Why I Love Apple Products

Because they do just what I want and nothing more? Because they're so easy and pleasant to use? No.

It's the packaging. These guys think of everything.

Case in point: I just got a new iPod Nano. When it comes in the mail, and you take it out of its corrugated shipping shell, this is what you see:

It's wrapped up like a present. A sleek, modern, tantalizing present from them to you. Is that little red ribbon functional? No. But it's adorable. The box is tiny: it fits in the palm of your hand without extending over your fingers. The top is square; the sides are a little shorter. (I thought that the side panels might be golden rectangles; I was wrong. They're 2 1/4 by 1 3/4, for a ratio of just 1.29, as opposed to the wider and more golden almost-1.62.)

Then you unwrap it, and you see this:

Is it just a matter of opening a lid, and out the thing comes? No! The whole box unfolds in a lovely, perfectly symmetrical, origami blossom. As the box flattens away, the device rises up on a little crystalline pedestal, sharp-corned square inside round-cornered inside sharp-cornered. The icons on the screen (actually a sticker; the device is off, of course) repeat this pattern in reverse. Oh, and the base of the pedestal? It is a golden rectangle, or nearly as close as our English units can get: 2 3/16 by 1 3/8, or 1.59 and change.

Does Dell take this much care and pride in their work? Does HTC? No. This is what the "devices are commodities" gigahertz-reciters just don't get. Laptops, mobile phones, and MP3 players aren't just boxes filled with parts with statistics printed on their sides. We carry them against our bodies every day. And I, for one, take joy in products that recognize and reward that intimacy.