Welcome back to Multicore. This is Instruction Set for Monday, September 29th, mostly curated and written on the road in Munich and Vienna this past week. Oktoberfest and Mozart, what a combination.
How could I begin with anything other than Jony Ive collaborating with Balmuda, the Japanese design brand behind an excellent toaster and slightly less successful smartphone.
The first fruit of this collaboration is — what else? — a “sailing lantern” that costs $4,800.
Wallpaper has an interview with both Balmuda founder Gen Terao and Ive, who says “As I’ve got older, who I work with has become far more important than what I work on.”
Ive had been observing Terao’s work, regularly visiting Balmuda’s Tokyo store. ‘There are all these diverse products, but they all expressed the values and care of a person, and there was a clarity and a truthfulness that I thought was really striking,’ he recalls. ‘So more important than [making] a lantern, it was the opportunity to be able to collaborate.’
‘When Jony came to me with the idea of this lantern, I found it really romantic,’ says Terao. ‘Combining this nautical idea with the contemporary technology of LEDs, I just got the impression that he wanted to create an excellent tool. And we are tool makers.’ What followed were ‘a very hard couple of years’ in which the Balmuda team developed Ive’s idea. ‘The level of precision and polish that he wanted was something I’d never come across before,’ Terao recalls. ‘So my team had to learn as we went along, and it was a very valuable experience for us.’
It’s not surprising that Ive is a fan of Balmuda; their appliances really are great. I was at a hip glamping spot earlier this month and the cabins were all outfitted with “Balmuda The Pot” kettles. At this point, the brand is so successful in Japan that it essentially signifies “we get it” in the same way as putting an iMac in a hotel lobby.
I do think Ive’s insistence that “it’s not precious” as he “takes the lantern and casually throws it around between his hands” is perhaps a stretch for a product that costs nearly $5,000. I’m admittedly not an expert on sailing lanterns but I feel like I could figure out how to outfit a fishing boat with a few more lights than this and still have change left over. But Ive says he “couldn’t find something that could survive in extreme maritime conditions,” so hey.
The lantern is available to order now and will ship in March 2026. Only 1,000 will be made.
Xiaomi’s controversially named 17 Pro Max turns out to have an fascinating twist to its display. The regular display, not the one in the camera bump.
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