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Feb 10 - Feb 17, 2002 |
A flat statement of design
Apple's iMac 2 revolutionizes the desktop once again
By Alessandro Cancian
Originally Published: 2002-01-20
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Apple's iMac 2
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You can love it or you can hate it, but one thing is certain, you can't ignore it because this is Apple.
They own only five percent of the market and they sell pricey computers. Their genius is that they build state-of-the-art products that even grandma can easily use. But most importantly, they don't use Windows. If there's a computer company out there that can leave people speechless, it's Apple.
There are many bets won and many lost in the history of the Cupertino-based company: from the launch of the Macintosh, to the introduction of the Newton, to the recent iMac.
It was 1998, and Apple had a less than optimal financial situation and faced the hard-to-break Windows monopoly; that's when the company came out with the iMac. It was something radically new, with its egg shape and its colours, so different from the beige boxes of the PC world.
The shape, however, was not the only difference: Apple had decided to abolish floppy drives and use only USB ports to connect the various peripherals, even though there were very few USB peripherals at the time. Many people thought that Apple's end was near, due to the "absurdity" of those choices, but the candy machine became a qualified success, and the six million units sold to date bear good witness to this.
Now, after over three years since the release of the original iMac, Apple wants to astonish us again with its innovative product design. Inspired by a sunflower, the iMac 2 design abandons the idea of compactness that the previous models had accustomed us to, giving an image of total independence to its components.
At first sight this new creation is reminiscent of a basketball post, or a table lamp. In fact, some people already call it Luxo Jr. (the computer-animated swing-arm lamp from a Pixar short movie).
The base of the computer is shaped like a white dome about the size of a chopped melon, not higher than a CD, and with a diameter of about 10 inches; it elegantly contains the CD tray.
The monitor, a 15" flat LCD display (1024x768 resolution), is "suspended" above the base thanks to a stainless-steel articulated "neck." It looks as if the monitor is floating in the air, and a simple touch can adjust its orientation and position to fit our needs.
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