Apple’s latest announcement about the iMac has been met with a lukewarm reception, it’s still a recycled design with different colors and slightly improved specs. Not much of an upgrade whether you ask me but doesn’t the new iMac look a bit familiar to a assured phone in Apple’s product line? just as Apple designed the iMac G5 around the iPod they redesigned it around the iPhone.

Of course that is obvious that the iPhone played some sort of inspiration but what is really unnerving is the fact that Apple chose the color scheme it did, the type of materials used and that there was no significant design change. I wrote up a similar post at my own Blog on how Apple essentially killed the iMac.

The blacks used and the brushed aluminum reflect heavily on Leopard’s revamped Finder and Apple is known for integrating Hardware designs into its OS and vice versa. We’ve essentially gone from a pinstriped, white plastic OS X to

The new iMac uses similar materials to the iPhone most notably the glass frame by a glossy LCD (let’s just shout that the Apple iMirror) and a brushed aluminum enclosure.

Is that a sign of things to come? I think so, whether Apple is touting that as a radical revamp to the iMac line with virtually no design change besides a color refresh what’s to stop Apple from applying the same logic to other Apple products? It’s not so much that not changing a product’s design by the course of a faraway moment but it could harm Apple by the enlarged run. Many consumers identify products based on looks and it’s how they differentiate newer version. Changing the specs isn’t ample and even still the design of a device can seriously affect how we use a product.

Original post by Chris