Design & Aesthetics — Posts

35 posts on "Design & Aesthetics" by Shlomo Strauss — bilingual writing on technology, science, and business.

• The Science Behind Why a $4,000 Audio Cable Sounds Like a $7 One — Tests reveal that expensive RCA cables offer no audio improvement over cheap ones, a phenomenon explained by simple physics and confirmation bias.
• MacBook nano and Windows RT: why Apple succeeded where Microsoft — Apple's $599 MacBook nano vindicates Microsoft's 2012 ARM laptop vision, but succeeds where Windows RT failed thanks to mature chips, Rosetta 2, and tight
• WD-40's trade secret is not much of a secret — and it doesn't matter — WD-40's formula is publicly listed and easily replicated, yet smart branding and consumer habit have built a company worth over $3 billion.
• The technology powering the Sphere's massive LED exterior — A look at how 1,500 Nvidia A6000 GPUs, 1.2 million LED tiles, and custom sync software bring the Sphere's exterior screen to life.
• Vertical forests: why green buildings fail and what makes them work — A tale of two green projects — Chengdu's mosquito-plagued ghost towers and Milan's celebrated Bosco Verticale — reveals what separates failure from…
• The Bugatti Royale sold only 3 units — and now fetches $22 million — Built between 1927 and 1933 with a 12.7-liter aircraft engine, the Bugatti Type 41 Royale was a commercial failure that now sells for $22 million at…
• The video switcher that assembles a live TV broadcast in real time — A look at the video switcher in a broadcast control room — the device that merges cameras, remote feeds, and graphics into the final picture viewers see…
• Apple I: the garage-built computer now selling for nearly a million — A look at the Apple I's origins, design philosophy, and how a machine that sold for $666 became a collector's item fetching nearly $1 million at auction.
• ASUS's gold-plated GPU pushes luxury PC hardware to a new extreme — ASUS's ROG Astral Dhahab line, sold exclusively in the Middle East, is set to get a 5 kg solid 24K gold variant worth over half a million dollars, paired…
• Adobe's new iPhone camera app stacks 32 frames for cleaner shots — Adobe's free Project Indigo app captures 32 bracketed exposures and merges them into a single clean image, offering manual controls and direct Lightroom…
• Apple's rounded corners are a precise design system, not an aesthetic — From the neuroscience of sharp angles to a design rule linking curvature to physical proximity, Apple's corner geometry turns out to be a coherent and…
• Leading lines in photography and architecture: how geometry guides — From the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange ceiling to the Chords Bridge, leading lines are a visual tool that draws viewers through a space and focuses attention on
• The physics of suspension bridges: resonance, triangles, and spider — A look at the structural principles behind suspension bridges — cable geometry, resonance failure, and the triangulation shared by bike frames and bird…
• The KI standard wants to turn your kitchen countertop into a wireless — The WPC's new KI wireless charging standard supports up to 2200W through solid surfaces like wood and marble, potentially eliminating power cords from…
• Yousuf Karsh and the art of black-and-white portraiture — An exploration of Yousuf Karsh's portrait philosophy — using deliberate lighting and a fleeting unguarded moment to reveal each subject's inner secret.
• NeXT: the computer Steve Jobs built after Apple forced him out — After being ousted from Apple in 1986, Jobs built the ambitious NeXT workstation — a $10,000 machine that flopped commercially yet hosted the birth of the
• Working code is not the same as well-written code — An 1890 pencil sharpener illustrates why finishing a task is not enough — how you do it matters just as much as whether you do it.
• The logic behind naming a tech company White Tiger — A founder explains the branding, SEO, and memorability logic behind choosing an unconventional name for his tech company — and admits a genuine love for…
• South Tel Aviv's street art scene hiding in plain sight — Amid the neglected streets of south Tel Aviv's industrial quarter, vivid murals deliver an authenticity that polished city centers rarely can.
• Disney built a stunt robot to bring Spider-Man's aerial moves to life — Disney's stunt robot is filmed in real time as it flies through the air, achieving human-like motion that current animation software struggles to…
• BYD's YangWang U9 hits 392 km/h and challenges the EV speed record — The Chinese-built YangWang U9 supercar packs 1,306 hp across four motors and tops out near 392 km/h, placing it just behind the Rimac Nevera as the…
• Prada designed NASA's next moonwalking spacesuit — Italian fashion house Prada partnered with Axiom Space to design the spacesuit NASA astronauts will wear on the Artemis lunar mission in 2026.
• The LAPD's patrol robot looks like it came straight from a video game — The LAPD's new autonomous patrol robot bears a striking resemblance to drones from Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, raising familiar questions about government…
• A handbag made of 99% air: NASA's aerogel enters the fashion world — Parisian fashion house Coperni unveiled a 33-gram handbag made from silica aerogel, the world's lightest solid material, originally developed by NASA for…
• Why humanoid robots are shaped like us — the software reason matters — Beyond market expectations and mobility advantages, the deepest reason for humanoid robot design lies in how their software is trained on human movement…
• Why modern recording studios use glass walls instead of foam panels — Double-pane vacuum glass and angled inner panels deliver effective acoustic isolation in small studios while preventing claustrophobia and preserving…
• Google's AI tool lets anyone design a custom font from scratch — A new AI-powered tool from Google Research lets designers and developers generate entirely new typefaces, opening up broad possibilities for web…
• Why green screens are green: the optics and sensor science behind — Camera sensors dedicate half their pixels to green, and the color contrasts well with human skin tones — two reasons that made green the default for video
• Why Apple has never made a printer, and probably never will — Apple's product philosophy of premium design and user delight may explain why it has never put its logo on one of tech's most despised devices.
• RGB vs. aRGB: the real difference behind PC lighting — A clear breakdown of how standard RGB and addressable aRGB lighting work, and why mixing components from different manufacturers can make PC builds…
• Two websites for a Jerusalem nonprofit: service mapping and two — White Tiger completed a dual-site project for a veteran Jerusalem nonprofit, integrating Google Maps API for service-point navigation and launching…
• Your PC is furniture — it's time to treat it like one — A custom-built PC can reflect your personality and complement your workspace just as much as any other design element in the room.
• MSI Project Zero wants to hide every cable behind the motherboard — MSI's Project Zero is a hardware ecosystem designed to route all cables behind the motherboard, eliminating visible wiring from the glass-panel side of a…
• How Canva grew from a quiet underdog to a $25 billion design giant — A look at Canva's cloud-first approach, ease of use, and pricing that explain how it reached 135 million monthly users and 85% of Fortune 500 companies.
• When good design masks a broken product — A costly lesson from a polished but dysfunctional omni-channel platform makes the case for putting product functionality firmly ahead of visual design.