Talk of crazy new products from Apple continues. While an actual TV isn’t mentioned by name this time, famed French Designer Philippe Starck has gone on record that he has been working with Apple on a ‘revolutionary’ new product and that it will be released in about eight months … and, as if to be intentionally cruel, that’s all he said. France-Info radio and the newspaper Le Figaro picked up the story, which we discovered through the Apple blog HardMac (and CNET).
Starck also revealed that he had been meeting with the late Steve Jobs in California once a month for seven years, until his untimely death last October.
So what is this new product? Well, Apple says it doesn’t exist. AllThingsD contacted an Apple representative who said that the Cupertino company is “not working on a new product” with Starck and has no idea what he’s talking about.
While it’s certainly possible that Starck is lying, mistaken, or that whatever project he was working on died with Steve Jobs, it’s also possible that Apple is lying. The company is notoriously secretive about its upcoming products. It’s possible that Starck was involved in an upcoming product at one point or another. What that product is, we do not know, but big products are often announced before the holidays. Perhaps he was involved in the next iPhone, or maybe something else entirely?
Starck’s design style melds very tightly with the modern, minimalist look that Apple has favored since Steve Jobs rejoined the company in the late 1990s. Starck has an eclectic resume as a designer, having made wristwatches, chairs, alarm clocks, motorcycles, tables, lamps, eye glasses, bathroom sinks, restaurant interiors, hotel interiors, and even windmills. A quick search on Google Shopping shows many of his designs. We’ve compiled a few below.
