Christmas wrapped up for another year

MAX Crus unravels the wrapping paper and packaging to reveal the greatest gifts of iAdvice.

PACKAGING PERFECTION: St Johns Road (Barossa) Resurrection Aged Tawny : Christmas and New Year is all about Resurrection isn't it...umm, no, whoops, wrong event. Whatever, have a go at the fantastic packaging on this...resurrected from the 18th century. Rating: 9/10. Picture: Simon Hughes 0422474444

AS I was opening an expensive and admittedly largely useless Google product on Christmas Day, thinking of those less fortunate than me, I realised that if there's one thing Christmas teaches us, it's about packaging.

The gift had lovely packaging, but it just wasn't quite as lovely as it could have been.

The colours weren't quite right, the instructions not quite as cleverly disguised and the sticky tape a little too sticky and ripped off a bit of cardboard, all of which made me think if there's another thing Christmas teaches us, it's about values and that the greatest value of all is Apple. Well, by sharemarket value.

Undoubtedly the major reason Apple is the biggest company in the world is they really have nailed packaging, metaphorically speaking.

Apple would never stoop to using such crude construction tools as nails when they have the best cardboard and paper origami magicians in the world on the payroll.

Their boxes are truly magical, and they really needn't put anything in them, but they do, and alas that's where things go wrong.

Christmas teaches us not only about packaging but about product design, again a realm of which Apple is at the forefront of good... and bad.

Sure, the packaging is stupendous and your iFad and iThings looks funky and you feel like the bees' knees believing everyone who sees you with it turns that awkward shade of envious green that Google uses.

However this is only true of people who have never had an iGadget.

Previous owners remember the struggles they had setting up even simple devices - let alone an Apple TV - or are shirty that their two-year-old iBling is slower than Grandma's Nokia because they installed the latest update.

Or what about the latest iBigmac which has the cutest cordless mouse imaginable but also has been designed to charge from underneath which means you can't use it while you wait an hour when it goes flat, which it will, right in the middle of the most important and urgent piece of work you have ever been tasked with.

What iNut thought of that one? Remember the old saying "when you're on a good thing?”

This is why the design of wine packaging hasn't changed for over 100 years now...with one exception (at least).

Originally published as Christmas wrapped up for another year