Is it time for Apple to change its hardware design language?

The Mac Studio, if it were designed like the old Quadra series! (Created in Cinema 4d by me! Mouse and Keyboard are stock objects from C4D that I modified)

With all the talk recently about Apple’s software design since the introduction of Liquid Glass and the backlash that followed, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Apple’s hardware design. Apple has a well-deserved reputation for being a leader in the field when it comes to industrial design, and there’s no doubt that many of Apple’s products are well engineered and well designed. It’s just that the “Apple” hardware look is getting a bit stale in my opinion. I mean, everything is basically a unibody aluminium (and glass) rectangle or square with rounded corners at this stage. Don’t get me wrong; there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this, and it serves the company well. But the company used to be a lot bolder.

I have been watching a lot of videos on YouTube lately about retro computing. I have a fondness for the days of the Commodore Amiga and the nostalgia of the early Macintosh. I was recently watching a video about someone restoring an old Macintosh, one of the pizza box-style ones, and I thought to myself: “Wow, that’s actually a beautiful-looking machine” It was then that I realised that Apple has been basically making variations of the same computer for years now, and to be honest, they’ve kind of gotten boring.

Macintosh LC Series (Source: By Benoît Prieur — Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80791904)

If we look at Apple’s desktop computers, now that the Mac Pro is dead, we basically have the Mac Studio, the Mac Mini and the iMac. The Mac Studio and the Mac Mini are marvels of engineering, absolutely, but they’re the same shape and have the same aluminium metal design. The iMac is also an Aluminium unibody rounded box. And while I’m mostly discussing the Mac in this article, almost every Apple product now uses the same material and basic design, except for the brief foray into titanium on some iPhone models. The other variation is the use of plastic on the AirPods, HomePod and Apple TV, though the latter is the same rounded square as on the Mac Mini and Mac Studio. At least the Mac Pro was different in its design. Even the Apple TV remote has the same unibody aluminium construction.

In the past, Apple has been much more adventurous in its design. While Jonny Ive gets all the praise for the most recognisable industrial design at Apple, even before Ive’s era, they created some pretty iconic products, right back to the original Macintosh. Even if some of those flopped in the marketplace, they were still beautiful designs in their own right.

Picking out just a few of my favourites over the years: there was the PowerBook Duo, with the DuoDock. One of the Apple products I lusted after when I was starting out as an aspiring designer, and something I thought was amazing at the time. What was incredible was that the dock was actually powered and would eject the laptop when you triggered the eject sequence. This still looks good today, albeit slightly bulky, although laptops have come a long way!

The Macs around the time of the Quadra series were also quite beautiful in their own right. While the white plastic and metal shells are mostly yellowed now, some people have restored them to their off-white glory, and they are still beautiful. I especially love the pizza box models, and even the Macs dating back to the LC II/Performa look great. It’s funny because they used to look dated, but because we’ve been in Aluminium squircle land for so long now, they’re starting to look cool again. They were still minimalist, as all Apple designs are, but not so much so that they lacked any kind of features or design aesthetic, unlike the polished metal boxes of today.

Macintosh LC II (Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31399)

The first Macintosh that we owned in our family was the Power Mac 7600, a thing of beauty, albeit a nightmare to get to the insides of. Again, these weirdly don’t seem dated design-wise and still look cool. We also had the corresponding Apple Monitor, a 16” Sony Trinitron tube in an Apple-designed enclosure, which, despite all the advances in technology and screens since, was still my favourite of all the Macintosh monitors. It was just a beautiful, albeit bulky monitor.

Power Macintosh 7600 (Source: By Stephen Edmonds — http://computers.popcorn.cx/apple/powermac/7600/, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=534378)

Macintosh 16" Colour Display — This photo doesn’t do it justice, but it was the best Creative Commons one I could find. It was the quality of the screen that made it special though. (Source: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15236)

And then there were the keyboards of this era, which were something special. To this day, many people still believe that the Apple Extended Keyboard II is the greatest keyboard ever made. Even some of the earlier models were a thing of beauty.

Apple Extended Keyboard II (Source: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16757)

Of course, the Ive era brought a whole new design language to Apple, from the original iMac to the early Power Mac G3 and G4 models, with their incredible case designs.

The black PowerBook G3, also known as “Wall Street,” was one of the first Apple laptops I ever used, and it was amazing. With the swappable modules in the front for battery and drive units. They were beautiful and functional, and different from most PC laptops at the time. These became ubiquitous in TV shows and movies.

Macintosh PowerBook G3 (© Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63412837)

Then, of course, there is the “Lampshade” iMac, possibly Apple’s most iconic and beautiful design. This was the beginning of the end of the transparent era, but for a brief moment, Apple showed that it didn’t care about convention or expectations and made a truly beautiful computer. I had one of these (in fact, I think my sister still has it somewhere), and it is still my all-time favourite Mac.

“Lampshade” iMac. Source: By Omega21 — Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10747858

And then there was the Apple Studio Display 17". The last Apple CRT monitor and possibly one of the most beautiful porducts Apple ever made. (At least from the side. The pinstripe thing on the front was a bit weird)

Apple Studio Display 17"

When Apple moved to all-metal designs, first with the Titanium Powerbook and then to the Aluminium unibody MacBooks and Power Mac G5, these were revolutionary at the time. Most other computers were still made of plastic or other materials, and Apple led the way in this regard. The unibody MacBook Pro was first introduced in 2008, almost 20 years ago. And the rest is an aluminium history.

I’m skipping over a lot here, and outside of the Mac, there were still lots of changes and experiments before the aluminium singularity, such as with the iPods and early iPhones. Could you imagine Apple of today coming out with something like the original Airport base station?

Original Airport Basestation (Source: By Redjar (Jared C. Benedict https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22082)

I’m not throwing shade at the MacBook Pro in any way either. I have had several, and they’ve all been great. But if you look at the one from 18 years ago and today’s model, there’s not a huge amount of change to the overall look of the computer. Yes, the keyboards and screens are different, and the current models are incredible computers, but the overall design is broadly similar.

Unibody MacBook Pro from 2008 (By Ashley Pomeroy CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62729054)

Current Generation MacBook Pro Design (This one is from 2021, but the design is still the same — the picture on the screen is hiding the notch. Source: By Oops4321 — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120869823)

And that’s the point I keep making. Apple tweaks the design and engineering, but everything since then has been an evolution of form, and there seems to be very little experimentation or, to use their own phrase, “Thinking Different” anymore. We’ve gone from big swings to slow evolution, and maybe that’s fine. I’m sure lots of people will disagree with me, and everyone has their own opinions, but I can’t help but shake the feeling that the Apple that drew so far outside the lines that people had to redefine what a line was, is no more. Or at least it’s asleep.

On the desktop front, Apple’s computers are pretty much variations of the original Mac Mini from 2005 in terms of form factor. Yes, they have changed layout and materials and become more compact and smaller, but the overall design of the rounded square is basically the form factor of the Mac Studio, the Mac Mini and even the Apple TV. The iMac has gone from being a talking point and the computer everyone wanted to copy, to what feels like an afterthought and possibly Apple’s most “meh” computer.

Industrial design aesthetics aside, though, Apple’s engineering has been on fire. The Apple Silicon team has achieved incredible things, and despite my pointing out that the design side is a little stale, it’s still remarkable that the company can squeeze so much power into such small devices. The irony is that the Apple Silicon revolution should allow much more experimentation from Apple’s Industrial Design team, but instead they’ve doubled down on the rounded aluminium block.

There are some bright spots. The use of colours has at least started to be more prevalent, with the MacBook Airs, the iPhones and more recently, the MacBook Neos. Even the dark version of the MacBook pro is cool looking, albeit still the same broad form factor. The iPhone continues to evolve, and the iPhone Air is diverging from the standard Apple design, as is the iPhone Pro to some extent, with the bright orange model standing out the most. The Vision Pro is sort of a departure, but like the AirPods Max, they’re still a unibody aliminium enclosure. And who knows, maybe I’m totally wrong here, and they’ve just evolved into the perfect form factor and material, and this will be the way forever, with only minor changes, and no one will care.

On the one hand, you could argue that this hardware style is now Apple’s brand. The corner radius even briefly made the transition to Apple’s software with MacOS 26, to much disdain from many. There’s no doubt that the squircle is definitely and distinctly Apple. Maybe I’m just jaded, but I just wish they’d be bold and different again.

So what would that even look like? I don’t know. I’m not Apple! The thing about Apple of the past is that they would surprise you and come totally out of left field. Remember the days of the Steve Jobs keynote when the audience would gasp. I want that again, even though it’s probably never going to happen. They could start by using a different material again. Anything but aluminium at this stage. And maybe change the shape up once in a while, Apple. And also, while I’m at it, you can be minimal without being so minimal that you have to hide the power button under the machine where no one can reach it. I’m looking at you, Mac mini.

I’m obviously not advocating for a return to the outlandish days of the flower power iMac or the other more out-there designs, but again, something different. A big swing rather than another slow quiet evolution.

For a laugh, I tried using AI to create a Mac Studio but in the design language of the old Quadras. I posted it on Threads to gauge the reaction, and to my surprise, people actually loved it. What’s more, I discovered that I’m not the only one who feels that Apple’s industrial design, while impressive, has become a little stale. And while I’m in no way advocating a return to the designs of old, something a little different, a little new, a little less rounded square and a little more organic curves or, well, anything. Heck, bring back transparent polycarbonate. Anything at all at this point.

I used Gemini to create an image of what a Mac Studio might look like in the style of the old Quadra series. The Image at the top of this article was created by me in Cinema 4D. Note the Gemini ones are wrong, as the Quadra series weren’t beige!

The Aluminium unibody design in all its forms has served Apple very well over the years, and there’s no denying that they do it better than anyone else. But it’s been nearly 20 years, Apple. This has to be the longest they’ve ever stuck with one design language, albeit with numerous evolutions. It’s time for something radically new, Apple.

At least in my opinion.