Post All your iMac 3 Mockups here - Page 12

The Vaio W is butt ugly, don't want to see something like that.

The V isn't too bad at all, and i'd be very interested in seeing how Apple could put a spin on the style.

Folks this is it. The iMac G5.



This one is from the Apple Collection


I just find it a little funny that Apple may end up using layouts used by other manufacturers in the past. What I like about the G4 iMac is that it is like nothing else out there.

I'm with you there. When's the last time Apple made a computer that was considered ugly at the time? I'm sure the new iMac will be beautiful. The one thing that will make me wait though is I want to see it benchmarked in some way. I have a PowerBook G4 1.5GHz and if the new iMac with it's G5 isn't signficantly faster (and many have suggested it won't be), then I don't think I'll be getting one, not much point.

TS's comments referring to the new iMac as "similar" to the Vaio may be throwing everybody off. Since they didn't see it and just relayed a comment by someone who "claimed" to see it, we may be in for a surprise. It's possible that the new iMac will feature the same elements as the current one but in a new form. Floating screen and CPU base in a different design and color scheme as well as different materials (no stainless steel). 9 days.

Mac SE? Nope.
There was no display to copy.

Classic 1 & 2? Nope.
Echo the SE and the LC/IIsi

Color Classic? Nope.
Drawn from the 1710.

LC5X0? Nope.
Practicaly is an Apple 13".

iMac? Nope.
iMac is all new breakthrough territory.

eMac? Nope.
Apple Studio CRT ( overall shape is the same ).

iMac2? Nope.
Draws heavily from the iBook dual usb.


Historically Apple do tend to reuse stylistic themes across their product lines. Only recently with the product grid have they strongly segregated style as an indicator of purpose. Because the pro line gets the monitors I dont expect to see the iMac echoing their style. I think we will see something all new. This is a consumer machine, and will get a consumer look. It wont use the industrial design of the new monitors.

Mac SE came out at the same time the Mac II came out. And the 12" monitor.

Color Classic and the 1710??! I guess I'll give you that... there WERE both BEIGE!! Practically twins!




The LC5X0 series looked like a monitor and IIsi fused together. An abomination. So it sorta looked like the 13".

eMac: Apple Studio CRT ( overall shape is the same ).
eMac=opaque/white and lame base. Studio CRT 17= transparent and sweet looking mobius base.





iMac2 and iBook???! Oh Lord.

I take back the LC5X0 series as not taking after a display. It really did look like a 13" bolted on a computer. The others have some similarities but that's about it. Except for the iMac 2 and iBook. It's one thing to be themed the same...

Fair enough, I dont think that the monitor uses the design language of the box very much. The Mac II does echo some of the SEs horizontal themes however, which is toned down and continues right up through to the Classic and LC time frame.


The color classic and the 1710 share common styling of the vertical fascia on either side of the screen. They also share strong organic curves, which were pretty unique to them. The CC obviously has functionality requirements that the 1710 doesnt, and Ill beg you to ignore the hideous monstrosity of the 1710AV.



The shape is practically identical. Once again, the eMac differs because of functional requirements ( speakers, optical drive ) but it is clearly a derived work. Apple probably designed them at the same time. The AS stand is much cooler. As for the white, well, the eMac also has to echo design themes of the iBook and iMac, white is the consumer color. Perhaps an eMac released earlied would also have been transparent.


I am talking about the ice Book, not the modern opaque bastard child iBook. The iMac screen is strongly reminiscent of the ice Book materiel. The iMac base marks the change to the opaque white plastics.

I dont think you can look at any of those comparisons and say that the devices look identical. Apples only share design language when they are designed at the same time ( see powerbooks, Classic/LC/IIsi, Quadras etc ). Modern machines have been staggered, and have recieved evolving design elements. The iMac 3 will be very interesting, because it would seem to have been designed at the same time as the new displays, but is obviously in the consumer half of the quadrant. I dont think that Apple will bring alu into the consumer machines, unless it is coloured. But the lack of colour for the g4 ipods implies that they arent gung ho about making consumer products coloured. I think they will evolve the white theme, perhaps with the 'chameleon' light system. However, they may make use of the shape of the new displays to derive the iMac 3, I dont think they are very friendly tho', they are much more serious. The iMac could really use a return to the whimsy of the original.

Your thoughts on this comparison are more on materials. My thoughts on this are more on the physical.

The iMac 2 is a screen. It was a huge departure from any desktop they had previously done in this regard. I had an icebook and I can say I never had thoughts of it being like an iMac and still do not.

I am hoping the iMac 3 is still about the screen with the internals in the background or fairly invisible. I think it will be.

Just in case someone gets bored, here is another mackompass iMac G5.

Elegant & nice

I really like this design. Nice rendering too. What software was this done with btw?

now that is wut i would expect from apple, not just a simple pizza box screen. i would not be suprised if Phil rolls that out.fantastic.

It looks like a really nice Gateway.

Yawn.

Sexy.

Not what I'm expecting though.

Speaker grills not so Apple.

Different to many of the mocks we've seen.

I don't think it will be like this.

Stylish design though...

Lemon Bon Bon

I like that design but would prefer the screen to be larger than the base, like this:

pic

Looks like a drive-in theater... uh, remember those?


Well... this is the backside but you get the point.

This Mackompass image shows a clever use of the rumored Chameleon
circuitry thus rendering the unsightly guts of the optical drive system
and other components completely invisible. :-)

You can go click Here to see a somewhat higher resolution version.


Hi! Just dropping by to show you my "Point Of View" about the next iMac.

My design retains the arm, and the round front is there to fit the rotation aspect, not just to mimick the mini.The lateral rotation joint can slide on a track at the top, but I'm not sure if free movement on the track should be allowed. The track real intent is to go from one rotation mode to the other.

When you slide the arm up to the back, the base-to-arm rotation joint unlocks and provide a small 90 degrees rotation so that the joint and arm will be pointing to you, and the half bottom of the arm will fit perfectly in the track. Once you are in that "mode" you can rotate the whole screen 90 degrees like the good old Radius Pivot display.

When in Portrait mode you can still rotate the screen sideways though with less freedom, using the arm-to-screen joint. The design I provided could be improved in many ways. Also I included the possibility of having a headless model. The track part would be covered ideally.

Anyway what do you think? I know I know... it looks like a lighter

VL-Tone
[OII II III II III]

Larger here.

Mostly Cinema4D

I had an old monitor like that. I think it was a Radius. It required a custom graphics card, but I think that they might be able to make a software implementation these days. It would be nicer for an LCD, to. The CRT was kind of heavy to turn, and the mechanism was a bit worn out by the time I got it.

Yeah that good old Radius Pivot

I would guess that Quartz and Quartz extreme could provide what's needed to do a software implementation.

Now as for why they didn't add Portrait mode for the G4 iMac: The neatness about the iMac swivel arm is that you can move the thing up and down and the screen will retain it's angle. It's a clever mechanism but they had to be sure it wouldn't break. Adding another mechanism for screen orientation was too much to ask I guess. If they added a perpendicular rotation in the arm-to-screen joint it could become too much stressfull for the other mechanism including added stress on cables. Other reaons include added height on the machine to accomodate the prortrait mode.

Portrait display or not I really hope that Apple won't do away with the arm. LCD's are light, why put them on unflexible stands remicient of the big heavy unmovable CRTs? Any LCD display 20" or less should have very movable displays, it's just logical. Oh well, less than 36 hours to wait...

Related urls:
http://pages.infinit.net/voxel/iMacG5PointOfView.jpg
http://pages.infinit.net/voxel/iMacG5View.jpg

VL-Tone
[OII II III II III]

That was the one! I ended up getting rid of it because it was for my Centris 650, and by that time, I had my iMac 333, and I was in high school, so needless to say, my mom didn't want not only my old computer sitting around, but my old computer with two monitors. I had a 4 megabyte(!) Radius video card in it, and I liked that better than the Pivot with its less-powerful graphics card. But man, with both video cards, I could have potentially had a three-monitor system!

Whatever happened to Radius?

Regarding the Radius Pivot, the LaCie 20" Photon LCD (ahem) can be rotated exactly like that -

The rotation SW only works in OS9 and Windows though

I wonder why the iMac isn't totally mobile for the very same reason.

Eventually isn't it going to get to the point where the Imac is going to become a laptop?

Why not now?

I guess the LaCie 20" Photon LCD doesn't exist.

It's a hoax, it's actually a Samsung monitor , a black piece of wood, and a door knob for the pivoting, in a LaCie scanner box?

Oh well I guess I should have ignored him...

Even if the iMac's motherboards always have been as small as laptops, the rest of the computer, HD's, videocard are not. Miniaturisation has a price and the componements in iBooks are less powerfull than in their iMac equivalent, so why impose too much miniaturisation on something that is sitting on a desk? It's only inflating prices. There is a balance to reach between the PowerMac G5 size and weight and the portable iBook, and that's where the next iMac will stand.

Since we are talking about a G5 iMac, Apple said that there won't be G5's in notebooks this year. (they didn't say the same for the iMac, they said "That would be heck of a challenge" and we know now he wanted to say "will")

If you want an iBook, buy an iBook,don't ask the iMac to become one

Maybe you are talking about something different like a new "paradigm"... we'll see tomorrow.

VL-Tone
[OII II III II III]

You are right about the size VL-Tone. That is why I think there will be some kind of base vs. everything on the backside of the monitor.

I think it will be hard to look at the new iMac if it doesn't appear in part to look like a thin screen after seeing the old/extinct version for so long.

BTW. Something that would keep me from buying a PM is just how big they have become. I will never get used to its enormity.

My point is that it will eventually become one. Laptops were much bigger and heavier years ago... that didn't stop us from using them.

By this same logic... why not make the iMac mobile? Or... at what point will the Imac become small enough to become mobile?

I think this would help differentiate the iMac from the powermac.

What if the iMac was corded and yet mobile. Like a telephone. This way you don't have to deal with batteries and yet it is still mobile.

This way it differentiates you from Powermacs and powerbooks.

So what you are saying is that Apple should drop the iMac line, and offer a new battery-less iBook called iMac?

Remember the cube? It put miniaturisation ahead of price and features. Mac Users don't expect to pay a premium over the already existing premium they have to pay for a desktop machine just to make that small.

There are already battery-less P4 laptops and I don't see them becoming popular in any way.

The problem with putting a G5 in a laptop is not so much the power consumption, it's the heat concentration.

Portable computers will always have like 30%-50% less features and power for the same price as a desktop, no matter how fast technology improve. You can simply fit more in a bigger computer.

Desktop personnal computers didn't really get smaller over the years if you don't take the screen into account. Actually in average I would say that they increased in size compared to the Apple II days.

VL-Tone
[O II II III II III]

So do you believe the new iMac is going to be bigger than the old one? Not counting screen size, but computer mass.


No. I'm saying that eventually the iMac will get so small it will need to be designed to be mobile because people are going to want to move around with it.

Whether it is a tablet or a laptop design.. or a wearable computer.

I think you are confusing form factor with function... that is a narrow viewpoint.

Well it actually may be true, the G5 needs a big heatsink. If it's smaller, It wont be by much. Note that my design iMac has a base that is too big, I realised afterward.



The iMac got smaller with each revision until now it's true, but there is a point where the form factor impedes it's function, I'm not confusing the terms.

Tell me, why the iMac would continue to get smaller? If it got the size of an atom, would you still think it would get smaller?

Could you explain why they should do a different laptop design for home use? What would be different in a home laptop? My point is, that mobile Macs already exists and they have another name than iMac. As for a wearable computer, I really like the idea, and Apple may be one of the first to bring it to consumers in the long term future (when you think of it, the iPod is actually a wearable computer), but if they can put a Mac in an iPod mini size device, in means that they could do a 50x more powerfull non mobile desk version for the same price that would only take a few square inches of your desk and that is the one that will still be called an iMac. As for a tablet computer, there is no keyboard it... Even with 100% accurate voice and writing recognition, most people will never consider buying one, if Apple ever comes out with a tablet computer, it wont be called an iMac.

Like I said, form and function are not the same, but they are interrelated, one can limit the other.

Since they are moving to an aluminum case the entire body of the iMac will be a heatsink.


Is this a joke? Consider how dramatically computers have shrunk in size and skyrocketed in performance I don't expect that to slow down any time in the near future.

Especially considering that we may be getting very close to the point where people don't need much more performance.

So if the demand for power decreases and performance boost increase and efficiency in power usage increases.. we could see computers continue to shrink dramatically.



You said it yourself. Powerbooks are made to be as samll as possible. You are paying for that extra engineering. We will reach a point where these 2 things will merge IMO. That could be the wearable computer --


This is my point though -- about a decrease in demand for an increase in performance. Does the average person need the 50x Imac/Ipod? Does the iMac user today need a powermac? Or do they get all they need from the iMac?



I totally disagree with this. Just because you have voice and handwriting recognition doesn't mean you can't use a keyboard... and vice versa.


I choose freedom.

So this mobile computer case would get hot? Could be usefull in the winter...


I said Desktop computer. The average computer is a big beige box while Desktop PCs 20 years ago were mostly computers in a keyboard. I'm fully aware of the advances made in computing speeds, and all things relative, transistors are getting incredibly smaller than they were 20 years ago. But we are talking about the actual size of the computer. The first computer I had in 1984 when I was 10 was a Timex Sinclair 1000 (ZX81), with 2k of standard RAM with the 16k extension, and running a Z80 at like 0.3 Mhz. This thing was physically smaller than just about any "desktop" computer of the time and smaller than any computer Apple ever produced. Sure I could lug it around easily from one room to the other with one hand, but I would sure have liked having a non portable more powerfull computer.


I used to think that 10 years ago, but boy I was wrong.
We dont have any idea of the kinds of things that will be done with more powerfull computers. My guess is that programmers will always push the enveloppe and create compeling new things only possible on more powerfull computers.


The demand for power wont decrease overall I would venture to predict, maybe some crisis here and there affecting the whole industry, desktops and laptops, but I have a feeling that the computer industry will always find new ways to get us to buy more powerfull computers. Anyway most of my arguments apply to chip using metal as conductors and magnetic disk for storage, when we finally get rid of hard disks and switch processor to photonic, nanotech or quantum computers, things will change dramatically, the desktop iMac will get smaller.... And you'll be right. I'll see it when it happens, but it's not tomorrow. It's like electric cars.


Your whole premise is based on the idea that the majority of people will end up being content with processor power and that mobility would become the only interesting feature. I dont think it will happen so again, I would love a 1 inch cube as powerfull as the iMac G5, but if I can have a G8 for the same price that is non portable, I'll choose the G8 because it will play the latest SpiderMan trailer in volumetric immersive video.


Most of today's iMac users don't need a Powermac because the current OS X consumer applications are built with iMac users in mind. With the release of the G5 iMac, be prepared to a slew of new consumer applications that will need power (and I'm not specifically talking about the 64-bit aspect). Kids raised today with Ghz computers will eventually crave for more speed and new "better than your dad's application". Do they really need it? Do we really need computers anyway? Weither it's a good thing or not, weither they "really" need it or not, my point is that people will continue to want it. The iPod is also a different beast it has a simple use: it's a portable iTunes, 10,000 songs will always be more than enough for most people, the iPod will continue to decrease in size and eventually the base price will drop too.


I forgot about all those tablet computers with keyboards... Ok then it could be a tablet computer with a keyboard acting as a dock? Hmmm that could be interesting... Really interesting, but I just dont see the iMac becoming this for the reasons I keep repeating. (hmmm that was an easy way out...)


You sound like Rob Glaser (sorry!) Most people want the computer to be a thing that they can leave home or on their working desk and that's freedom for them. If for you freedom is being linked to your computer even when you are walking then cool for you. While I would love it myself, I don't see it replacing my desktop computer and I think it's the same thing for most computer users.

Anyway I understand your point in a way, I think it would be better if at one point we would stop craving for more speed and instead chose other features, and I love wearable computer myself but I dont think it will replace the desktop. The pros get the machines, they do tons of cool programs and stuff with it, and then we want to have the machines to run those same programs and the cycle repeat with each new generation. Don't worry, the pros wont run out of imagination to make most people want faster computers...

Oh well I used too much words...

Another thing we have not discussed is the possibility that you won't have to actually carry the computer to use it.

A wireless monitor that had a huge amount of bandwidth and zero latency would make all my dreams come true... and something far less than that could do it for me now as well.

Yes a wireless screen will be cool, someday, not now.

Anyway look at my "improved" design... well the base is much smaller and it got double jointed arm to elevate the screen so you can rotate it without having the bottom too close to the vents and cd drive.



Here is a larger view.

VL-Tone
[OII II III II III]

That smaller base would need to be about 80-100lbs either that or have a huge suction cup at the bottom.

I eat all of my words The computer is the screen...

Congratulations on your mockup. Not bad for your first. I just looked through them all again and you did the best.

Yup! Pretty accurate!