Folks, there's nothing the iPhone can't do. With one simple device, you can make phone calls, tell rude jokes, browse the internet, video chat, play music, and provide design inspiration for a toilet. That's right, a dang toilet.
Reuters has an in-depth look at the new $5 billion Apple corporate headquarters in Cupertino. There were time overruns, contractors leaving, and generally a huge number of moving parts to design one of the more ambitions buildings around. It's a circle, it's a spaceship, it's where your technological future is being determined.
Whatever, let's talk toilets.
"Apple's novel approach to the building took many forms," Reuters writes. "Architect German de la Torre, who worked on the project, found many of the proportions - such as the curve of a rounded corner - came from Apple's products. The elevator buttons struck some workers as resembling the iPhone's home button; one former manager even likened the toilet's sleek design to the device.
Hmm. We all know how toilets look. They look like a bowl (the "mouth" of the toilet, if you will) with a tank for holding the water needed to flush ("swallow," if you will.) It's hard to imagine that a toilet could significantly resemble an iPhone. Does it have a touch screen? Does it come in a baffling array of sizes and somehow get worse with each successive version, ultimately perverting the vision of its creator?
One thing is for sure: Said manager has definitely thought about pooping on his or her iPhone. Let's see if de la Torre, the architect, will admit that Steve Jobs was in fact a misunderstood toilet manufacturer who was trying to make a quick buck in the tech world, before returning to his true passion: Plumbing.
"But de la Torre ultimately saw that Apple executives were not trying to evoke the iPhone per se, but rather following something akin to the Platonic ideal of form and dimension," Reuters writes.
That sounds like an extremely highfalutin way of saying that your toilet looks like a phone. Or vice versa.