The 10th Anniversary Of The iMac
Sweet As Candy And The Birth Of i...
That's
right. 10 years ago Apple released the first
iMac. It was in its time a revolutionary product
on many levels and can in many ways be
considered the first big step in the
resurrection of Apple.
The most obvious differentiation from its peers was the way that it looked. The all-in-one-enclosure was a friendly looking egg-shaped machine in a blueish hue. The material had reportedly been created in cooperation with a candy-factory and I think it is safe to call the machine a genuine design-classic. It was by and large the first computer made where the manufacturer really considered the esthetics to be as important as the technical specifications. As Steve Jobs (Apple's CO) said: "...the back of this thing looks better than the front of the other guys'...".
It also gave birth to a new naming convention, starting the name with a lower-case "i". Today, using a lowercase first letter is fairly common, but back in its day it was another thing that told the audience that the iMac was something special.
Apple is today one of the strongest, most popular companies in technology. This is of course largely down to the fact that they release high quality products. But, it is also because Apple honors the fact that the "story" matters...
First iMpressions (ooh, that's clever)
As I've been mentioning going on and on
about in my last posts, the first impression is
incredibly important. Apple's focus seems to be on
delivering the best possible user experience and they
obviously understand the importance of a good first
impression.
That's why they spend money on stuff like packaging. Where most PC-manufacturers will send out their machines in a brown cardboard-box, Apple will pack their machines in specially designed cartons with 4-color printing and often creatively designed styrofoam designed to make the unpacking easy but also to create an experience in its own right.
Ad for the original iMac
Telling A Story
Some will shrug at this and say that it doesn't matter. Well, it doesn't matter if your product doesn't live up to the experience, but it certainly puts the receiver in a mood where he or she is ready to be further impressed by the hardware. When people spend hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars they want to feel well catered for. The same feeling of quality and attention to detail seeps through from Apple's advertising all the way to the finished product. It tells a story. The story of a company that cares about their products, not just about cutting costs to improve the bottom line.
Above you'll find a video from the release of the birthday-kid. It's also a nice example of how to give an effective presentation.
