Objects. What are objects? Objects as well as subjects are entities. They are self contained, they are well defined, they have easy markers that separate them clearly from all that is around them. Objects as well as subjects can have a character, certain criteria that define them precisely. Object and subject are like opposing forces, they are two ends of the same spectrum, they are antagonists, the existence of one defines the existence of the other. This goes down to even language. There are dedicated words and expressions to define subject and object and make the logic between them comprehensible.

I'm a subject because it's me that is talking about myself. I'm a subject because I'm able to observe a scene and therefore put meaning into it. In here I'm the creator of my world, I make all the rules, I define all the criteria. But in that world I might also deal with certain other entities, other humans as well as animals or plants as well as things.

That dualism of me versus the world around me exists because I'm able to see, understand and interact with the world. I'm active. I have hands, eyes and all my other senses that are able to differentiate between me - the subject - and them - all the objects around me.

This fundamental principle, this inner logic, you could say this philosophy rules most of our societies all around the world. It's the world as we get to learn it, as we known it. Maybe there's a sense of Western attitude in it, a sense of materialism from which Zen buddhism is vastly different. But that leads us into territories I don't want to talk about here today.

Today I want to talk about objects. Objects are cool because they make us understand what we want, who we are, where our limits are, where we end and something else begins. Objects define us. And I think that's one of the main reasons why we like them so much. They help us understand the world and introduce a concept that we can immediately understand using our senses, our hands and our eyes.

In a world of consumerism objects are not only cool and desirable, they also drive our economy, the inner workings of our society as a whole. We use objects to define who we are, how much money we have, what we like or dislike, what we stand for. And I guess in such a world it's clear that those players are most successful who make the best objects. Because good objects are desirable, everybody wants them, longs for them.

It came to be that an apple is not just an object, it's the object per se. It's more of a principle than a thing. It's one of the first objects introduced to the world back in the Bible, it's the one object why Christians have been pushed out of paradise and into the hell of this material world. It was an apple that hit Isaac Newtons head as he became aware of the principles of gravity. And it's funny or an underlying deep wisdom - who knows - that the most successful company in the world is just called like that - Apple.

Apple creates objects. Beautiful objects. Expensive objects. Objects everybody wants. Apple creates the apples of today. And it's this fundamental focus on a product design circling around the definition of object versus subject that makes iPhones, iPads and Macs so unique and indeed special. Most of them come with crystal clear shapes as influential as the black monolith in Stanley Kubrick's "2001 - A Space Odyssey".

Apple is best when it creates these rectangles of different shapes and sizes, these boxes with their chamfered edges that we can hold and play with in our hands. Those that we can feel and touch. Those that we can easily and intuitively experience. Those that we can see and without a doubt separate from all the rest with our sheer eyes. That's Apple, that's their success pool. That's been the long term strategy of Apple's glorious success. That's Steve Jobs and Jony Ive.

And thinking along those lines I can't help myself questioning newer endeavors like all these wearables, like the Apple Watch, like the Apple Vision Pro, maybe like future AI glasses that somehow start to blur that carefully defined line between object and subject. Just think about the Apple Watch with those weird straps that you are supposed to attach to your very own body. It's a mixture of two worlds, a connection that works to some degree but has never become such a major success. That way of thinking can even be pushed further to the Apple Vision Pro. This is a device completely without any clear form, there's no boundary between me and the object anymore. There are weird straps everywhere. It's not something I can hold in my hand and look at and thereby easily describe, visually understand and immediately grasp what it looks like, what it's supposed to do. It's a difficult device, it's complicated, yes complex, it's even ugly. It's not an object anymore, not an entity, it's just another part of the crowd of the world around us.

I can see why Apple is trying to push its own boundaries into territories that have not yet been explored so much. And granted, another wearable device from Apple are their AirPods and they are a huge success story. And that's despite their amorphous shape and their intimate connection to our very own body. But I would argue that these minor and inferior devices are just commodities, are just accessories that are less important and less defining. We use them because they work and don't hurt, but they are not able to create a success of the magnitude Apple is aiming at.

So what are the lessons we might take away? First of all it's the distinction between object and subjects that matters. And for a product company like Apple it's more or less the only thing that should matter. I desperately think that Apple needs to come back to its roots and create more rectangles, more clear shapes, things that we can feel, touch and explore with our hands and our eyes in one go. It's the simple things that matter. It's the simple things that we value as objects. And it's the simple things that give significance to our lives.