It’s been 15 years since the announcement of the iPhone, and 20 years since the launch of the iMac G4
Looking back on two of the most significant launches in Apple history.
The second Steve Jobs enure at Apple will be studied by business historians for the next several hundred years. I don’t think that’s too bold of a claim. Apple’s acquisition of NeXT and the return of Steve Jobs to the company he had founded turned Apple around from a company that was on the brink of bankruptcy to a company that would go on to be the most valuable in the world. When looking holistically at that era of Apple’s history, you can divide Steve Jobs’s tenure into two parts: There’s what came before the iPhone, and what came after it.
January 9 marked the 15th anniversary of the launch of the iPhone, and it will forever be the most exciting, most monumental Apple product launch in the company’s history. Rumors had abounded for years that Apple would eventually release a cell phone. I remember as far back as 2001 or 2002 that if you typed in “iPhone.com” in your web browser that it would take you to Apple’s homepage. My main reason for hoping Apple would get into the phone business was that I knew Apple could deliver what traditional cell phone makers couldn’t: a good user interface. Little did we know that Apple would release a product that would redefine the entire mobile phone industry. Not only that, but the entire concept of a personal computer. When we use that term we still think of a desktop or laptop computer running a “desktop” operating system, but nothing has been a more “personal” computer over the last 15 years than the iPhone. It’s completely changed the way we live and work, and it’s made Apple a company worth $3 trillion.
Meanwhile, January 7 was the 20th anniversary of the launch of the iMac G4. Few products convey the spirit of that “first half” of the second Steve Jobs era like the iMac G4. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he quickly set out to simplify Apple’s product lineup. Gone were all of the products that weren’t executed well or weren’t a key part of Steve’s plans: No more printers, digital cameras, or Newtons. Instead Apple would focus on having a consumer desktop Mac and a pro desktop Mac. A consumer laptop Mac, and a pro laptop Mac. The original iMac took the world by storm. Not only did every PC vendor start copying Apple’s colorful designs, but everyday household products and office supplies started adopting Apple’s colors and plastics. I think it’s no coincidence that when Nintendo unveiled the GameBoy Advance, it came in colors that looked an awful lot like the iMac’s Blueberry and Tangerine. Heck, I even had a George Foreman grill from that era that aped Apple’s Blueberry-colored plastic. There was a lot of whimsy in those late-90’s and early-2000’s Macs, and I look back more wistfully on that era of Apple than any other.
The iMac G4 was perhaps the ultimate expression of Apple’s whimsy and its design prowess. There was never anything like it before, and there’s never been anything like it since. With its “half basketball” base which held the iMac’s guts, to the floating 15-inch display surrounded by a transparent frame, to the still impressive multi-adjustable neck, this was something special. I had the pleasure of helping to setup a lab full of iMac G4s soon after they launched while working for my college’s IT department. What fun that was!
Sadly, the iMac G4 was gone all too soon, replaced less than three years later by the iMac G5. I’m not totally sure why they went completely away from that design. I’m sure they would have had thermal issues trying to keep a G5 processor cooled in that housing, and that indeed may have been the key issue. It may also have been challenging to adapt 17-inch and 20-inch displays to that floating system. Whatever the reason, I’m sad the iMac G4’s design came and went so quickly.
And while Apple has released some amazing Mac products in the years since, the iMac G4 was the swan song of that era of whimsy for Apple. The iMac G5 at least kept the friendly white design that was so prevalent in that era of Mac design. When Apple transitioned the Mac away from PowerPC processors and over to Intel chips, the iMac took on the more industrial look of the PowerBook and MacBook Pro. Bare aluminum became the standard Apple look.
That’s why I was delighted to see Apple bring a splash of color back to the iMac last April with the launch of the M1-powered iMac, which ships in an array of colors very reminiscent of Apple’s whimsy era. And there are rumors that Apple may give the MacBook Air the same treatment. It looks like we may be heading back to a new ear of whimsy from Apple. I truly hope we are.