Apple didn't invent anything: they just copied your electric toothbrush.
Your electric toothbrush has a direct link to the iPhone. No, seriously.
Dylan R.
Apple, the kings of innovation? No, the kings of remix.
While everyone is raving about the Apple "revolution", let me reveal a little-known secret that the design industry has known for decades: every iconic Apple product is a copy. Not a distant inspiration. A copy. Almost pixel for pixel, curve for curve.
The T3 Radio from 1958 that looks strikingly like the iPod. The ET66 calculator from 1977 that could be the mother of your iPhone Calculator. This LE1 speaker from 1959 that, when placed next to an iMac, makes you question the timeline.
All these objects have one thing in common: Braun. This German brand of shavers and electric toothbrushes that you come across in your bathroom without thinking. And behind Braun, a man: Dieter Rams, the designer obsessed with a radical idea: to create objects so obvious that they are forgotten.
This is not theft. It is the ultimate understanding of what good design really is.
And if you’re wondering why your latest product redesign already looks stale when it’s only 6 months old, that’s exactly what we are going to break down. Because the difference between a design that lasts 50 years and a Dribbble effect that ages like milk is precisely what Rams and Apple understood, unlike 99% of current designers.
Do you want us to audit your product with this same logic of sustainability? Let’s discuss what really makes a design stand the test of time.
The irrefutable evidence: when 1958 meets the iPod
The visual survey is overwhelming. You don't need to be a designer to see it.
The Braun T3 Radio, 1958. This circular dial. This absolute purity. This immaculate white. Place an iPod next to it and try to explain the fundamental difference. Apple’s clickable wheel? It’s there, in 1958, already perfect. The minimal interface that only shows what’s essential? Rams had already encoded that.
The ET66 Calculator, 1977. The round buttons. The functional colour coding (operations in colour, neutral numbers). The millimetre spacing. Open the Calculator app on your iPhone. It’s the same. Exactly the same philosophy, transposed onto a touch screen. Apple simply adapted the hardware into software.
The LE1 Speaker, 1959. The angled foot. The aluminium and white. This silhouette that defies gravity with elegance. Place an iMac G4 next to it. The resemblance isn’t striking, it’s violent.
And do you know what’s crazy? These Braun products are more than half a century old. They should smell of mothballs, look like dusty museum relics. But no. They are still relevant. Still modern. Still desirable.
Because Dieter Rams never designed for 1958. He designed for eternity.
The temporal gap proves something fundamental: when design is reduced to its essential function, stripped of all fashion, all trends, all artifice, it becomes timeless. It transcends decades.
Apple did not steal. Apple recognised genius. And rather than reinventing the wheel (spoiler: it’s often a losing strategy), they applied principles that had already proven themselves over decades.
That’s the strategic intelligence of design. Not originality at all costs. Relevance that lasts.
Dieter Rams in the room: the obsession with "less but better"
Who is Dieter Rams ? A discreet German, born in 1932, who spent 40 years at Braun creating objects that nobody noticed. And that was exactly his aim.
His mantra: "Less, but better" – Less, but better.
Rams was obsessed with a counterintuitive idea for the time (and even more so today): creating objects so obvious that they are forgotten. The ultimate design, for him, is one that disappears in favour of usage. It is the absolute anti-bling. The antithesis of everything Instagram promotes.
His 10 design principles are not an aesthetic checklist to look nice. They are functionalist commandments that still resonate today, especially in the world of SaaS and digital products:
Good design is innovative – But innovation does not mean reinvention. It means incremental improvement of the existing.
Good design makes a product useful – Function > Decoration. Always. If your fancy animation slows down the user journey, it has no place there.
Good design is aesthetic – But aesthetics is the consequence of refined function, not a goal in itself. Beauty emerges from coherence.
Good design makes a product understandable – A refined UX should never require a 10-minute tutorial. If your user has to think, you have already lost.
Good design is unobtrusive – Your users are not there to admire your interface. They are there to accomplish a task. Serve them.
Good design is honest – No dark patterns. No false promises in your UI. Transparency builds trust.
Good design is sustainable – A sustainable UI does not follow trends. It ignores them. It is built to last for years without becoming annoying.
Good design goes down to the last detail – The devil is in the micro-interactions, spacing, hover states. That’s where the difference between "it works" and "it’s excellent" lies.
Good design respects the environment – Transpose that to the web: a lightweight, efficient, accessible site. Not a 10MB behemoth that loads 47 unnecessary scripts.
Good design is as little design as possible – Less is more is not a cliché. It’s a discipline. Every element must justify its presence or disappear.
What is fascinating is that these principles perfectly describe what makes a SaaS convert today: brutal clarity, function > decoration, lasting relevance.
The design that works is not the one that impresses on a Dribbble screenshot. It’s the one that solves a problem so well that the user doesn’t even think about looking for an alternative.
Want to know if our design offering is right for you? We will show you everything.
The Dribbble trap vs lasting relevance
Let's talk about the real design problem in 2025: the fast fashion of the web.
On one hand, you have the Braun/Apple philosophy: timelessness, function, subtlety. On the other hand, you have Dribbble: glassmorphism, neumorphism, bento grids, and all these wow-effects that have saturated portfolios for the last 6 months and will be outdated in another 6.
The “trendy” design ages like milk in the sun.
It’s not a matter of taste. It’s a matter of lifespan. These spectacular effects, these over-the-top animations, these interfaces overloaded with frills... they have a half-life of 6 months at most. After that, they become embarrassing.
Why? Because they belong to a fad, not to a functional logic. They exist to impress other designers, not to serve users.
Let’s take a concrete example: a website overloaded with parallax animations, complex transitions, micro-interactions at every pixel. On Dribbble, it gets 10k likes. In real life? It slows down loading, distracts the user, hides important information, and in the end... it kills your conversion rate.
Compare that to a site like Stripe. Linear. Notion (before they started doing anything). A brutal clarity. Almost boring at first glance. And yet, that’s what performs.
Because these products understood what Rams preached 60 years ago: good design must be relevant in 3 years, not just today.
Your job as a designer (or decision-maker) is not to follow trends. It's to ignore them in favour of the evidence of use. Always ask yourself: "Does this element help my user accomplish their task?" If the answer is no, toss it.
Sustainable design is the one that withstands the test of time because it is rooted in function, not in ephemeral aesthetics. It is the one that doesn’t require a redesign every 18 months because “it looks old.”
Conclusion
Apple won because they understood a truth that everyone ignores: design is not art. It is sustainable problem-solving.
Jony Ive was not an artist in search of personal expression. He was a problem solver obsessed with the obvious. And when he discovered the work of Dieter Rams, he did not try to do "in the manner of". He applied the same functional principles to the digital age.
The result? Products that last for decades without aging a bit.
Your takeaway today: stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Stop chasing the latest trend. Stop designing to impress your peers.
Look for the obvious in usage. Strip down to the essentials. Build to last. Good design is the one we don’t notice because it does exactly what we expect of it, perfectly, without friction.
That is the lesson from Braun and Apple. And it is exactly what too few products apply today.
