It turns out Apple’s premium pricing goes beyond its technology. Apple has announced via its Newsroom that it will be releasing a hardbound book “chronicling 20 years of Apple’s design, expressed through 450 photographs of past and current Apple Products,” and it will cost $199 for a small version, and $299 for a large edition.
The book is called “Designed by Apple in California,” and includes photos of products like the 1998 iMac all the way up to the 2015 Apple Pencil.
A sample from the book that puts product photography front and center
The book is dedicated to the memory of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Apple’s design head Jony Ive has led the project and wrote the foreword, which explains:
“While this is a design book, it is not about the design team, the creative process or product development. It is an objective representation of our work that, ironically, describes who we are. It describes how we work, our values, our preoccupations and our goals. We have always hoped to be defined by what we do rather than by what we say.
We strive, with varying degrees of success, to define objects that appear effortless. Objects that appear so simple, coherent and inevitable that there could be no rational alternative.”
The books are available now from Apple.com in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the UK and the US, and select Apple Stores. The small edition costs $199 and its dimensions are 10.20″ x 12.75″ while the larger version costs $299 and is sized 13″ x 16.25″.