Apple turned 40 at the beginning of April. From humble begins in a Californian garage it has become the world’s most successful company. Here we look back at some of our personal favourite Apple products during that time.
For us the most striking thing about Apple products was that when we first started out in business back in the mid 90s everything was dominated by PC. Sure there were a couple of Macs but these tended to be used by the slightly extrovert graphics departments and they certainly weren’t seen as cool as the latest PCs running Windows 95.
That seemed to change in 1998 with the iMac. It was Jonny Ive’s first commission at Apple and the first product that Apple launched following Steve Jobs returning to the company. Designed for consumers to access the internet at home it was a Macintosh for the internet generation. The iMac was born and it saved Apple from bankruptcy.
For us as a company the iMac is the one we adore. It’s not just us either, whether it be the 27 or 21.5” versions they are be far and away our most popular leases. The range of businesses that we supply them to is equally broad. It doesn’t seem to matter if you are a marketing agency or a fast food franchise the iMac is loved by all.
The iPhone has to be our next choice. Many would argue that Steve Jobs was at his finest during the 2007 product launch. The iPhone was ground breaking and changed smartphones for ever. If you are like us and watch with amazement as your 2 year old swipes from photos to photos, pinching and zooming it seems hard to think that a device with such an intuitive OS wasn’t the norm. Prior to the iPhone we were all using Blackberry’s and well they were just boring.
The two products that we have mentioned so far may perform separate functions but they share one common trait. Their longevity. They didn’t just arrive and fizzle out. They have stayed the test of time and evolve.
With this in mind we decided that we weren’t going to vote for the iPod. Yes it became the world’s most favourite MP3 player but the iPhone now does what your iPod used to do and Apple hardly sell any of them anymore.
So that left us with the MacBook Air or the iPad. The argument for the Air is very strong. Again Jobs was on form when he pulled out a whole computer from an envelope. The design aspects of the Air led to a whole Ultrabook market and are very evident across Apple’s portable computers today.
However, we have a soft spot for the iPad. Even now an iPad 2 gets daily use in our house. Of course it’s old and with each iOS upgrade it seems to struggle more and more and it never really did replace our iMac or MacBook Air. However, it’s great for watching iPlayer in bed or for facetiming the family whilst you have breakfast and because of that we are kinda fond of it.
Perhaps that is the point about Apple and their products over the past 40 years. The have managed to generate a level of emotion that their competitors have failed to. At the end of the day they are just phones or computers and yet we queue for the latest model or read Apple rumours blogs to see when the latest Mac is coming out. As irrational as it may be you become fond of them.
We started the blog by saying that these were our favourite Apple products from the last 40 years. We would love to hear from you about what your favourite products are. Would it be the Apple II, the first Macintosh or the iBook? Whatever, your personal choice would be we would love to hear it.
