The Tech Behind Apple's Impossibly Thin New iMacs
The 27-inch iMac is only 5mm thick at its edges. Photo: John Bradley/Wired — We know Apple has a love affair with thin. The iPhone 5 is the thinnest iPhone ever. The MacBook Air could very well be used to slice bread.
Context & Ripple Effects
Thinness has been Apple's signature spec for six years: rumors of an ultrathin MacBook Pro surfaced back in 2006, the MacBook Air made the wedge famous in 2008, and the September 2012 iPhone 5 launch billed that phone as the thinnest iPhone yet. The new 27-inch iMac closes the loop by importing that language into the one product category where thin buys nothing functional — a desktop sits on a desk, unplugged from battery or pocket constraints.
First-order effects
- Apple's desktop line now carries the same industrial-design identity as its portables, with the 27-inch iMac tapering to just 5mm at its edges, making the machine itself a demonstration of Apple's manufacturing technique rather than merely a spec-sheet refresh.
Second-order effects
- Rival PC makers' all-in-one desktops are pushed into an aesthetic arms race on a metric — edge thickness — that has no performance payoff, forcing them to spend on display lamination and assembly methods purely to keep pace visually.
Third-order effects
- If thinness keeps migrating across categories as it did from the Air to the iPhone to now the iMac, thickness itself hardens into a marketing specification for desktops, shifting competition among computer makers further from internals toward industrial design.
The trend: Apple is systematically extending its thinness playbook from laptops and phones into desktops, making sub-centimeter profiles the visible proof point of its manufacturing advantage.