The Design Language of Apple's New Imac: A Conversation About Style and Functionality

When it comes to Apple's new imac, many people have been excited about the prospect of a more modern and sleek design language. One of the most notable aspects of the new imac is its thin bezels and lack of chin, which some may find to be a bold departure from traditional computer designs. According to Ian Zelbo, who has done a ton of renders on the device, this design choice was a key aspect of the imac's style.

Zelbo's renders show that by removing the chin and making the bezels black, the imac takes on a more streamlined look that is both modern and futuristic. The use of black bezels adds a touch of sophistication to the device, while also creating a sense of depth and visual interest. However, Zelbo also mentions that he may have shrunk the bezels slightly, which could be seen as a minor tweak to the design.

Despite some criticism about the lack of a chin, I believe that this design choice is a key aspect of what makes the new imac so appealing. When you're talking about a device like the imac, which is meant to be iconic and memorable, it's not just about functionality - it's also about style. The fun and quirky design language of the imac is part of its charm, and I think that's something that Apple does really well.

However, some people have been confused by the imac's new design, partly because we've come to expect a certain level of familiarity from Apple's products. But I think this is actually a strength for the imac - it's not just another computer in a sea of similar devices. It's a statement piece that says something about Apple's commitment to innovation and style.

The real key to the imac's design, however, lies in its ability to balance style with functionality. The use of an M1 chip, for example, offers outstanding performance for its category and price, while also providing easy integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem. This versatility is a major part of what makes the M1 chip so successful across a wide range of devices.

For me, the imac's design is all about creating that perfect balance between style and functionality. I think it's a great example of how Apple can take risks and push the boundaries of design while still delivering something that's both functional and desirable. The new 30-inch iMac with an M1X chip takes this to the next level, with a larger display and more ports - but again, that's not the focus of this imac.

Ultimately, I think the controversy surrounding the new imac is partly because people have been expecting it to be a "pro" machine from the get-go. But I think that's just not what Apple is trying to do with this device. Instead, it's aimed at people who want a great all-around computing experience - something that can handle everyday tasks with ease and also offer more advanced features for those who need them.

The goal of this imac is to be the ultimate "zoom computer", capable of handling remote work and video conferencing with ease. And I think it succeeds, not just because of its design language, but because of its performance and power efficiency. The use of an M1 chip makes it incredibly easy to get up and running, while also providing a huge boost in productivity.

As for the future of Apple's design language, I'm excited to see where it goes from here. With the 30-inch iMac on the horizon, we may finally see some more pro-level features like an XDR display - which would be a game-changer for content creators and professionals. But even without those features, I think the new imac is a testament to Apple's commitment to style and innovation.

Ultimately, what matters most about the design of this imac is how it makes you feel when you look at it. For me, that sense of excitement and curiosity is part of its charm. Whether or not you agree with the design, there's no denying that it's a bold statement from Apple - one that says they're willing to take risks and push the boundaries of what we expect from their products.

Let us know in the comments below what you think about the new imac! What do you like most about its design? Do you have any criticisms or suggestions for how Apple could improve it? We want to hear your thoughts!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ensince apple's tuesday event i've been quite surprised at the controversy over the new design for the 24-inch imac to be honest i don't i don't understand it i think the device looks perfectly good so in today's video i want to talk about the controversy talk about what people don't like talk about why i think it works and while i'm doing all of that i'm quite curious to hear what you guys think so let me know your take on the 2021 24 inch imac design in the comments below and if you want to see my full review of it when it's available make sure to hit subscribe and turn on notifications so let's unpack this so the controversy around the design for this new imac basically comes down to two things the bezels and the chin and it's kind of ironic because those were the problems that people had with the old imac the bezels and the chin now personally i never found the chin to be that big of a deal and i still don't think that it's that big a deal on the new imac but i would definitely agree that the old imac bezels had to change now i can safely say that i was not expecting the design that we got on tuesday and i think most people weren't either and that's probably why it ruffled some feathers however given what apple is trying to do with the new imac i think they actually pulled it off really really well so to tell you why we first have to go back in time to the last imac the 2019 21.5 inch 4k imac was a bit of a weird device it was sort of a hybrid between a mac mini and a 15 inch macbook pro that might sound confusing but if you think about it the processors that were available were a quad core i3 a 6 core i5 or a 6 core i7 those were 8th gen by the way and those are the exact processors that you could get in the old 2018 mac mini as far as the graphics it came with a radeon pro 555x 560x or it was upgradable to vega 20 graphics exactly the same as what you could get in the 2019 15 inch macbook pro so it was a hybrid of those two devices and those are two pro devices the mac mini especially with the six core processors was frequently used by pros and in server farms and obviously the 15-inch macbook pro has always been targeted towards higher level users so it had those internals it could have up to 32 gigs of ram plenty of storage although admittedly it did also have fusion drives which were not ideal but it was kind of a pro device so it was kind of a pro machine but also it wasn't really a pro machine because most people that wanted to do graphic design or video editing or animation or rendering or whatever we're going for the 27-inch imacs like myself i've been using 27-inch imacs for years now and then the basic computing people didn't really buy into it either because they didn't need vega 20 graphics or a 6 core i7 and that sort of thing so especially the higher end configurations of the old 4k imac weren't really that popular and so the new imac is designed to solve that problem the new imac is basically macbook air desktop edition the fact that it's running an m1 chip it has the fun colors a funky design it's very clearly designed to be appealing to a broader market than just pros so i think that apple has basically incorporated that into the way that they designed it the design is fun it doesn't have the sleek super minimal thin bezel look that a lot of pros were looking for basically people wanted a pro display xdr but not six thousand dollars and with a computer in it that's basically what people wanted however that i don't think would have even been as successful given what the 24 inch imac is designed to be now i'm not saying that it looks better as it is than if it looked like a pro display xdr because obviously i think the pro display xdr is gorgeous and i would love to see an imac with that design language however i think both of those things can be attractive in their own different way now one of the things that i saw on twitter as people have been debating the looks of the new imac is a couple of people have tried to i guess fix the current imac and if i'm honest i'm not a huge fan of a lot of them so from what i've seen the biggest tweak people want is turn the bezels black and put the apple logo back however when i saw some renderings of that i don't think it looks very good i think the black bezels i think when you have this design with the pops of color when you put the black bezels on it it's it's too dark it doesn't work with the lighter colors even if you were to color balance the entire imac to be as rich as like the back of the display and just have that on the stand as well as on the chin i still don't think it works it's it's weird to combine these bright saturated popping colors with black bezels so as far as making tweaks to the design i think the most successful was by ian zelbo who's done a ton of renders he's really talented he learned how to do all this stuff himself and he basically took out the chin made the bezels black and i think he might have shrunken them a little bit but didn't really touch a whole lot otherwise and i actually think that's a pretty good looking design i think that's probably what a lot of people would be very happy with however i still think if you're looking at the computer from the front as it is you can kind of get a sense of the colorfulness right the chin has a pop of color the stand is colorful if the display is just a sheet of black glass it looks a little bit weird to have a colorful stand and a colorful keyboard do you know what i mean if you don't have those color cues coming up all over the device it's kind of weird to have those personally i think the 30 inch imac the bigger pro one with an m1x chip that's where we're gonna see that no chin thin bezel pro xdr display look and that's where i think it would work because again i think it's about the whole package here when you're talking about the fun quirky interesting design language base model imac i think you can get away with having a little bit of fun with the design and in fact i'm glad that apple had some fun with the design you will not find other computers out there that look like this imac if it were to just be a thin piece of glass you know you can you can buy a monitor that looks like that on amazon it's not very interesting it's not distinctive the whole point of the imac and apple products really is to be iconic memorable and unique granted it's hard to be unique when you're trying to sell millions of units but that's why you go with a design like this right it is super super different and frankly i'm here for it because a lot of apple's designs have been a lot of the same for a very long time so i think a lot of the reason that people have been confused is because we sort of expect imax to be a little bit more pro level and with the m1 chip you can sort of expand your definition right because you can get an m1 chip in a 700 mac mini or an 800 ipad or a fifteen hundred dollar macbook or a two thousand dollar imac right it is a hugely applicable chip across a wide range of devices and the reason why the m1 chip and its corresponding devices are so successful is because it's not just a fast chip it's a chip that offers outstanding performance for its category and price insanely good battery life and power efficiency low thermals and operating temperatures easy integration with the rest of the apple ecosystem it's a really really versatile chip that's why it shows up in so many devices and that's why it shows up in an imac that is now being targeted as like a zoom computer right this is a global pandemic a lot of people are using zoom and so it is really appealing to say okay a 24 inch four and a half case screen with a good webcam good mics good speakers very decent performance but more importantly for the target audience cool low power consumption low noise super sleek and it's just the computer that does it all that's the goal for this imac if you want the pro imac frankly you gotta wait for it that's how it works the m1 is really versatile and it can be used for certain pro things don't get me wrong it's very powerful but i think a lot of us who really want to transition over to apple silicon and do like the legit i want to i want to use apple silicon every single day for video editing that's my goal and for me that means i need more ram i need more ports i need a little bit more power i could probably use some more graphics power as well and i could use a bigger display too to be honest those are things that are not here yet the apple silicon transition is not done yet so those things are all to come and i think a lot of the controversy with the new imac is because people really wanted it to be that pro level machine and that's just not what it's trying to do so hopefully with the 30 inch imac we will get that pro display xdr style that would be really nice to have don't get me wrong i just don't think you need to have it in order to have a good looking interesting device that's my two cents as i mentioned earlier i'm very curious to hear what you guys think of the new imac so let me know that in the comments below and i will see you all in the next video yousince apple's tuesday event i've been quite surprised at the controversy over the new design for the 24-inch imac to be honest i don't i don't understand it i think the device looks perfectly good so in today's video i want to talk about the controversy talk about what people don't like talk about why i think it works and while i'm doing all of that i'm quite curious to hear what you guys think so let me know your take on the 2021 24 inch imac design in the comments below and if you want to see my full review of it when it's available make sure to hit subscribe and turn on notifications so let's unpack this so the controversy around the design for this new imac basically comes down to two things the bezels and the chin and it's kind of ironic because those were the problems that people had with the old imac the bezels and the chin now personally i never found the chin to be that big of a deal and i still don't think that it's that big a deal on the new imac but i would definitely agree that the old imac bezels had to change now i can safely say that i was not expecting the design that we got on tuesday and i think most people weren't either and that's probably why it ruffled some feathers however given what apple is trying to do with the new imac i think they actually pulled it off really really well so to tell you why we first have to go back in time to the last imac the 2019 21.5 inch 4k imac was a bit of a weird device it was sort of a hybrid between a mac mini and a 15 inch macbook pro that might sound confusing but if you think about it the processors that were available were a quad core i3 a 6 core i5 or a 6 core i7 those were 8th gen by the way and those are the exact processors that you could get in the old 2018 mac mini as far as the graphics it came with a radeon pro 555x 560x or it was upgradable to vega 20 graphics exactly the same as what you could get in the 2019 15 inch macbook pro so it was a hybrid of those two devices and those are two pro devices the mac mini especially with the six core processors was frequently used by pros and in server farms and obviously the 15-inch macbook pro has always been targeted towards higher level users so it had those internals it could have up to 32 gigs of ram plenty of storage although admittedly it did also have fusion drives which were not ideal but it was kind of a pro device so it was kind of a pro machine but also it wasn't really a pro machine because most people that wanted to do graphic design or video editing or animation or rendering or whatever we're going for the 27-inch imacs like myself i've been using 27-inch imacs for years now and then the basic computing people didn't really buy into it either because they didn't need vega 20 graphics or a 6 core i7 and that sort of thing so especially the higher end configurations of the old 4k imac weren't really that popular and so the new imac is designed to solve that problem the new imac is basically macbook air desktop edition the fact that it's running an m1 chip it has the fun colors a funky design it's very clearly designed to be appealing to a broader market than just pros so i think that apple has basically incorporated that into the way that they designed it the design is fun it doesn't have the sleek super minimal thin bezel look that a lot of pros were looking for basically people wanted a pro display xdr but not six thousand dollars and with a computer in it that's basically what people wanted however that i don't think would have even been as successful given what the 24 inch imac is designed to be now i'm not saying that it looks better as it is than if it looked like a pro display xdr because obviously i think the pro display xdr is gorgeous and i would love to see an imac with that design language however i think both of those things can be attractive in their own different way now one of the things that i saw on twitter as people have been debating the looks of the new imac is a couple of people have tried to i guess fix the current imac and if i'm honest i'm not a huge fan of a lot of them so from what i've seen the biggest tweak people want is turn the bezels black and put the apple logo back however when i saw some renderings of that i don't think it looks very good i think the black bezels i think when you have this design with the pops of color when you put the black bezels on it it's it's too dark it doesn't work with the lighter colors even if you were to color balance the entire imac to be as rich as like the back of the display and just have that on the stand as well as on the chin i still don't think it works it's it's weird to combine these bright saturated popping colors with black bezels so as far as making tweaks to the design i think the most successful was by ian zelbo who's done a ton of renders he's really talented he learned how to do all this stuff himself and he basically took out the chin made the bezels black and i think he might have shrunken them a little bit but didn't really touch a whole lot otherwise and i actually think that's a pretty good looking design i think that's probably what a lot of people would be very happy with however i still think if you're looking at the computer from the front as it is you can kind of get a sense of the colorfulness right the chin has a pop of color the stand is colorful if the display is just a sheet of black glass it looks a little bit weird to have a colorful stand and a colorful keyboard do you know what i mean if you don't have those color cues coming up all over the device it's kind of weird to have those personally i think the 30 inch imac the bigger pro one with an m1x chip that's where we're gonna see that no chin thin bezel pro xdr display look and that's where i think it would work because again i think it's about the whole package here when you're talking about the fun quirky interesting design language base model imac i think you can get away with having a little bit of fun with the design and in fact i'm glad that apple had some fun with the design you will not find other computers out there that look like this imac if it were to just be a thin piece of glass you know you can you can buy a monitor that looks like that on amazon it's not very interesting it's not distinctive the whole point of the imac and apple products really is to be iconic memorable and unique granted it's hard to be unique when you're trying to sell millions of units but that's why you go with a design like this right it is super super different and frankly i'm here for it because a lot of apple's designs have been a lot of the same for a very long time so i think a lot of the reason that people have been confused is because we sort of expect imax to be a little bit more pro level and with the m1 chip you can sort of expand your definition right because you can get an m1 chip in a 700 mac mini or an 800 ipad or a fifteen hundred dollar macbook or a two thousand dollar imac right it is a hugely applicable chip across a wide range of devices and the reason why the m1 chip and its corresponding devices are so successful is because it's not just a fast chip it's a chip that offers outstanding performance for its category and price insanely good battery life and power efficiency low thermals and operating temperatures easy integration with the rest of the apple ecosystem it's a really really versatile chip that's why it shows up in so many devices and that's why it shows up in an imac that is now being targeted as like a zoom computer right this is a global pandemic a lot of people are using zoom and so it is really appealing to say okay a 24 inch four and a half case screen with a good webcam good mics good speakers very decent performance but more importantly for the target audience cool low power consumption low noise super sleek and it's just the computer that does it all that's the goal for this imac if you want the pro imac frankly you gotta wait for it that's how it works the m1 is really versatile and it can be used for certain pro things don't get me wrong it's very powerful but i think a lot of us who really want to transition over to apple silicon and do like the legit i want to i want to use apple silicon every single day for video editing that's my goal and for me that means i need more ram i need more ports i need a little bit more power i could probably use some more graphics power as well and i could use a bigger display too to be honest those are things that are not here yet the apple silicon transition is not done yet so those things are all to come and i think a lot of the controversy with the new imac is because people really wanted it to be that pro level machine and that's just not what it's trying to do so hopefully with the 30 inch imac we will get that pro display xdr style that would be really nice to have don't get me wrong i just don't think you need to have it in order to have a good looking interesting device that's my two cents as i mentioned earlier i'm very curious to hear what you guys think of the new imac so let me know that in the comments below and i will see you all in the next video you\n"