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IMac G4
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==Development== The [[iMac G3]] was released in 1998 and was a major success for Apple; it sparked a 400% rise in the company's stock price over the next two years and sold six million units.{{sfnp|Quittner|Winters|2002|pp=46β53}} It helped reverse Apple's financial fortunes, marked the first major collaboration between returning CEO [[Steve Jobs]] and [[Chief design officer|head of design]] [[Jony Ive]], and was manufactured using new methodologies at Apple that would be applied to their future products.<ref name="appleinsider_2020-04-09">{{Cite web |last=Gallagher |first=William |date=April 19, 2020 |title=How Apple Went From Bust to Five Million Colorful iMac Sold |url=https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/04/19/how-apple-went-from-bust-to-five-million-colorful-imacs-sold |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221129190702/https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/04/19/how-apple-went-from-bust-to-five-million-colorful-imacs-sold |archive-date=November 29, 2022 |access-date=November 30, 2022 |website=[[Apple Insider]]}}</ref>{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|p=141}} After the iMac's release, Apple revamped its product offerings for other consumer segments, including the [[Power Mac G3]] and [[Power Mac G4|G4]] and the [[iBook]]. Apple's industrial designers increasingly held more sway, and the engineering department saw significant turnover in the wake of the industrial design group's demands.{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|p=149}} In 2001, the design team moved from a separate building to a new space at the company's headquarters, offering a larger area to generate ideas, prototype models, and showcase them to Jobs.{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|pp=159β171}} [[File:A sunflower 2014-06-18 16-51.png|thumb|left|Sunflowers provided inspiration for the iMac G4's design.|alt=A yellow sunflower perched atop a green, leafy stalk, with a cloudless blue sky behind it]] Eighteen months after the iMac's release, Ive's team began considering a redesign that swapped the computer's bulky [[cathode-ray tube]] screen, around which the computer was designed, with a thin, flat [[liquid-crystal display]] (LCD).{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|p=187}} Ive produced a prototype that attached the computer components behind the screen, similar to his work on the [[Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh]].{{sfnp|Isaacson|2013|p=445}} The design came with drawbacks; the hard drive and optical drive would be less performant in a vertical orientation, and the added heat produced by the G4 processor would necessitate a noisy fan that would be positioned close to the user. There would also be no easy way to tilt and swivel the display without moving the entire machine.<ref name="nzherald_2002-01-20"/> Jobs hated the design, which he felt lacked purity. "Why have this flat display if you're going to glom all this stuff on its back?" he asked. "We should let each element be true to itself."{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|pp=187β188}} When Ive visited Jobs' house to talk over the issue, Jobs suggested basing the computer on sunflowers, which were growing in his garden. The suggestion of a narrative in the design appealed to Ive, who began sketching out designs drawing on the sunflower shape.{{sfnp|Isaacson|2013|p=446}}{{efn|This is the most commonly given origin for the iMac G4's shape, but [[Leander Kahney]] reports another origin offered by an unnamed former executive. In this telling, Ive made two designs: one with the computer behind the screen, and one with a separate screen and base. Jobs chose the latter "goose neck" design because its anthropomorphic features made it more approachable.{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|p=188}}}} The machine took two years to develop.<ref name="nzherald_2002-01-20">{{cite news|last=|date=January 20, 2002|url=https://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/apple-takes-a-bold-new-byte-at-imac/EAB5W56ADW7WLTINWLXGZ4QFZE/?c_id=5&objectid=787149|title=Apple Takes a Bold New Byte at iMac|work=[[The Independent]]|via=[[The New Zealand Herald]]|access-date=June 19, 2024|archive-date=June 30, 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240630145017/https://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/apple-takes-a-bold-new-byte-at-imac/EAB5W56ADW7WLTINWLXGZ4QFZE/?c_id=5&objectid=787149|url-status=live}}</ref> Ive and the design team first tried to attach the screen to the base with a series of vertebrae held together by spring-loaded cables. A clamp on the back of the screen applied tension to the cables and allowed the spine to loosen or stiffen. This design required two hands to grab the screen and release the clamp, and proved difficult for some users to adjust.{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|pp=188β189}} Ive solicited feedback from design consultancy firm [[IDEO]], who recommended abandoning the spine idea in favor of a more practical design with two rigid arms. Designer Doug Satzger suggested that they did not need the amount of flexibility the two-arm design offered, and after Jobs concurred, the second arm was dropped. The final arm was made of stainless steel with an internal spring that balanced the screen while being free enough to be moved by the touch of a finger.{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|p=189}} The designers added the plastic halo ringing the screen that offered space for adjustment without touching the display, and minimized the look of a thick bezel around the edges. The computer components of the machine were put in the weighted base, which borrowed work done for the ill-fated [[Power Mac G4 Cube]] to cool the machine by using a fan to draw air from the bottom and expelling it out the top.{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|p=190}} The iMac's final design suggested a sunflower or a desk lamp, and its [[anthropomorphic]] features made it, like its processor, feel more friendly and approachable. Jobs was so taken with the design that, in an uncommon move, he listed himself as the primary inventor on one of the design patents for the machine.{{sfnp|Isaacson|2013|p=446}}{{sfnp|Kahney|2013|pp=188β189}} Whereas the iMac G3 had been made of translucent plastics in a variety of colors, the new iMac was mostly opaque white, following from decisions Jobs had made to make the [[iPod]] music player all white. Ive called the color "pure and quiet", and Jobs felt the color made consumer products feel more premium, rather than disposable.{{sfnp|Isaacson|2013|pp=390β391}}
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