Apple’s iMac line hasn’t been updated since May 3rd, 2011. On average, that makes an update almost a year overdue. So you know a big update is coming, and rumor has it that when it comes, the new iMac will jettison the the optical drive to achieve a vastly thinner, teardrop form factor.
We were curious what that would look like, so we asked our designer Dan Draper to mock-up what a revised iMac with a thinner design would look like while largely retaining the iMac’s iconic portrait. The answer is familiar, and yet entirely new… the best iMac yet.
The new iMac is believed to be announced next week at Apple’s October 23rd event. Check out the full concept after the jump, and let us know what you think in the comments.
Over the past few years we’ve seen hundreds of fake iPhone mockups, some have been bizarre, while others looked so good we wished they were real. What’s been most surprising is that some of the weirdest looking concepts are actually fairly similar to prototypes Apple was working on in their labs.
Thanks to the evidence in the Apple vs Samsung trial, we got to see the different iPhone prototypes Apple was working on, so we’ve gone back and found 7 artists mockups that look a lot like prototypes Apple was working on.
Like a healthy baby in utero with all its fingers and toes showing on the ultrasound, we’ve now got a pretty good picture of what the next iPhone will look like: longer, thinner, a new metallic back, a smaller 19 pin dock connector and, of course, a bigger 4-inch display.
It’s going to be a beautiful phone, but what next? It’s unlikely that Apple will do another major iPhone revision for awhile, which means future iPhones will, for the forseeable future, probably just refine the forthcoming design.
Here’s a beautiful concept of what the iPhone’s design could look like in the next couple of years, courtesy of French designer Nak.
Italian designer Federico Ciccarese is well known throughout the blogosphere for his Apple product concepts. Chances are that you’ve seen his gorgeous iPad Mini and iPhone 5 concept designs in recent months.
Ciccarese has released a futuristic iPhone concept that takes a very different approach to wearable technology. Kinda creepy, right?
If Apple made an iCamera, it would look like this. The Iris, a concept design by Mimi Zou, is so pared down that it doesn’t even have one button. And like Apple’s designs, this minimal approach brings some compromises.
These Instaglasses make the whole world look retro-tastic.
Instaglasses. What a fantastic idea. Sadly only a concept (and surely destined to remain so), these special specs survey the scene before you and apply your choice of Instagram filter to the real world. You’ve heard the expression “seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses”? Well, these are retro-tinted glasses.
The chances of iOS 6 being anything like this video concept by Joost van der Ree are pretty slim: we already know most of what to expect in iOS 6, and across the board, it looks like an app — not feature — focused update.
But who cares? This still looks great. We’re not so sure about the redesign of the Notification Center to pull down under the home screen — this seems counter intuitive — or the need for a “Mission Control” for finding running apps — the existing task switcher is an expert feature unused by most people which works just fine for poiwer users — but we do love the major innovation of this mockup: “Flipcons”, which show all your app updates and notifications as an overlay that pops out of each individual app on the homescreen.
None of this stuff will be in iOS 6, of course. But maybe some of it will come via jailbreak, and if it doesn’t, there’s always iOS 7.
According to pre-WWDC scuttlebutt, iOS 6 won’t be a huge departure from what we’ve got now, at least when it comes to stand out system features. What we will see, however, is a total revision of Apple’s core apps, most noticeable in Apple’s totally overhauled, Google-free Maps app, along with a sexy new silver UI.
What will it all look like in action, though, on the new, possibly elongated iPhone 5, when it ships in September or October? Over on the Apple Core forums, user gizmosachin created some nice mockups of what all the pieces will look like when glued together.
Apple is expected to unveil iOS 6, the next major iteration of its software platform for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, at WWDC in two weeks. Not much is known about iOS 6, other than the new Maps app and the possibility of a more metallic look. Many have been speculating about what Apple could introduce, and we at Cult of Mac have a few ideas we’d like to see come to fruition.
The iOS jailbreak community has been innovating at a quicker pace than Apple for years. Jailbreakers had multitasking first, tethering first, iTunes WiFi sync first, and so on. There are many jailbreak concepts currently available for iOS 5 that we’d love to see Apple implement in iOS 6. That’s not to say that Apple will adopt all of these concepts, but we expect at least a few to show up in a way that only Apple can make happen.
There’s nothing that really needs changing about Apple’s patented “Slide to Unlock” functionality, but ever since Apple introduced the Smart Cover for the iPad 2, there’s been a conceptual disconnect between how you unlock an iPhone — by sliding — and how you unlock an iPad — by unfolding an origami-like cover off of the display.
It’s not really anything Apple needs to fix, but short of releasing a tiny little iPhone-sized smart cover, I think this “Fold To Unlock” design created by Anton Kudin is just an excellent conceptual bridge between the lockscreen and the smart cover.
Check out the concept in its full, high-res glory below.
![Seven Bizarre iPhone Concepts That Apple Almost Made For Real [Gallery]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-07-at-9.42.37-AM.jpg "Screen Shot 2012-09-07 at 9.42.37 AM")
![What The iPhone Could Look Like In 2013 [Gallery]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/IPHONE_6_-10c_nak_studio.jpeg "IPHONE_6_-10c_nak_studio")
![This Futuristic iPhone Concept Is A Bizarre New Take On Wearable Technology [Gallery]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/iPhone-002-brand.jpg "iPhone-002-brand")
![This Is What iOS 6 Running On The iPhone 5 Will Look Like [Gallery]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/x0BRA_medium.jpg "x0BRA_medium")
![Jailbreak Concepts That Apple Should Add In iOS 6 [Feature]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ios6jailbreak.jpg "ios6jailbreak")
