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That's DOCTOR Ive To You (12/19/00)
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Hey, you all know about "honorary degrees," right? We're no experts, but it looks like a sort of seedy practice whereby a given institution of higher learning picks a famous individual upon whom to bestow a degree, without said famous individual having completed the necessary curriculum required for other less-famous people. The upshot is that the famous guy gets all the benefits of the degree, such as title, respect, a nice certificate to frame and hang in the study, etc.-- everything except for the actual education, but that's highly overrated in today's market anyway. Meanwhile, the college or university gets the publicity of having honored a celebrity while only paying the printing costs of ink on paper for the degree itself. Everybody wins!
Okay, so maybe that's an overly-cynical view of the whole process. We're sure that the vast majority of honorary degrees are conferred on deserving individuals (famous or not) who have shown themselves to be worthy of such an honor. For instance, take Jon Ive, Apple's veep of industrial design and the guy who's primarily responsible for the striking looks of all of Apple's neato computers. A Macworld article reports that his alma mater, the University of Northumbria, has just given him an honorary doctorate to add to his First Class Honours Degree in Design for Industry, which he earned the old-fashioned way. Congratulations, Dr. Ive!
The part we're not too sure we understand is that Dr. Ive's brand spankin' new honorary doctorate is in the field of "Civil Law." Did Jon transfer to Apple Legal and not tell us? Did he design the shirts for the legal department team, "the Translucent Sharks," in Apple's after-work bowling league? Or maybe it just comes from having designed the iMac, the Computer Than Launched A Thousand Trade-Dress Lawsuits. Who can say? Regardless, the man's got a doctorate now, so show him a little respect. And if the heads of any prestigious universities are watching right now, the AtAT staff wouldn't mind a few honorary degrees ourselves. The wall in the den is looking a little empty right now.
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SceneLink (2752)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 12/19/00 episode: December 19, 2000: Salon knows exactly how to save Apple-- by killing the Mac. Meanwhile, rumors swirl that Apple may ship some version of Mac OS X at the Expo after all, and industrial design wizard Jonathan Ive receives an honorary doctorate from his alma mater...
Other scenes from that episode: 2750: Future Nightmare #423 (12/19/00) Further evidence that we've all stepped through a time warp into the heady days of late 1996: everyone and his opinionated grandmother has a surefire plan to "fix" Apple. As first pointed out by faithful viewer Sandra Odorico, the lovely folks at Salon have evidently decided that today is Twist The Knife Day, and to celebrate, they've posted a trio of articles under the cheerful heading of "Is Apple falling?"... 2751: "We Are Never, EVER Late." (12/19/00) Pardon us while we roll our eyes, but with Mac OS X so close to completion, we thought we'd seen the end of the Name Game. You know what we're talking about: the way that Apple avoids missing its deadlines by constantly moving the finish line...
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