Why Intel will never inspire an iMac

Matt Loney AnchorDesk

Published: 26 Feb 2002 15:40 GMT

Three years ago at Intel's Developer Forum, a group of bunnymen in gold lamé bunnysuits bounced down the stage with Intel-commissioned concept PCs. It was a particularly low point of the bi-annual event. The reason? Much as it would like to, Intel will never make or inspire an iMac.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the summer of 1997, he brought one vital ingredient; an understanding of how design, manufacturing and technology should work together. Out went the over-extended production line of PC-wannabe beige boxes that proliferated under the gaze (or not, as I hope the case is), of Gil Amelio.

In came a philosophy that brought together the people who design motherboards with the people who design cases. And out came the iMac, closely followed by the G4 and, after a brief and forgivable mistake with the Cube, a follow-up to the iMac that was every bit as revolutionary as the original.

Such marriages of industrial design and technology are a heady mix that was common in the early days of both Apple and even non-Apple computers. The Commodore Pet is still an instantly recognisable icon in old re-runs of Buck Rogers in the 25th century.

But all that was before the IBM PC, which became the industry standard. Nobody (well, perhaps Microsoft and Sun excepted) can argue against the benefit of industry standards when it comes to technology. But when standards are extended to design, they inevitably descend to the lowest of all common denominators: the banal beige box.