The original iMac was hailed as Apple’s return to mainstream computing. A computer for the rest of us, just like the original Macintosh of 1984.
One of the marketing tag lines was “Chic, Not geek”. It came in a rainbow of colourful choices and had features that appealed to regular people who were not that tech savvy. This has been in fact Apple’s mantra for as long as the company has been around. Every innovation from the Mac to the iPod, iPhone and even the iPad has been around making technology more accessible.
An ad for the original iMac (1998)
However, over the last decade the Macintosh line started to languish. We saw this with the failure of the butterfly keyboards and tepid response to the touchbar on the MacBooks. Over the last decade Macs transitioned to aluminium bodies, cold and uninviting. Yes, they were thinner, lighter, more powerful and capable than ever before, but somewhere along the way, the Mac lost started to lose its soul. You could get big and bigger, grey or silver, but cold and impersonal either way.
iMac lineup 2020. The regular iMac available only in silver. Only the $5000 iMac Pro was available in Space Gray.
Over the last two years Apple has again turned their attention to revitalising the Macintosh line up. The M1 MacBooks from 2020 were the same 2016 design but with new internals and an improve keyboard. The 2021 iMacs are a return to form for the Mac lineup. Not just updated internals, but a full blown heart transplant. A move away from cold calculating silver and grey machines, and back to colourful creative tools that are bicycles for the mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if the redesigned entry level MacBooks adopted a similar colour palette.
The new line up of consumer iMacs
One of the critiques levelled against the new 2021 iMacs by tech pundits are about the white bezels and the pastel coloured chins. The argument being that these make the iMacs look ugly and something akin to the ProDisplayXDR would’ve been better. I respectfully disagree with these points.
The colourful designs stand out and just like the original iMacs, these new iMacs will standout in any room they live in. The white bezels, colourful chin and stand help it stand out even more and makes the device more approachable. Those with school age children occasionally prefer to have their computer in a shared part of the house (kitchen, living room, etc). That’s where a colourful iMac will really standout and brighten up any room it lives in. It’s a computer not for pros, but for the rest of us.
The original 1998 iMac broke the cycle of “beige boxes” that was the norm of the 90s. The 2021 iMacs have broken the cycle of “cold aluminium boxes” that have become the norm for personal computers over the last decade.
The 2021 iMacs are a return to Chic. Not Geek.