[ams6110]

Even the first Mac was pretty gorgeous compared to something like an IBM PC or clone.

A period where they did lose their elegance was when Jobs was in exile, they started looking like pretty ordinary (though still decent) PC systems.

[zachrose]

Indeed:

>> Esslinger convinced Jobs that zero-draft tooling was essential. As well as gaining a subtle but powerful precision to the shape of Apple's cases, it decreased their actual size. A zero-draft enclosure could fit more tightly around the components within, and, despite the tooling expense, the resulting decrease in plastic could eventually decrease costs. Moreover, zero-draft molding, being an unusual, complex and expensive technology, helped prevent a growing problem for Apple: unauthorized clones.

http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/design/design2.html

[brudgers]

That's not aesthetics.

[brudgers]

>Even the first Mac was pretty gorgeous"

It was the same beige as everything else and had the same square corners. It was aesthetically equivalent to a C64 or a PET 16 or any one of a large number of name brands.

That's not to say it wasn't sound industrial design, only that it's aesthetics didn't differentiate it in the way the first iMac's aesthetics differentiated it.