Apple’s product design evolution: From beige plastic to a laptop in the kale

Two green iMacs, shot in profile, make most of my argument before I type a word. The left one is a translucent gumdrop with its organs on display, a picture tube and a tangle of cables pressed against the plastic. The right one is a green line with a foot. You could slide it under a door.

Apple has spent half a century caught between two philosophies. Show off the technology, or make it feel invisible.

Beige was the rebellion

Hard to believe now, but Apple’s first design fight was over plastic. In 1977, serious computers came in metal boxes, since metal was cheap and blocked radio interference. Steve Jobs walked the aisles at Macy’s, studied the Cuisinart food processors, and decided the Apple II would be molded plastic in sandy beige.

Jerry Manock gave the computer a softer look. Jobs didn’t even want recessed handles getting in the way. Once people found a place for the machine, he expected it to stay there. The finished design was simple, almost understated.

The Mac stood up

Apple abandoned the suitcase proportions with the 1984 Macintosh. The screen took the top position, the disk slot moved underneath, and the whole machine became a much (in the strongest sense) neater desk companion.

The handle Jobs killed on the Apple II came back here, with the main screws hidden inside it. The other screws needed a technician’s Torx driver, and opening the case yourself voided the warranty. Molded inside that sealed shell were 48 signatures from the team. I adore that detail, and I’m annoyed by it in equal measure, since the people who made the Mac signed a box you weren’t allowed to open.

Grooves, 1984 to 1990

Hartmut Esslinger swapped the beige for off-white and cut grooves two millimeters deep, spaced 10 apart. They looked decorative. They also hid the vents.

He was horrified to learn a car body shop had been painting Apple II cases. From then on the pigment went into the plastic itself.

Bondi blue tore up the rulebook

Bondi blue wasn’t the only unusual detail on the 1998 iMac. The power cord matched the translucent shell, and the mouse had a split-color ball that showed through the casing. Then Apple added a handle to a 35-pound computer. Jony Ive wasn’t expecting people to carry it around. He wanted buyers to feel comfortable reaching out and touching the computer.

21 years after Manock’s beige wedge, Apple wanted nothing to do with beige. The candy-colored iMac showed off the hardware through translucent plastic. Even the billboards joined in, declaring, “Sorry, no beige.”

My first image shows the 2000 green model. The gumdrop design survived another generation, this time with a slot-loading CD drive and a wider choice of colors. You didn’t have to take the casing apart to appreciate what was inside.

The metal arrives

My second image is where plastic starts losing.

The 2006 MacBook Pro was a slab of aluminum one inch thin, and Apple pitched it as up to four times faster than the PowerBook G4 it replaced. Look at the bezel, and you’ll spot the iSight camera, a tiny dark eye above that glossy Tiger Dock. Webcams used to be separate gadgets you clipped to a monitor.

You won’t find my favorite feature in a glossy press photo. MagSafe was a tiny bit of engineering that could save an entire laptop from hitting the floor. Apple took it away in 2019. The complaints followed, and MagSafe returned in 2021.

Carved from one block

In October 2008, Apple explained unibody to a room full of press.

Each case started as one solid block of aluminum weighing more than 2.5 pounds, and machines cut away everything that wasn’t laptop. The trackpad turned to glass and lost its button. FireWire vanished from the cheaper MacBook, and plenty of video people called that a deal breaker.

Apple has a habit of removing things people swear they’ll never live without. The iMac lost the floppy drive. FireWire disappeared from the MacBook. Then the iPhone 7 arrived without a headphone jack. The backlash was enormous. None stopped the products from selling.

Same $1,999, twenty years apart

The third image is the one I can’t stop laughing at, in a good way.

A man crouches in a vegetable patch, kale leaves flopping into frame, typing on a silver 14-inch MacBook Pro balanced on a scuffed equipment case. Behind him, a woman studies an iPad. Apple photographed the 2006 model floating on pure white, like jewelry. The 2026 model gets dirt, marigolds, and harsh sun.

Notice the logo faces the camera right side up. Jobs flipped it in 2001 so the room sees the apple correctly when the lid is open, while the owner gets it upside down. The person typing is advertising for Apple whether he likes it or not.

One number stopped me cold. The base 2006 MacBook Pro cost $1,999, and Apple’s press release for the new M6 model lists the same $1,999 starting price. For that money you now get up to 24 hours of battery, according to Apple’s own testing. I spent years with a Dell Inspiron that struggled to stay alive away from a wall, so a figure like that makes me skeptical and envious at once. Apple also says the enclosure is 100 percent recycled aluminum, a long way from body shops spraying paint on plastic.

The flat iMac is the punchline

Go back to that first image.

The 2000 iMac wanted you to see inside. The 2026 iMac barely has an inside you could see, and its whole personality lives in one shade of green and a stand. I own a MacBook Air, so I live in the slab era daily and I’m grateful for it.

Still, which one would you rather put on a shelf in 20 years? I’d pick the gumdrop every time.