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Title: Starts strong, but runs out of steam fast
Review: I would agree with many of the statements made by the others who have reviewed the book. The first few chapters are strong, and I felt like it was really going somewhere. But the irksome, constant worshipping of the Macintosh desktop as the paragon of machine beauty really gets on ones nerves.The designs for computer enclosures are somewhat interesting, but they have a very distinct back-of-the-napkin quality to them. They are neither well-thought-out nor particularly well illustrated in the book itself.I am currently reading Interface Culture (Steven Johnson) and more thought has gone into each chapter of that book than all of Machine Beauty combined.If you're looking for a brief and slanted history lesson on the microcomputer revolution, ending in 1984 when the Mac made its debut, then this book is a easy read, but there are much better books out there if you're looking for thought provoking material.
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