

Perhaps it solved computer design, and there’s no point in trying to re-think things. Perhaps Apple’s burst of creativity in the first decade of this century was enough. It’s been a decade or more of quiet iteration without really rethinking the fundamentals of the product-except that one time, which Apple rapidly came to regret. But the exteriors of Apple’s Macs look remarkably like they did in 2012, if not 2007.

Of course, Macs have evolved a lot in the intervening years on the inside. Even if you don’t consider the Titanium PowerBook G4 the originator of Apple’s laptop designs, it’s hard not to look at the Air and see it as the source of every single thin, light, (mostly) silver laptop that Apple makes to this day. On the laptop side, the second-generation MacBook Air was the definitive Mac of the 2010s and influenced the design of modern laptops immensely. What would have happened if Apple had kept intently focusing on evolving Mac designs? We’ll never know, but given the importance of the iPhone and iPad to Apple’s bottom line, de-emphasizing the Mac was probably the right call during that era. The iPod had become a huge hit, and Apple’s most intense design focus turned to new products-leading to the arrival of the iPhone and iPad. Then Apple turned its focus to the iPhone, iPad, and other products.īut by the time of the Intel transition, the complete revamp of the Mac was largely complete. AppleĪpple used to regularly offer new designs of its Macs. Power Macs were introduced with plastic handles and bright colors-and then the colors were slowly muted away until the plastic was replaced with a perforated aluminum shell.

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The iBook was introduced as a brighly colored portable iMac, then moved to a monochrome plastic enclosure. The PowerBook became rubbery black with a shiny white Apple logo, then transformed again into a thin silver metallic model that’s not too far off from today’s MacBook Pros. The iMac added fashion colors, morphed into a round computer with a floating display, and then took up the computer-within-display approach that we still see today. This was the biggest creative flourishing in the Mac ever. (There were also some failed forays, now largely forgotten, into areas like server hardware.) After introducing the original G3 iMac, Apple turned over the entire product line multiple times in just a few years. Apple invested a huge amount of effort in renovating the Mac in the early days of Steve Jobs’s return to Apple.
