Apple’s New Thingy

There’s nothing like press lead-time to spoil an much-hyped product announcement. Here’s the cover of the January 14th edition of Time Canada:

Here’s another picture:

And here’s a snippet:

The new iMac, which Time took for an exclusive test run recently and which will be unveiled at the annual Macworld convention in San Francisco this week, could be just the thing. Like many PCs today, the new iMac is built around a flat-panel display. But instead of taking up precious desk space like a typical flat monitor, the iMac’s screen floats in the air, attached to a jointed, chrome-pipe neck. It’s also rimmed by a “halo,” a translucent plastic frame that makes you want to pull it toward you-or push it out of the way. Jonathan Ive, chief of Apple’s ID lab, says he designed it so that you would want to touch it, want to “violate the sacred plane of the monitor.” The chrome neck is articulated and bends while maintaining the angle of the screen; it connects to the computer, an improbably small hemisphere at 26.4 cm in diameter-somewhat bigger than a halved cantaloupe. The machine bears an uncanny resemblance to Luxo Jr. – the fun-loving, computer-animated swing-arm lamp that starred in a short film by Pixar, the fabled computer-animation studio that Jobs runs. (Pixar creative chief John Lasseter has also made the first new iMac ad.) “It looks a little cheeky,” says Ive. It looks alive.

So there you have it — the iMac, Mark II. Unfortunately, Time doesn’t have any specs for the machine. I suppose we’ll all have to visit Apple’s tomorrow to see what’s inside. But what’s outside is very nice (and yes, in my not-so-humble opinion, while what’s under the hood is important, style does matter), and it looks like it would look very sharp on my desk.