In my piece about Apple’s Spring Loaded event that took place last month, I said this about the design of the new, colourful M1 iMacs:

Apple has created what’s possibly the thinnest all-in-one desktop computer, and I’m sure they’re still patting themselves on the back. But was it necessary to produce a computer that is so thin that its power supply has to be external? I find that rather inelegant. My 21.5‑inch 4K retina iMac is less than 3 cm thicker at its thickest point, and has an internal power supply. I believe that Apple could have easily built a new iMac with this new, flat design, by making it 2.5 cm thicker and putting the power supply inside. It still would have retained a thin and elegant profile, and Apple would have spared us the external brick.

This design choice on Apple’s part keeps rubbing me up the wrong way. If the thinness of these new iMacs excites you to the point that you don’t really mind having to pay that thinness with having an external power brick, perhaps you’ll find my irritation a bit amusing. Or perhaps you’ll see it as a way to find something, anything, to criticise Apple or to be unhappy about.

Actually, these iMacs have features (or lack thereof) that are even more annoying to me, and that external power supply is just the cherry on top (or, well, at the bottom… of the desk… hidden somewhere…).

When I dislike things like this, sometimes I worry that maybe it’s a matter of age. That maybe I’m just that get-off-my-lawn curmudgeon who has seen so many designs and purported innovations in tech over the past 30 years, and therefore can’t really be enthusiastic about these colourful thin slabs. About these design statements that want to be so much more “how it looks” than “how it works” that, in order to do so, sacrifice I/O, sacrifice internal upgrades, and have to have some parts of their main circuitry placed externally because they simply can’t fit inside.

But I’m glad that someone like Marques Brownlee shares my perplexities about the 24-inch M1 iMacs. In his video review on YouTube, he’s not afraid of speaking his mind about some aspects of the iMac’s design that don’t convince him.

[The iMac] is trying to be a piece of tech that can fit into any room, and people would rather have something that looks friendlier than a metal box. Fine. Now, the chin on the other hand… This is probably where we’re going to start to disagree.

I get that it’s iconic to the iMac to have this chin, even though they got rid of the actual icon, the logo. But I just think it would have looked so much better without the chin. So, most of the computer is down there in the bottom. If you look at Apple’s videos, you can see their basic setup, which is the M1, and the logic board, and all that — most of the computer down in that chin. Then it’s just mostly cooling and speakers throughout the rest.

So, by shoving the computer down there, it let them make this whole computer razor-thin — 11 and a half millimetres thin for the whole thing! It’s thinner than a MacBook Pro, it’s thinner than an Apple Watch! This entire computer is actually thinner than the depth of a headphone jack, so they had to put the headphone jack on the side of the computer, otherwise it wouldn’t fit at all. It’s stunningly razor-thin, and it’s kind of amazing that the entire computer fits inside this sleek case — thinner than pretty much every other 24-inch monitor.

And that’s all amazing, and it clearly took a lot of work to make it this thin. But after I get it out the box and decide where I want to put it and lock it in place, I don’t care… I don’t care how thin it is. So I’m confident that nearly 100% of the people buying this machine would have been totally cool with it being, like, 20 millimetres thick, and being able to fit a lot of that computer stuff behind the display so that it doesn’t have a chin. And it would have looked way better and it still would have been impressively thin, so then that would have also given them more room for more impressive speakers. […]

They also probably could have fit the power adapter inside the computer like with all the rest of their desktops, but they really leaned into the external power brick situation with the iMac here…

Dave Lee, another competent reviewer with a good eye for design, doesn’t like the chin either, but more interestingly in his video review he mentions another aspect that’s worth pointing out. He appreciates the design of the magnetic power connector that attaches on the back of the iMac, but he also notes that the iMac is really light, 4.5 kg, and the bottom of the iMac’s stand is slick plastic, it lacks any grippy material. This, he says, is nice for sliding the computer around a little bit, in case you want to tilt the screen and show something to someone, or move the screen away from the sun, for example. But, because it’s a light machine, and there’s no grip on the bottom of the stand, if that power cable on the back is yanked, he thinks there’s a very real possibility that the iMac goes right over the edge of your table or desk.

Since Dave moves the iMac a lot in his video, you really notice just how lightweight this machine is, and just how easily it can be moved around — maybe even too easily. Even if you think the ‘yank the power cable and the iMac may fall’ scenario above is unlikely, think about other situations, like having your headphones plugged in, the headphones cable gets tangled or trapped around something (your chair’s armrest, perhaps), and you end up yanking the iMac, maybe even damaging the headphone port and surrounding chassis, given the position and the thinness of the computer. Do you think this is another extreme scenario? Maybe it is. But I have firsthand experience and other people’s accounts of this exact scenario happening with laptop computers (especially the ‘falling on the floor’ part).

Desktop computers with external power supplies

When John Gruber’s review of the new M1 iMac appeared on my feed, I went and read it right away because I was very curious to learn his take on it. Historically, all his product reviews have been thoughtful, detailed, and have often pointed out things I hadn’t considered, or made me see them in a different perspective, which is the kind of intellectual input I really love.

But this review was underwhelming and, as I commented on Twitter, with unusual fanboyish tones I’ve never really detected in his past product reviews.

His argument defending Apple’s choice to make the iMac so thin as to have an external power supply is unconvincing:

Is it a cheat to make the power supply external? Sure, maybe. But great designers know how to cheat right. The external power supply could have been internal, glommed onto the back behind the hinge somehow. There’s no doubt in my mind that this actual design — with the external power supply enabling the iMac itself to be as thin as possible and universally flat across the entire back — is a superior idea. The power supply will, in most people’s setups, be hidden out of sight. Why not hide something that’s even just slightly ungainly? All sorts of ungainly stuff, everywhere in life, is hidden out of sight. That’s a design cheat.

This reads like a brief from Apple’s marketing department given to a sales rep.

The external power supply could have been internal, all right; the iMac would have been a bit thicker, but still thin enough to be a striking design. It would have worked. It would have produced an equally elegant iMac with all its ports in the main unit. It probably wouldn’t have been a show-off design like this, but really, I don’t see any other reason behind the iMac’s thinness other than, We made it this thin because we can.

Is there any usefulness behind this absolute thinness? No. While I never liked thinness for thinness’ sake in computers, I could understand the argument in favour of having a thin laptop because it also means having a lightweight machine you can easily carry with you anywhere. In machines like the MacBook Air and the 12-inch retina MacBook, thinness can be considered a feature. In a desktop computer? It’s merely wow factor. It’s just looks. Is it good design? I don’t think so. Gruber talks about ‘design cheat’. It’s actually a compromise.

Gruber:

Why use an external power supply with a non-portable desktop computer? I think that’s the wrong question. The right question is: Why should MacBooks and iOS devices be the only devices that look as thin as possible? Apple has, in fact, done this before, but only sporadically. The 20th Anniversary Mac (1997), G4 Cube (2000), and the first few generations of Mac Mini (2005–2009) all had external power supplies. These M1 iMacs, I suspect, won’t be the last.

Well, in the case of the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, this machine featured a unique sound system by Bose, with integrated stereo speakers in the main unit, and a subwoofer built in an external Bass unit. The power supply necessary to power both the Mac and the subwoofer would certainly have been too bulky to be put in the main unit. Since the Mac came with an external subwoofer, it simply made perfect sense to put the power supply there.

The Power Mac G4 Cube came with a big and heavy power brick. You can see its size compared to the Cube’s in this image (taken from eBay):

This power supply wasn’t external just because this way Apple could make the Cube as compact as it was. If this power supply had been an internal component, the Cube wouldn’t have been just taller — its whole design would probably have been different and, essentially, much more similar to any other tower-shaped Power Mac G4 of the time. This power supply is very powerful, capable of powering both the Cube and an attached Studio or Cinema Display with the ADC connector. A power supply like this gets hot and needs proper ventilation. By making it external and in a perforated chassis, Apple could make a smaller and silent desktop setup (remember, the Cube was passively cooled like the iMac G3; it didn’t have an internal fan) where neither the Cube nor the power brick needed active cooling. This is a much better example of that ‘design cheat’ Gruber talks about.

In the case of the Mac mini, the reason for having an external power supply is right there in the Mac’s name. The point was to keep the Mac as small as possible because that was (and is) the defining feature of the Mac mini. Apple then managed to put the power supply inside the mini, because in later Mac mini units the internal components were smaller or removed (like the optical drive).

So, let’s recap:

• In the case of The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, the benefit of an external power supply was to allow the Mac to have a unique and powerful sound system. It wasn’t just a matter of having a good-looking machine.
• In the case of the Power Mac G4 Cube, the benefit of an external power supply was to have a compact and silent desktop machine that was still capable of directly powering ADC displays with just a cable, so that the user didn’t have to deal with two power bricks, one for the Cube and one for the display.
• In the case of the first generations of Mac minis, the benefit of an external power supply was to have a small desktop computer. It wasn’t a purely æsthetic reason. The Mac mini was not designed to look cool, but to be usefully compact. Its compactness and small size is its defining feature and what makes it still a versatile machine today (Macminicolo will surely agree).
• In the case of the new M1 24-inch iMacs, the benefit of an external power supply is… what? That so you can have the thinnest desktop machine ever? Okay. And that’s useful, how? Thin and light, some will argue. Sure, a light desktop computer is great when you need to take it with you when working out and about— oh, wait. Yeah, yeah, the answer is: the benefit of an external power supply in these M1 iMacs is that so they can look cool. It’s the looks. Just that.

Gruber:

The result of putting the Apple TV-sized power supply out of sight is that the M1 iMac itself looks like it’s just a display. Maybe that’s true of the Intel iMacs too, but the M1 iMac not only looks like it’s just a display, it looks like it’s a very thin display.

I own a 2017 21.5‑inch 4K retina iMac. It doesn’t look thick when I look at its profile. The curved, tapered design makes it look like a thin display indeed. Sure, not razor-thin as the new iMacs, but still, it’s only 5 mm thin at its edge. And it’s a very balanced design overall, both in terms of visuals and weight. It’s not a heavy desktop machine (it weighs 5.6 kg, essentially 1 kilogram more than the M1 iMacs), but it has sufficient heft you don’t feel it may topple if accidentally hit or if it gets yanked by a cable. And it has a very useful array of ports: four USB‑A, two USB‑C Thunderbolt 3, Ethernet, and an SD card slot.

The design of the new M1 iMacs… I don’t know. I even read someone who used the word daring, but what is the dare? Who gets to make the thinnest all-in-one desktop computer? Good, now what? What’s the purpose?

You may say, Sometimes things are just designed to look cool, and that’s okay, I guess. I think it’s a philosophy that works best with objects that aren’t everyday tools, but that’s me.

But even with some past Apple computers where it was clear that the primary purpose of their design was to look different and distinguishable from other PCs (think of the iMac G3 or the first colourful clamshell iBooks, or the Power Mac G3 Blue & White, and the following generations of Power Macs), there was at least one element in that design that made it also practical and smart. A common denominator of all those past Macs I’ve mentioned was their handles. All those machines had smartly integrated handles to lift and move them around. There was more of course, but even this small detail was enough to give their design a certain depth and purpose. These new iMacs are as razor-thin as their design is razor-shallow.