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When Apple decided in 1999 to start selling its already popular iMac in five candy colors, Wired News called on several industrial designers to see what they thought about the move. Almost unanimously, they declared it a watershed moment in computer design.
Computers were becoming commodities, the designers explained, and increasingly, computer makers needed to find a way to make their machines stand out. Tinkering with the look of the computer, more than its speed or specific technical capabilities, was a good way to appeal to people.
The iMac would sound the death-knell for the drab get-up sported by old computers, they said. Machines of the future would come in different shapes, colors and sizes -- like cars and toasters and, indeed, people.
Called for comment this week on Apple's new iMac -- a redesigned, flat-screen, pivot-arm model -- several industrial designers offered a less consistent view of the new machine.
None of them hated it; industrial designers seem to always find Apple products at least interesting. In fact, most of the designers loved the new machine, saying once again that it heralded a new trend. But a few were less sure about the iMac, saying the effort might be a little clumsy, and the age of "differentiation by design" -- the age that was ushered in by the first iMac -- is actually now outdated.
In design circles, the first iMac is considered a classic. Mark Dziersk, chairman of the industrial design firm Herbst Lazar Bell, praised it as a rare "popular design milestone," comparing it to the New Beetle. "That kind of product made my job easier," he said. "It made it easier to show my clients that design matters."
That's one of the reasons why Dziersk likes the new iMac. "I think it's brilliant. The 'articulation' -- that's new and it's going to establish a trend. It's a pioneer, a first in the industry."
When Dziersk said that the iMac "articulates," he means that in the anatomical sense of the word -- that the iMac consists of two sections united by dynamic joints. This dynamism is relatively new in personal computers. IBM has a version of its NetVista machine that can be equipped with a swinging arm, but, inconveniently, that arm must be anchored by a wall or a desk.
"The breakthrough here is giving what used to be a brick, the main CPU of the computer, a functional reason for being -- now it's the anchor of a movable screen," Dziersk said. "Computers used to be static. What (Jonathan Ive, Apple's chief designer) and Jobs have done is break through again. They've established a new paradigm."
Chuck Jones, the vice president of design at Whirlpool, said that he's been waiting for a new iMac for awhile now, because he feared that "Apple was resting a little too much on the laurels of the last iMac."
What he sees now, though, is worth the wait. "When we talk about the archetype that consumers would connect with a 'computer,' what Apple's done is try to push that archetype to form factors that are more familiar to consumers," Jones said. "You look at the rounded base and the arm and the flat screen, one could say that in many ways they're trying to draw a connection to a picture frame.
"Apple has been very clever about choosing non-threatening, friendly and familiar form factors," he added. "I think the rounded base was brilliant. It's not edgy, not so confrontational."
"Friendliness" might sound like an unlikely way to measure a computer, but that turns out to be an important feature of iMac design. Rotund, toy-colored, and a bit doltish, the first iMac was perhaps the most affable machine ever created, and Apple played up that angle.
The first iMac ads featured the tagline "Say hello to iMac," which, when you think about it, is a bit revolutionary for a computer. It's not "say hello to the iMac" -- it's just iMac, like, that's the big galoot's name. Before iMac, who ever thought of saying howdy to a machine? Who ever says anything nice to a machine?
Apple is clearly trying to make the new iMac look like something you'd also want to say hello to. A promo video perhaps reveals a sign of the company's marketing direction (it hasn't unveiled any ads yet) -- the computer anthropomorphically nods its flat-screen "head," dances to hip-hop music and even seems to gesture at times.
But Kit Morris, a designer at Design Edge, said that although "they have it moving its head in an inquisitive way, I didn't catch the friendliness that they're evidently trying to portray. I think the previous iMac was more friendly and more bubbly. For example, one of their core markets is education -- and it's much easier to imagine the old iMac in school than this one."
Pip Tompkin, Morris's partner at the design firm, agreed with that. "It does have an austere look," Tompkin said.
But if the new iMac is no longer your old lollipop-colored amigo, no longer the neophyte's friendly fat guide to the Internet, it's also more engaged than the old model, perhaps a little more quick-witted. If you were to talk to this iMac, you would say more than just hello -- and it would turn its head and join you in a conversation.
Many of the designers who commented held fast to the same design-as-value theory that won the first iMac so many followers. "From my perspective, the computer industry in many ways is not dramatically different from the appliance industry in which I work," Whirlpool's Jones said.
Competitors find themselves at a stalemate, he explained, without "dramatic differences in terms of fundamental technology differentiating them. When you're in that kind of an industry, one of the best ways to offer a compelling reason for consumers to choose your product is to leverage design, to create a whole new emotional relationship with consumers."
But at least a few of the designers warned of perils in this approach. "The problem is that that's trend-driven," said Stephanie Smith, a design consultant who heads Architecture Now. "It's fashion-driven, and it might have become kind of banal to differentiate by design, like it was in the designer glory days of the late '90s."
Smith believes that desktop computers are fundamentally different kinds of products from cars or clothes, for which looks mean a lot. "Being out in the world forces us to buy clothes or cars, and the laptop has done that for computers -- the laptop is kind of a fashion accessory. But when it's sitting on your desk in your office, it's different," she said.
Smith thinks that people don't care much for radical design in objects that just sit around. That might explain why all TVs look essentially the same, and few people pay hundreds more to get one that looks radically different from a standard old tube.
"Some people will buy the iMac so when they have dinner parties, everyone can see it. If you have a Frank Gehry house, the iMac will be part of that."
But Chris Conley, an assistant professor of product design at Illinois Tech's Institute of Design, said that it's important to remember that Apple doesn't just make its products look different from other machines -- the machines also, you know, think different.
"What we can't miss here is that Apple combines the different look with a different experience, or a configuration that matters to people -- in this case they're saying that this is the perfect 'digital hub.' The looks here signal that difference," he said.
"Very few people will buy it just because it looks cool. Many will want more, and I think it arguably offers that."
