Mark Boulton

Apple released the new iMac yes­ter­day. Not so much a bold step in design but a chunky one. The com­puter is now housed behind the screen with the cd being slot-loaded from the side. They’ve squished it all down to 2 inches wide. So far, so good. 

Apple have pretty gen­er­ally always been good at design. From the days of the K2 case right up until now (although the new ipod but­tons suck). I think they’ve been listen­ing to much to their internal design depart­ment, than to their cus­tom­ers. Let me explain… 

The lamp­shade iMac had all the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of a well designed car. It had clean lines, almost under-designed func­tion­al­ity, but a per­son­al­ity and it purred under the bon­net. The new design is top-heavy (it does look like it might fall over any minute), it doesn’t tilt to any angle you want it to, unlike the old imac which is simply won­der­ful to use. I don’t like this new one. I may have to have a closer look at it before I finally come to my decision about it but I think the only good thing is it’s a G5, and there­fore rather quick (oh, and the faster front­side bus). 

At least they’ll be loads of lamp­shade G4 iMacs around which may be a bit cheaper!