oh apple, I love/hate you
The big news once again belongs to Apple. New iMacs all around!
And they look like this...
Jobs announced an update to the iMac line, dropping the 17", upgrading specs (though not as much as I'd expected in terms of things like hard drives and ram) and dropping the prices for every model. I'm guessing the price drop is responsible for the somewhat underwhelming spec upgrade. It's a tradeoff...
I'll let one of the other HMLers talk about the new keyboard. I have trouble getting up in arms over those, and that's at least in part because I still find Apple keyboards irritating. I use one, but I'm sad to admit it's more because it matches my computer (and is wireless) than anything else.
Everyone's talking about the bezel, though. And so will I [after the jump].
People love it and hate it. I hated it when I first saw it. I mean, what can beat an all-white front, like my wonderful iMac at work? It's clean and simple, like the iPod. But then people (Eric) started talking about the iMac as a TV and a media centre pc and a media appliance... and I thought about LCD TVs, with their black screen borders. Apparently (Steve Jobs, via Eric again) people found the bezel makes the iMac look more at home in a living room. This makes sense to me.
In designing computers and software, I'm reminded that fitting with people's expectations and familiarities are key. People expect a TV to look a certain way, and it's an uphill battle to change these expectations -- especially if your goal is adoption and moving units out the door. If you can make your computer look more like a TV to people, they'll think of it more like a TV. This may not be true for the crowd that has been using computers to watch TV since it was possible, but most people don't think like that. It doesn't do anything for them to reimagine their devices and appliances and it's important for designers to specify many of these things with their design. The iPhone, for example, is clearly a device made to watch video. Most modern cellphones don't look like they are, regardless of whether they're paired with ad campaigns touting this ability. Most people, thus, won't use them for that purpose, because their design doesn't imply that they should.
If you want people to realize that their iMac is also a TV, it better tell them that by the way it looks. That's what I'm trying to get at.
And now I'll leave you with an almost-pornographic disassembly of an new iMac.
