When Apple introduced the current iMac form factor in 2004 by asking Where did the computer go, I thought it was one of the worst slogans to come out of Apple in a long time. I mean, come on, the iMac is so thick and has such a counter-intuitively huge bezel below the screen that nobody could ever mistake it for a display.
Boy, how wrong I was. Since that time, I’ve heard a ton of people making that mistake. One person even hesitated to upgrade from an old strawberry-red iMac to the new model because she preferred an all-in-one system.
The latest example is a story on the Apple cult in the May-June issue of Bisnes.fi, a Finnish business monthly. When describing the SoHo Apple Store, Leena Maria Aula writes about “white displays” being everywhere. I’m not sure which is the bigger accomplishment here: managing to write a four-page Apple story without learning what an iMac is, or coming to the conclusion that the cult of Apple is about fighting capitalism. (Yes, really.) Either way, I guess the story illustrates that Apple is not nearly as mainstream as we, neck deep in the business, like to think.
I recently installed a lab of iMacs at a University I used to work for. The iMacs were mounted to arms that would lower into the desk so that the room could be multi-purpose as a regular lecture room and computer lab. Previously, PowerMac G4s and LCD displays had inhabited these desks. One the first day of class, one of our "I know more about Macs than you do" faculty came in to teach and immediately called the help desk complaining that again, IT had screwed up. "Where are all the computers! I can't teach class with just a bunch of displays!"