Weird Apple design: ‘Spring Loaded’ edition

Apple’s product design is usually very good, setting industry standards for how many of the gadgets and computers we use every day look and feel. But the company’s many hits make the less obvious design decisions stand out that much more.

Thanks to the huge amount of new stuff Apple introduced at its “Spring Loaded” event on Tuesday, we have a lot of new Apple designs to scrutinize. While the company generally did pretty well with this round of updates, there are still a few things that made us raise our eyebrows.

The iMac still has a big chin

Image: Apple

I think Apple’s new iMacs look really good — except for that darn chin, which, once again, proudly protrudes from the bottom of the computer’s screen like Johnny Bravo’s impressive jawline.

To be fair, Apple did what it could to make the chin look nice. The pastel colors are really fun, and I’m happy Apple removed the giant logo that graced the chin of previous iMac generations. (Remove the “MacBook Air” text from my laptop’s bezel next, Apple.)

And I get that the chin is necessary to allow iMac to be as ridiculously thin as it is. Instead of putting the computer’s internals behind the screen, Apple has stuffed them into the chin.

Image: Apple

Someday, though, I’d like to see Apple release an iMac with no chin at all — just a screen that’s a computer.

The iMac has white bezels

Image: Apple

Perhaps the most surprising thing to me about the new iMac was its white bezels. Most of Apple’s recent computers have had black bezels, which typically do a better job of hiding the edges of the display and make it less obvious where the screen ends and the bezel begins. (The non-Retina MacBook Air, with its silver bezels, hung around until 2019.)

But again, I have to give Apple some credit for its choice here. Black bezels paired with the bright new iMac colors would be quite jarring — the white looks great with the new iMac colors. And these white bezels are significantly smaller than the giant black bezels on the Intel-based iMacs that are still on sale.

The new iMacs join Apple’s base iPad, the iPad mini, and the iPod touch in the white bezel club. It remains to be seen if the new iMac joining it is foreshadowing others.

The curved corner keys on the iMac’s Magic Keyboard don’t look good

The new Magic Keyboard has some nice upgrades, including a Touch ID sensor (which comes with more expensive models), new function keys, and color-matched aluminum. But the look of just four of the keys on the keyboard makes it much worse than the previous model, in my opinion.

Check out the keys on the four corners of the new Magic Keyboard. Notice how they each have one corner with a much wider curve than the rest?

Image: Apple

I just think they don’t look very good. I get that they better match the wider curves of the keyboard itself, but I think they look odd when all of the other keys have four corners with exactly the same curvature.

Here’s an image slider comparing the old keyboard to the new. The uniform corners on the old model look a lot better, in my opinion. Look at that bad right arrow key on the new one!

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