Free Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney

mostly beige boxes that had been designed for office cubicles. Brunner wanted to change that. “For years I wondered how the computer would evolve from a box into something more physically compelling that would fit better in the home,” said Brunner. His hope was that his team would come up with “concepts that would encourage people to select their computer the same way they would a piece of furniture or a home stereo.” 28
    Brunner also wanted to move away from the heavy, oversized CRT monitors standard on desktop computers. Instead, he wanted to fuse a desktop CPU with a flat-panel display. “We thought that flat panels would become mainstream; they were already mainstream on laptops.”
    Brunner’s October 1992 briefing document laid out his ideas and criteria for a high-design desktop Mac. It was, in effect, a challenge to the group’s designers and five outside consultants to come up with the best concepts.
    Brunner kept it loose: His basic call was for a high-design desktop Mac, powerful but with a minimum footprint. Brunner insisted that all concepts use new materials in new ways, including polished or brushed metal, wood, veneer and different types of coatings and finishes. Not only were there a minimum of other restrictions; the designers were actually invited to step outside of Apple’s established design language.
    Brunner did add another interesting wrinkle to the project: He wanted a machine that couldn’t be expanded with extra hardware cards and beefier internal components. Most home users never bothered to expand their machines, so he encouraged designers to forget expansion slots, freeing them to explore much thinner designs.
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    The initial concepts were wildly varied. One was inspired by the design of a classic Tizio lamp, with the guts housed in the base and the screen mounted on an arm that hovered in space. Another concept hid the main display and components inside a metallic exoskeleton.
    One of the most intriguing concepts came from Jony and Daniele De Iuliis, who teamed up to pitch a mid-range computer. Their design had a homely look and their goal was to create a machine affordable for those with a modest budget. They called it the “Domesticated Mac.”
    To keep the price down, they based it on a CRT monitor, not a pricier flat screen. It was basically a Classic Mac in a funky-looking case. It was an odd duck, resembling an old-fashioned wardrobe, with three feet and twin doors that covered the display. There were slots inside the doors for things like extra floppy disks. Jony and De Iuliis also put an analog clock in one of the doors. Cleverly installed, the clock would flip around so that it told the time when the door was open or closed.
    Brunner created his own Pomona project design. His concept closely aligned with his prescription for a futuristic computer with a slim profile and powerful components. Brunner designed a wide, curved enclosurecontaining a flat-panel display flanked by a pair of big stereo speakers. It was a computer-cum-stereo, perfect for the kind of multimedia experience promised by CD-ROMs, then new to the market. To keep it slim, he proposed to use the guts from a PowerBook notebook. It would be made from—of all things—black mahogany, like a concert piano.
    Since the other designers thought his concept looked more like a product from the high-end audio maker Bang & Olufsen than a PC, Brunner’s solution became the “B&O Mac.” The mating of a PC and stereo system was a novel idea at the time, and it generated a lot of excitement in the design studio. In fact, Brunner’s concept would trounce all other Pomona designs in focus groups in the summer of 1993 and, by the end of the project, was declared the winner of the Pomona competition.
    Nearly a year had passed since Brunner released his brief, but the group had a good idea of the basic shape and scope of the project. So far so good.
    To turn it into a real product, Brunner handed the