apple's innovation success is due greatly to this alchemy between chief designer and powerful boss.... Since it began nine years ago, the "Steve & Jony Show" has cranked out a stream of iconic products, from the candy-colored iMac that changed the world's conception of a home PC in the late 1990s to the diminutive iPod Nano. In that time, Apple has created and maintained a choke hold on the digital music market, and analysts say it is poised for its biggest share gains in the PC market in years. The lessons from the 1,273% rise in Apple shares over the past 10 years transcend any particular tech market. Apple has put the design of great customer experiences on the map, not just as a means to win creative kudos but as a way to earn billions of dollars and revolutionize industries.

In an interview with Logitech USA Director of Business Development Paul Pistilli earlier this month, he mentioned "the great synergy" Apple has between software and hardware as the driving force behind Microsoft's design guidelines. Apple is capitalising on this lead in the current Mac vs PC advertising campaign, painting the PC user as a brown-suited accountant type, the type who works damn hard and is good to have in the office but someone who you wouldn't really want to hang out with. Although my colleague Nathan Davis paints the campaign as a failure, I beg to differ. Sales figures suggest either that the ads are working or the products are selling themselves. Apple has just doubled its share of the US notebook market from 6% to 12% in twelve months. Has this sudden concern with design quality among the big players in the PC market come too late to catch the Steve and Jony Show? I think so. But it's fun watching them try.