Why beige?

Re: Why beige?

i would imagine that it has to do with its neutrality in just about any setting. it's not as dull as gray, or as flashy as bright white. the off-white of beige works pretty well in places like offices.

apple started making those products that stood up for themselves, made their own style rather than trying to fit in with anything else, and dared to be flashy. it was great, and everyone tried to follow... and now the PC market has a bunch of off-black s**t computers, which essentially do the same thing as beige--try to fit in without changing the style of the place... unfortunately, they really do, and not in a good way, ever.

Apple really did shock the industry pretty well. It was pretty cool, and now they are in their "mature and beautifully eloquent" stage, in my opinion. I can't imagine what they will start to look like years from now, but I definitely love the whole brushed metal/black look for the Pro models and clear/white look for the consumer models.

The iMacs freaked me out a little when they came out because they were so different. It didn't take long to see that they made a huge impact. They didn't make Apple the leader of the free world, but every lamp and pencil holder for the next 3 years was some "off-iMac" color. Even the new George Foreman grills are iMac colors. The impact of those machines goes way beyond computing.

Anyway, why beige? Probably as was already stated it goes with most surroundings without being too offensive. It also takes wear/aging well. I did see some black cases as far back as about 1995 but nobody bought them until the iMac. Then the gates opened for boring emulations and the god-awful Alienware case.

it was for offices. no thought was given to what consumers might want, or that offices would want anything else. check out the way offices looked in the late 70's and 80's to see why this worked... most of apple's computers were actually more grey than beige, to better suit the monochromatic corporate enviroments of the 80s. apple wasn't the first to add color/style, but they were the first to bring it to a consumer audience. i think i remember seeing silicon graphics workstations that were purple...

pnw

Originally posted by paulwhannel
most of apple's computers were actually more grey than beige, to better suit the monochromatic corporate enviroments of the 80s.

Click to expand...

I think the color was called "platinum"...

vSpacken

I was just about to say that, vollspaken. I think the original SE was the first Mac to sport platinum.

I' quite sure that they also did a study as to what showed dust and dirt. Beige just doesn’t show the dirt as black, gray or white does. It also matched, to one extent or another, ever other business machine out there from FAXs, to copiers, to PBX machines.

The system architecture was bold, but the body conformed to what was acceptable.