iMac Turns 10

UnknowingFool writes "Ten years ago, Apple announced the original iMac. In some ways it was Apple returning to its roots with an all-in-one design, but in other ways it was a departure from the normal. Certainly it didn't look like any other computer. Apple dropped SCSI, their proprietary connectors, and the floppy drive. Instead Apple used USB for all peripherals including the ergonomically uncomfortable hockey puck mouse. At the time, both the lack of a floppy and the inclusion of USB were much criticized. In hindsight, these moves are now considered forward thinking."

iFirst?

iFirst?

10 years already?

Yikes, Im feeling old...

It just worked

I think the emphasis should not be on the hardware, but on the package. True, it used USB (like the PowerMac G3 before it), but at that time this was just a faster replacement for the ADB bus that Apple had used as an universal bus before, and SCSI had been replaced by IDE as an internal connector before.

The major point of the iMac was the "just works" philosophy, as pointed out in some Apple ads that had a kid set up the iMac including internet access in a fraction of a time a HP engineer could do it with a PC. It was all about reducing the complexity that network access, multimedia and all the other nifty features had brought to computing during the last years. And that theme stuck with the iPod and the iPhone and is now widely regarded as the best way to bring technology to the masses.

So it was a revolutionary machine, just like the original Mac, and the hardware was the smallest part. I still have the original box, maxed to 128MB RAM and running MacOS 10.3. Just in case, because it "just works."

Re:It just worked

True, it used USB (like the PowerMac G3 before it),

The Blue&White PowerMac G3 was released after the iMac, not before. The beige G3 did not have USB.

People weren't criticizing USB on the iMac as a replacement for ADB; they were criticizing it as a replacement for serial and parallel. When the iMac was announced, there were no USB printers on the market. None. That would mean that if you bought an iMac, you couldn't print from it. And the only USB scanner most people had ever seen was this one [youtube.com].

Of course, the release of the iMac created a huge market for USB peripherals; Epson was the first to step up to the plate and release a USB printer. It was translucent blue.

Re:

You can't go wrong hooking up an iMac (unless you don't know to connect the mouse to the keyboard).

I know that person; he keeps phoning me for advice. Does anyone know of a service that will home deliver a clue?

I can remember

Working at CompUSSR right about the time the iMac's were starting to become available. Maybe it was the second model that came in your choice of "flavors"? Don't recall exactly. What I do remember is that in the Wichita, KS store you could get pretty much any color you wanted, except the purple ones. The purple they used was almost an exact match for K-State purple, and people were buying them as soon as they hit the sales floor. That's when I knew computers had changed.

Re:I can remember

I spent a couple days as an Apple representative in Circuit City, making sure their sales guys knew what iMacs could do. In addition to Apple's demo software, I brought in a copy of Unreal Tournament and an Ethernet crossover cable. Of course you can't really play UT without a two-button mouse, and iMacs at that time were shipping with hockey pucks [lowendmac.com], so I asked the sales guys if there was a PC with an extra USB mouse we could borrow.

They had no idea that an HP USB mouse could be plugged into a Mac.

They had also never heard of Unreal Tournament before, although a very attractive girl from the appliances department wandered over and mentioned that she had seen her boyfriend playing it at home. I was shocked that none of the computer salesmen were aware of such a popular game. It was definitely an eye-opening experience.

This is why Apple now has their own retail stores.

Cat got your tongue?

Good system, with the benefit of hindsight.

Of course, at the time, we all thought it was a joke, 'cos we aren't your average consumer. I thought getting rid of the floppy was a good idea though, even at the time. Damn floppy disks.

It wasn't all roses.

At the time, both the lack of a floppy and the inclusion of USB were much criticized. In hindsight, these moves are now considered forward thinking.

On the other hand the hockey-puck mouse was a disaster, and its descendants (down to and including the Mighty Mouse) are still ergonomic nightmares. The iMac keyboard was also pretty but unpleasant to use compared to the ADB keyboards, and Apple still hasn't really recovered. Luckily PC USB keyboards and Mice work well with the Mac, and I'm using a Microsoft keyboard and Microsoft mouse on mine.

It's as if a thousands hands screamed out in pain

...And then were silenced ... only to scream out in pain again.

The original iMac brought two major travesties to the personal computer industry. One was the mistake that was puck mouse. That thing caused more carpal tunnel syndrome then the whole porn industry. The second was the Throw out and Replace mentality it pushed on consumers. Yes, you could upgrade the memory and you MIGHT be able to replace a dead drive. However real upgrades were right out. Plus accessing anything in the original iMAC with its obtrusive CRT monitor was a nightmare. I kept my PC going for 6 years with incremental upgrades. The iMac might last you 2-3 years max!

Re:It's as if a thousands hands screamed out in pa

The second was the Throw out and Replace mentality it pushed on consumers.

I don't think the iMac did more or less to foster this mentality. My parents bought a 33 MHz Acer in the mid 90s. 4 years later, it's dying, the processor I'd replaced in 1999 wasn't cutting it, and 8 MB of RAM cost, well... a lot.

But look, a new Pentium-class HP! And it comes with a monitor, and a free printer with mail-in rebate. Bought it, trashed the Acer and corresponding dot-matrix printer.

Fast forward 4 years. The HP is dragging. Windows ME just didn't do it any favors. But look, a new Pentium II Dell! And it comes with a free monitor and a free printer (with mail-in rebate). Bought it, trashed the HP and corresponding inkjet printer.

Fast fowrard 4 years. The Dell is dragging. But look, a Sony VAIO!

In the meantime, the lamp iMac my then-girlfriend now-wife bought in college (2002 or 2003) is still running strong.

Re:It's as if a thousands hands screamed out in pa

Actually the original iMac had an upgradable processor and some sort of system-bus interface slot that was later used by several companies to produce FireWire and other cards for the system.

But frankly I think it's ridiculous to expect the average person t

Re:It's as if a thousands hands screamed out in pa

However real upgrades were right out.

Unless you count the upgrade cards from Powerlogix and Sonnet, which were just about the only way to upgrade any Macintosh's CPU. The iMac wasn't exactly a new direction for Apple in this regard.

Plus accessing anything

Re:

That's true. I go tired of my pointer going sideways when it should be going up.

So can we now be told...

...what the purpose of that "mezzanine" bus was for? As I recall the original iMac had this expansion bus that was called the "mezzanine" that apparently disappeared in subsequent models, never to be seen again.

I also seem to recall somebody actually released a product or something that used it, though I can't remember anything about it.

Re:So can we now be told...

There was, I believe a SCSI adapter for it and a Voodoo2 video card. The voodoo2 was the best upgrade you could get for one of those at the time.

I'm still not sure what it was supposed to be for, either.

Re:

Absolutely correct. We bought a floppy drive with our Bondi-Blue rev.B iMac (it read 120MB "Super Disks" also, but we never used that). We needed it to copy old files from our previous Mac (which didn't have Ethernet). We (well, actually my wife) contin

Re:Hmm...

I would say that iPod/iTunes actually saved Apple

No, Apple was already back on its feet financially by the time the iPod shipped.

-jcr

Re:Hmm...

I would say that iPod/iTunes actually saved Apple

No, Apple was already back on its feet financially by the time the iPod shipped.

But Apple got "back on its feet financially" largely because of cost cuts and downsizing (started by Amelio), not from increased revenues. If I remember correctly, the revenues didn't really start "rolling in" until the iPod became a cultural phenomenom.

I remember Steve Jobs's first use (I'm pretty sure) of his "One Last Thing" catchphrase at Macworld 1998 to announce Apple's first quartly profit in ages [news.com]. However, revenues were down half a billion dollars from the same quarter the previous year ($1.6 billion down from $2.1 billion).

Three years later [news.com], quarterly revenues would be down to about $1 billion and Apple would be losing money again. Apple had a net loss for the year 2001 and a net operating loss in 2003. Revenues/profits bounced back, then took off in 2004 and 2005. Note that iTunes Music Store and iTunes for Windows were launched/released during 2003. In January 2007, even with increased Mac sales, 48% of revenues were from iPod sales [wikipedia.org].

A nice page with Apple's income data over the last ten years: AAPL - Apple, Inc. Stock Report | Financial Statements [morningstar.com]

I'm not sure if the iPod "saved" Apple, but I don't for sure if Apple could have continued with Mac sales being their primary revenue source (without the iPod halo effect and a smaller share of the market).

Re:Hmm...

I don't think you can really accurately say that it was either the iMac or the iPod that saved Apple. Apple was never on the verge of shuttering its building, even though some pundits liked to pretend it was. Even in its lowest days, it still had lots of loyal fans, smart engineers, and a good pile of cash. Apple's biggest problem was a lack of focus. It had a huge and diverse product line that spread its resources too thin, and made it really hard to get some things done (IE, a revamped operating system).

The iMac is sort of a cornerstone example of the focus that Apple found. Instead of selling dozens of different desktop computers, they started selling just two, the iMac and the Powermac workstations. Instead of selling you Apple branded printers/scanners/cameras with your Mac, they gave you a couple USB ports and pointed you towards some third party devices.

The same focus that lead to the iMac eventually allowed Apple to release OS X, and then the iPod. The iPod has allowed Apple to reinvent itself to a significant degree, but I think they'd still be around even if their adventures into music hadn't happened. They wouldn't be near as big as they are now, but they'd still exist, they'd still be selling computers, and they'd still have lots of fans.

Re:

Apple was never on the verge of shuttering its building, even though some pundits liked to pretend it was.

Actually, that's not quite correct. There was a low point in '96, when Gil Amelio pulled off a pretty amazing trick and got emergency bank fundi

Re:

I don't think you can really accurately say that it was either the iMac or the iPod that saved Apple. Apple was never on the verge of shuttering its building,

Of course Apple was on the verge of closing. They were beleagured. John Dvorak told me so.

Re:

Instead of giving somebody a floppy with a copy of a work recorded on it, you could e-mail a copy to her.

No, they would just put it on a CD.

The use case with CD-R is a lot different from the use case with a floppy or USB flash drive in three ways that I can see:

Your reasons are real nice except for the fact that floppy was long dead before the mass adoption of flash. Flash drives didn't even come out until late 2000 and by then floppy was already all but dead.

Re:iblame imac . . .

Look at the bright side, the iEra ended the period where everything ended in Tron.

Re:

In my mind, Apple really missed the boat on that one. First of all, Palm was still pretty big in '98. Apple should have gotten over their failure with the Newton and their NIH-ness, recognized how great Palm was, and actively promoted the ability to wirele