1. Apple’s default Mac OS X typeface is Lucida. The company’s marketing typeface is a custom Myriad family.
2. The Apple iPhone’s default software typeface is Helvetica.
3. The Apple iPhone is pretty much unslayable. It won’t matter what other touchscreen-based mobile network interfaces are developed and how much more feature-rich they are and on what networks they run, the iPhone will still be more desirable. I do not proffer an image of one because you, my reader, should know how it looks. It is one of the rare instances of a first-mover dominating a market space, and it’s a first-mover in a hardware interface, no less.
4. Why does the Eames Lounge Chair hold its resale value so well compared to practically every other lounge chair in existence? Of all the thousands designed, there are numerous more comfortable, more visually daring, more exotic in their use of materials. Despite this, the Eames still commands a premium.
5. The choice of Helvetica as the iPhone’s software typeface was a strategy to position the device not merely as the next step in a technological progression — the Motorola RAZR and StarTAC phones were groundbreaking but their cultural value was only set within the context of other mobile phones — but as the next milestone of the modernist tradition.
And in case you were wondering, yes, this has been a long week.