Spigen’s Got an Apple Watch Charger Stand Like a Mini, Retro iMac

Ugh. I’m now using the word “retro” to describe things that I remember using when they were new. It’s like how the classic rock stations are now full of music I used to shun as being too new when I was but a mere boy.

Spigen just released a stand for the Apple Watch’s magnetic charging cable that draws heavily from one of Apple’s most classic devices: a computer so interwoven into pop culture that it’s almost synonymous with Y2K.

a baby imac

Remember the Apple iMac G3? Well, maybe you don’t. Now everyone is “retro,” I suppose. It came at a time of great upheaval at Apple. It was near death, having slid into a slump by the late 1990s after the ouster of Steve Jobs.

Going in a completely new direction from the boring, beige boxes of Windows PCs that dominated at the time, Apple released the colorful iMac, later termed the iMac G3, in 1998 to a raucous reception.

The iMac was sleek, and more importantly, it was colorful. You could have it in a range of colors, the tinted plastic transparent to show off the guts of the iMac at a time when computers were still vexing, magic boxes to most people. To say it saved Apple as a company wouldn’t be an overstatement.

To celebrate that, Spigen released the Classic C1 Charger Stand in three colors: tangerine, graphite, and ruby. It doesn’t have quite the color range as the iMac, but it features a transparent case, like its inspiration.

This is just the stand. You’ve got to supply the charger yourself, and the magnetic cable that hangs onto the Apple Watch while it’s charging. You should have the one that came with your Apple Watch, though.

There are more retro-themed (and colorful) accessories in what Spigen calls its C1 Collection. It’s a range of cases, chargers, and such inspired by classic Apple. “Classic” as in late ’90s/early Aughts. I’m still getting used to that.