Apple + Their Kate Moss Thang.

tiny keyboard
Originally uploaded by benbarren

From the aptly titled Back in Skinny Jeans, on the iMac tagline which pundits are reading gender into : "The new iMac. You can't be too thin. Or too powerful." There is definitely a second year undergrad sociology thesis here.

Skinny Jeans : "I thought it was interesting that Apple would use a body image metaphor to describe their newest iMac design. To continue the metaphor, could the iMac be suffering from the same societal pressures to be thin as us women? Is there such a thing as computerexia-nervosa? If the iMac, the most fashionable desktop computer around isn't thin enough, does that mean it isn't good enough or lovable enough for us consumers? Let's see."

I also liked the Signal:Noise blog on the iMac, which while an obvious point to make, is one we were nattering about beforehand (and the argument applies in reverse too : currently the ipod UI looks so out of date because of the iphone, and even Jobs today said a "touch-screen" Mac was an active "research project" already) : "The old iMac basically looked like a huge iPod and the new iMac looks like an iPhone. I love watching them iterate and evolve. Each product playing off the next. Each new material finding its way into new products. This is design at its best."