iMac (Mid 2007)

Apple put the iMac in aluminum and glass in August 2007. It has looked broadly like that ever since. The white polycarbonate and clear plastic had run since 2002 and was starting to look like a leftover from the iMac G3 era. What replaced it was an anodized aluminum enclosure, edge-to-edge glass over the display, a slimmer profile, a new aluminum keyboard and a revised Mighty Mouse. Core 2 Duo processors from 2.0 to 2.8GHz gave enough headroom for iLife '08, which had just rebuilt iMovie, and for the increasingly heavy interface in Mac OS X. Reviewers liked the look almost without exception, reading it as a return to Apple's minimalist register after several playful years. The glass was the complaint. Reflections under bright light or sunlight annoyed photographers and editors constantly, and professional users kept saying so for years while buying them anyway. Aluminum chassis, glass front, tapering profile. Apple iterated on that with small changes through 2009 and onward, until the M1 iMac finally broke it in 2021. This is where the iMac stopped being a colorful appliance and started being the machine people picture.