The 5 coolest-looking Macs you probably haven't heard of

Summary

Apple used to be more experimental with Mac designs, whether out of necessity or genuine interest.
Sometimes this succeeded, as in the case of the iMac G4, but there were also notable failures, like the Power Mac G4 Cube.
The last radical Mac design was arguably the 2013 Mac Pro, sometimes dubbed “the trashcan.”

Apple has, in some ways, become a significantly more conservative company in the past decade. While we’ve seen it launch new categories like the Apple Watch and the Vision Pro, and even abandon a costly attempt at the Apple Car, most of its products have pursued a gradual evolution. Someone with 2017’s iPhone X would instantly recognize the hardware and software in 2024’s iPhone 16 Pro.

The company used to be more experimental with major products, particularly Macs. In some cases, this was out of necessity — Apple was in dire straits when it launched the first iMac — but often, it was a matter of prestige or testing out new design philosophies. If you encounter one of the Macs below in the wild, what you’re really seeing is an abandoned evolutionary branch.

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1 The JLPGA PowerBook 170

Almost a spoof of the 1990s

The regular PowerBook 170 was a respectable, if very expensive laptop when it launched in 1991. A $4,600 sticker price (well over $10,000 today, adjusted for inflation) got you a 25MHz 68030 processor, paired with a 9.8-inch monochrome display. There’s far more power in even the cheapest Apple Watch, but at the time, the laptop was enough to get serious work done on the road.

In 1992, a special edition of the 170 was produced to mark that year’s Japanese Ladies Professional Golf Association tournament. Whereas the standard laptop was gray, the JLPGA version was multicolored in a very ’90s fashion, as if it came right off the set of In Living Color. Only 500 units were ever produced, making it one of the rarest Macs in existence, especially in fully functional condition. As of this writing, models on eBay were selling for the price of a new car.

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2 The iMac G4

A reinterpretation of the desktop PC

Apple / Pocket-lint

Following the success of 1998’s original gumdrop iMac, Apple’s design head at the time, Jony Ive, got to work on the idea of replacing its CRT screen with an LCD. Ive presented then-CEO Steve Jobs with a vertically integrated prototype, but Jobs sent him back to the drawing board, dissatisfied with its practicality and aesthetics. Ultimately, sunflowers the pair saw in Jobs’ backyard served as inspiration.

Launched in 2002, the iMac G4 looks more like the lamp in Pixar’s animated logo than any modern system. You could raise, lower, tilt, and swivel its LCD at will, since the screen was attached to a custom arm mounted on top of the actual guts of the computer. The product sold well and was generally well-reviewed — but despite hopes by Jobs, later Macs were forced to abandon the sunflower design language, given problems with processor heat and bigger displays.

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3 The Power Mac G4 Cube

A victim of form over function?

The G4 Cube is one of Apple’s more infamous failures. Released in July 2000, it attempted an ultra-minimalist design, compressing just about everything into a shape “floating” in acrylic glass. It made a number of sacrifices to achieve this, to start, requiring an external monitor while ditching expansion slots. You also had to plug USB and FireWire cables into the bottom, and accessing the Cube’s internals meant pulling it out of the acrylic with a pop-out handle. There were no audio jacks, and it couldn’t fit full-length video cards. These things alone made it controversial, but it was doomed by being more expensive than an iMac without the expansion options of a regular Power Mac.

Sales were poor, and Apple quickly moved on to other design concepts. Nevertheless, the Cube went on to inform a lot of future products, such as the iPod, Mac mini, and Mac Pro.

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4 The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh

The Mac equivalent of the Apple Watch Edition

Apple

Despite its financial problems at the time, Apple marked 1997 with a limited, luxury model of the Macintosh that cost $7,499, equivalent to nearly $15,000 today. It foreshadowed later iMacs by using a very vertical design, and featuring a 12.1-inch LCD well before the launch of the iMac G4. Internal specs included a vertically-mounted CD-ROM drive, a 250 MHz PowerPC 603ev processor, and 2GB of storage.

Those things alone contributed to the computer’s cost, but on top of that, Apple incorporated a TV tuner, a Bose sound system with a subwoofer, and even video capture hardware. If you were somehow able to afford one, Apple is said to have used a concierge service to hand-deliver it to buyers.

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5 The 2013 Mac Pro

Apple’s last radical Mac design

Pocket-lint / Apple

By 2013, Apple had largely given up on any major changes to the Mac form factor. iMacs, MacBooks, and Mac minis had all settled into largely familiar forms. However, the Mac Pro was due for a refresh, and Apple decided to break with earlier tower designs by launching a compact black cylinder you could fit on any desk. To keep heat under control, the new model used a single fan to push air through a central dissipation core, with the actual circuit boards facing outwards from it.

The computer was sometimes nicknamed “the trashcan” by fans and critics alike. Initial response was relatively positive, in fact, but the only internal components that could easily be upgraded were RAM and flash storage — you otherwise had to rely on USB and Thunderbolt accessories, or perform risky modifications on your own. That might not have been an issue except that Apple left the Pro’s specs unaltered until 2019, by which point it was severely out of date. Subsequent Pros went back to a tower format.