The journey from the scrappy Apple of the 1970s to the world-conquering trilliondollar titan of today has been a long one, and Apple hasn’t always travelled that road in a straight line. Nestled among Apple’s many blockbuster products, you’ll also find many products that didn’t quite catch in the same way as the iPhone. Some were years ahead of their time, some were ideas that Apple simply decided not to explore further, and some really should have been left in the meeting room.

As we’ll discover, Apple has also made some very beautiful versions of its best-known products in order to raise funds for the charity Product (RED) – products that have sold for more than most people spend on a house.

Over the next few pages we’re going to look at the times Apple followed its motto of ‘Think Different’ – sometimes a little different, sometimes very different, and sometimes a bit too different. These are the deepest of deep cuts, the products Apple tends to keep locked away in its vaults, the weird and the wonderful. Come with us as we discover Apple products made of gold, strange hybrids of different devices, possibly the ugliest Mac ever made and six pairs of rather funky-looking socks…

1 iMac G3 Flower Power / Blue Dalmatian (2001) These were only on sale for a few months, but the Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian Macs are among the most memorable Macs of the late 90s and early 00s – possibly because they were so divisive. Then again, even the original Bondi Blue iMac attracted derision when it first launched, and that turned out to be the most important Mac since the Apple II. These somewhat ‘wackier’ models might not have been the biggest sellers for the company but they represent the Steve Jobs-era Apple at its most creative and playful.