It's certainly not the most interesting period. The development of the Snow White language and the multiple prototypes that never went out hint at what Apple would do in those 20 years. The iMac, iPhone are interesting, but are interesting for the details - the "friendliness" of the first iMacs, the psychedelic ones (the Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power), the sleekness of the iPhone's interface are all details. The pioneering work had already been done and those roads were somewhat explored, some saved for the time we'd have the technologies for it.

For comparison: https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Simple-Early-Design-Years/dp/389...

This was not before the Macintosh as the author points out.

Hartmut Esslinger prototyped the "MacPhone" in a study in 1984 after the success of the Macintosh. [1] Other prototypes in this series were part of the Snow White project. [2]

Information sourced from "Keep It Simple: The Early Design Years of Apple" by Hartmut Esslinger. [3]

[1] http://imgur.com/MMYDogd [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_design_language [3] https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Simple-Early-Design-Years/dp/389...