Jony Ive, the industrial designer behind almost every Apple product in the last two decades, has designed a camera. Not just any camera, in fact. The Brit, in conjunction with Australian designer Marc Newson, has designed a one-of-a-kind Leica M, which will be auctioned off in November to benefit HIV/AIDS charity Product (RED). Even a normal Leica, beloved by a certain strain of photography enthusiasts, sells for £5,000.
The Leica M for (RED) has a lot of recognisable Ive touches. The "laser machined aluminum body" and "anodised aluminium outer shell" strongly resemble a current generation Mac Pro, Apple's most advanced desktop computers.
Also evident is Ive's tendency to focus on simplicity. The designers removed a number of features from a normal type 240 Leica M, the basis for their take. Most importantly, there's no hotshoe, the slot which accepts accessories like a flash, and there's no port for an external viewfinder. Just like the original iPod was criticised for lacking features its competitors offered, Ive's Leica focuses on the basics.
A lot of work has been put into a camera which only one person will over own. Leica say that "a total of 561 models and nearly 1000 prototype parts were made during the 85 days" it took to create it, and 55 engineers spent 2,149 hours working on it.
Source: The Guardain
