In a February press release it was mentioned that there were “over 100,000 pre-orders” and Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing Philip Schiller stated that the response to iPod mini has been off the charts” foreshadowing the impact that the model would have.

The extraordinary reception of the iPod mini surprised even Apple which originally planned the model to just go after the high-end flash-based devices.

Hence, at the end of March, another press release was issued, warning that worldwide availability was postponed to July, due to the “much stronger than expected demand in the U.S. far exceeding the total planned supply”. In the release Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Operations Tim Cook was quoted saying that

“The iPod mini adds further momentum to the iPod, which is already the leading digital music player in the world.”

If we take a look at statistics by early 2004, Apple knew it had a hit with the iPod: in less than three years, the device had captured 31% of the U.S. market for mp3 players. Thanks to the release of the iPod mini Apple’s market share grew during 2004 and in January 2005 was at a staggering 65%.

As to which were the winning factors of the iPod mini making it the most successful iPod model ever the answer is simple and yet manifold. It was small in size and weight, extremely portable, designed with great care and with an eye to wearability.

It was also marketed as a must-have fashion item, not just encased in a stylish curved aluminium body but offered in five colors: silver, gold, pink, blue and green. In the following years Apple reproduced many of those characteristics in the second and fourth generation of the iPod nano which very much resembles a mini and in the second generation of the iPod shuffle.

The iPod mini and iPod nano pictures are “courtesy of Apple”

The images featured are from the new iPod lineup introduced in the September of 2009.

All images are © and courtesy of Apple.

The use of typography is a mainstay of Apple which has used it since the early Eighties to market products and most of all its brand. The ad for the Lombard PowerBook (also known as “Bronze Keyboard”) takes the use of typgraphy even further marrying the images of the laptop witha series of words in many languages (actually the same word and/or concept) alternating and speeding towards the viewer.

This style will be later used not only in promoting the follow-up, the PowerBook Pismo, but will also be part of all the intros to Apple’s operating systems.

In the 1999 ad “slim” and “slank” were Apple’s key words, still set in Apple Garamond as would the similar Mac OS 9 intro.
The last of the “classic” Mac OS also started the “Welcome” ritual which has been used (so far) in all of the Mac OS X intros since 2001 although set in the Lucida Sans and from 10.4 with an added 3D effect.

Unlike the much bigger 700, 800 and 900 models, the 605 was offered in a horizontal slim “pizzabox” case, which closely resembled those of the LC line.

While the innards of the 605 were indeed shared with that of the Performa/LC 475 -featuring a 68040 and a floppy drive- on the other hand the design of the case was unique, a fact that many books and websites overlook, incorrectly reporting them as identical.

The design of the Quadra 605 is much rounder and stylish and looks like a slimmed down version of the Quadra/LC/Performa 630. Gone is the front hoof of the LCs and the 605 lies flat, not inclined, on the surface, sporting four cute “feet” similar to those that adorn the base of the 630, 800/840 and 7×00 models.

The 605 can be seen as the missing link between the LCs and the 630: thanks to its small width and a clean front panel without a second slot for the optical unit, it has a very appealing design, which is minimal and elegant at the same time.

Image taken from Wikipedia

The Apple IIsi predates the Mac IIsi with whom it shares not only the name but also some form elements and is probably one of the lesser known Apple products of the Eighties. Its mastermind is Jean-Louis Gassèe, head of R&D after Jobs departure and it si just one of the many projects which were started after the successful launch of the Mac II in 1987.

The industrial design of Apple IIsi is of course heavily based on the form factor of the Apple IIgs for hardware reasons, but also shines on its own, thanks to the work of Ken Wood and Robert Brunner of the Palo Alto studio Lunar Design. In fact this was proably one of the jobs that helped Brunner later becoming the head of a reformed Apple IDG (Industrial Design Group), envisioning new guidelines and a brand new direction after the frogdesign era.

The new Power Mac G3 featured new copper-based PowerPC processors from 300 up to 400MHz (later upgraded to 450), an ATI RAGE 128 16MB video card, two USB and two 400 Mbps Firewire ports (an industry first), retained an ADB legacy port, and most of all was housed in a striking translucent blue and “ice” (white) minitower enclosure.

This enclosure not only brought the design concepts already seen on the iMacs (but christened on the eMate 300) to Apple’s Pro offerings but coupled that with a groundbreaking access mechanism that simplified access and expansion.

Code named “El-Capitan”, the case was considerably more easy to open than those of the previous minitower “beige” Power Macintosh G3s, which were introduced with the 8600 and 9600 models.

In fact it allowed the user to open the side of the computer with just one swift move (even while powered on) by pulling a lever and to expose entirely its motherboard, memory slots and expansion cards.

Pictures are courtesy of Apple and were taken from an old PR section of the Apple website.

To make the point more clear here are more examples, taken from a very wide spectrum of Apple products, strategies and eras.