The line of peripherals coming out for Apple's forthcoming iMac grows ever longer. This time, Hewlett Packard is reportedly planning to release USB scanners that will be compatible with the cutest computer on the block, according to Mac OS Rumors. That's good news, as until now, scanners for the iMac were relatively scarce; whereas multiple storage devices have been announced, only Umax had committed to releasing a USB scanner with iMac-compatible drivers. And as we always say, choice (and competition) is good.

But here's the interesting thing: Rumors claims that the only difference betweens HP's existing USB scanners will be the bundled driver and the casing, which we expect will be "iMac-friendly." Let's see; Iomega's iMac Zip drive has a translucent blue case, Syquest's iMac SparQ is translucent red, Imation's iMac Superdisk mimics the iMac's colors and textures almost perfectly. Sensing a trend? The promise of USB on the iMac was that it would eventually open up all sorts of PC-only peripherals to the Mac side, since manufacturers would only have to write Mac-compatible drivers. But instead of just writing new software, it appears that vendors are, more often than not, also changing their hardware designs to be more iMac-like in style. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but we find it sort of ironic to see manufacturers voluntarily changing their hardware when they don't need to.

What that willingness really shows is that these manufacturers expect competition to be fierce as they battle for iMac owners' dollars. Say you're Jane or Joe iMac-Owner: which would you rather buy, a drab and boring looking flatbed scanner, or one that's sparkling, translucent, and complements the computer you'll be using it with? Apple's ushering in the long-anticipated Age of Computer Style, in which looks and industrial design become much more important factors in the buying process than they once were. Anyway, for those of you who want to track the list of peripherals being released for the iMac, we've found iMac2day's list to be pretty comprehensive. It's a fairly sizeable list for a computer that's still a month away... We have no doubt that USB will catch on in a big way, and we're very comfortable with Apple moving to the new interface as its standard.