Apple's iMac G4 was a great example of the company's decade-long quest to escape the beige box era: compact and attractive, it was especially beloved of anyone who needed to share a peek at the screen with others—but perhaps not so well-liked by those wanting performance, upgradeability, or less points of potential mechanical failure. It's now an iconic museum piece, but the design is coming back in the form of a "smart home display," claims industry analyst Mark Gurman.
Apple's upcoming home smart display will include old school iMac-like base. Apple is making progress developing its next entirely new product — a smart home screen — and it may be a little smaller than expected. The device will have a square display, I'm told, and be about the size of two iPhones side by side. The screen is positioned at an angle on a small base, making it reminiscent of the circular bottom of the iMac G4 from a couple of decades ago. It's possible that the base will include speakers, essentially turning the device into a HomePod with a screen.
It's a week of eagerly-anticipated upgrades for Mac people. Though there's no event scheduled, the line is to get the M4 chip and a more compact design for the Mac Mini, among other things.
Those iMac G4s are still fun to use for simple purposes such as word processing, though the less-cute (but to me more handsome) polycarbonate intel iMacs are upgradeable to genera-purpose functionality, though I'd recommend at least a Core 2 Duo model that can run a 64-bit OS.
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