Slashdot Mirror
R.I.P. Original iMac: 1998-2003
Joey Patterson writes "CNET News.com reports that, after five years, Apple has stopped selling the gumdrop-shaped iMac to the general public."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Apple also released today an Xserve Cluster Node that has no graphics card and starts at $1000 than the high-end Xserve.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Ahh, the end of an age. The only computer my mother ever used that almost completely replaced my usefulness.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Perhaps now that people realize Apple has stopped selling fruit colored computers we can see the end of all the pink and purple translucent plastic office products...
I'll miss the old iMacs, they really sent a shockwave throught the PC community (prompting many users to get one even if they didnt know what the hell they were getting into in the mac world), and a lot of new ideas and concepts.
I especially liked the manuals... the shortest manuals ever, something like 20 words right? But anyways, I've gotta hand it to Apple for those things lasting as long as they did, and bringing a new style and appeal to the computer market. Live long and prosper iMac..
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
As long as they keep selling the eMac, how significant is this announcement? I mean, provided that you can spend the extra coin, the eMac seems like a better choice what with the larger CRT and all.
Still, it will be hard to make a fishtank out of the flat-panel iMACs...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
...but still avalailable to educational establishments.
What's with that? They think that schools are so used to old equipment, they can continue to flog their discontiued lines to them???!
I wonder if this means the newspaper comic Fox Trot will retire its iFruit computer.
This is the real signature
(Beats those shadows on the cave wall, don't it?)
It indeed is a sad day...
I never though they were too aesthetically pleasing. Though, I will say that they were pretty good (not underpowered or lacking in feature) when I used them in a Journalism class I took once.
...and it was like, beep beep beep... and it was, like, gone...
5 years is much longer time than your average x86 PC company would sell a computer for. I'm no Mac fanatic, in fact, I don't even own one, but I guess this goes to show that Apple does make solid products that last for a while.
and on the 9th day, God gracefully ate the gumdrop.
... you can buy the same form factor from Apple, albeit called an eMac.
"You have liberated me from thought."
It was cool, the only problem is that Apple never sells old systems and Mac addicts seem to be far less likely to sell their computers on ebay. Since I don't want to pay $800 for a computer I only want to play around with, that usually means the only macs I get are covered in grease...
Anyone know a good place to buy old (like 3-5 yr. old) Apple computers like imacs or ibooks?
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
I'm surprised that slashdot posted about the CNET article about the end of the original iMac instead of new clustering Xserve. I mean think about it. Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of...oh nevermind.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
As far as computing is concerned, the iMac was just a blip on the screen of desktop computing. But realize the impact the iMac had on industrial design for absolutely everything.
You couldn't swing a deat cat and not hit a differently colored George Foreman grill, a phone, a printer, a kitchen gizmo, some transparently housed electronic gizmo, another technologically-all-in-one-packaged device, or any combination of the two.
Lest we forget the bold step Apple gave us in dropping the floppy, and changing the way peripheral removeable storage designers view the desktop.
Old Macdonald had a farm.
e Mac
i Mac
e mac
i Mac
O Mac
'Course my fave is BigMac.
Best Windows Freeware
Slashdot finds links I never would have been able to guess on my own. I would like to ask the editors-- can I run "MS Word" on this Dell my son just bought for my birthday?
I suggest you read Slashdot
Runing a R.I.P Apple story (on the front page) on Troll Tuesday. This should be fun.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Hey, they are still available through educational channels. I just ordered another one given the success I have had with an iMac running Webvision. This site is a new iMac G3 running OS X and is getting on average 30 thousand hits/day and the machine is absolutely quiet with no fans so one can actually have their server up and running right next to your desk.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I don't think it's too much hyperbole to claim that the iMac was one of the most revolutionary computers -- ever. The all-in-one factor was important, certainly, though not unique by itself. Neither was USB, the lack of a floppy drive, or a round and colored case. But the combination of these (and others) in one radically different computer probably changed the history of personal computers. When was the last time you saw a large manufacturer sell a beige case? When was the last time you saw a computer that didn't come with USB? Even now, manufacturers are still slowly phasing out the floppy drive, something that Apple basically did with that one bombshell back in 1998. Love it or hate it, the iMac changed the face of computing forever, and will be remembered as such a pioneer in the annals of the history of personal computing.
::bows and gets off his soapbox::
-- shayborg
It was the thing that brought Apple back to the masses. However, now they have OS X to bring Apples to the geeks like me.
Um, they weren't the *same computer* they sold 5 years ago I'm afraid. I count 20 revisions made to that machine in 5 years. That gives each system a shelf life of about three months!
Uk apple store still has it, as does the French, Spanish, German, Austrian and Irish (and i'm guessing the rest of the world apart from The USA, but I'm too lazy to check any more countries.) They start from 999 or £649.
The new iMac is better in nearly every way, but one nice thing about the old CRT-based iMac is that it is difficult to damage.
CRTs are not bullet-proof, but they are much more "bored kid with a pen"-proof than LCDs.
So long dear friend! We will miss you! I had a rev. B. iMac Bondi Blue and it was one of my 1st investement on a Apple Computer. Lasted me 4 years and gave good service.
Long live the new iMac!
Apple is like a strange drug that you just cant quite get enough of they shouldnt call it Mac. They should call it crack
The eMacs are quite a bit bigger.
gumdrops.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Being a PC tech, I never really get to play with macs too much. I have had 3 with shot monitors come across my desk though.
:(
My buddy bought some Imac with firewire for $150 bucks. AV version I think it was called. Anyways he brought it over, I patched his OS9 to its latest patches. He had it for about 2 weeks until the monitor gave out.
So of course, he brings it back to me. Having never ripped one of these things open I was excited at the prospect of tinkering around with some new hardware. Before I grabbed a screwdriver I called apple.
tech: No matter what the problem is, hold the special programmers button on the side, it erases the nvram which will make your monitor work because it has a bad analog board.
After several attempts at this and failing he gave me something else to try.
tech: press the apple key + q r a t during bootup, again this will fix your problem.
Well, again that lead nowhere.
So with the help of my fine freind google, I found a PDF service manual and some more docs. I converted the imac into a pile of electronic parts, pressed some magic button inside and still, black screen
Eventually I read that the analog boards on these things go out quite frequently, the replacement cost of the board went way above the $150 my friend had originally paid for it. I talked him into getting an external monitor (works now) and things were happy again.
Alarm clock designers, cheap plastic toy manufactors, and eMachines annouced plans to "reinvent" their catalogs, creating whole new lines of items, based on the idea of a solid base, with a flexable-like and a flat screen interface.
A representative from eMachines was quoted as saying, "Good designers copy, great designers steal directly from Jonathon Ives."
Honestly, other than the "snow" colored version, I thought the iMac was pretty ugly... The new 17" however, very nice...
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
Some say that it's too bad that Apple is letting the iMac go. But Apple needs to keep progressing ever forward. Who needs a translucent easter egg with a 15 inch screen when Mini Me has a fly laptop with a 17 inch screen and a Super Drive? If nostalgia sold computers, Apple would still be rolling out the 128k.
That's not to say that the iMac was bad or anything. It was Apple's savior. We'd all like to see Apple continue to make great computers. To do that, it's gotta kick that old freeloading 5-year old out of the house.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
Yea, yea, the iMac saved Apple, and I appreciate that, but I am pretty much sick of bondi blue.
But the system was quickly becoming outdated. The G3 processor combined with the Rage 128 graphics (barely updated since its introduction) simply does not run OS X very well. On an early iMac, it's downright painful. The only remaining G3, the iBook, only runs X acceptably because of its better graphics chipset.
My brother has my old Bondi iMac 233mhz running the 10.2.4, and its still running great. Not to mention that he put in some extra memory, but then again, all computers could use extra memory.
I wonder if they are slimming down their product line in anticipation of the PPC 970 line that is *cough, September* soon to come.
I don't think this should be called as an RIP of the iMac, since the name still lives on, albiet its a totally different form factor.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
I'm not pleased with the trend of removing the floppy from computers. I consider myself lucky being able to find a new laptop model with a floppy couple of months ago.
From what I've seen, quite a bit of Mac users (faculty at my university) still use floppy with their computers through the usb-floppy. And when the classic iMac came out, LS-120 was still prevelant (remember those? superfloppy drive that took BOTH 120MB superdisks and 1.44 floppies). Perhaps Apple was intending to eliminate the floppy, but I think it's still in use.
$cat
Is the C-Family really being phased out? I don't think so.
Did the imac beat the C64's sales record for a single model? If so thats a pretty high mark to have attained.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I thought they dropped the gumdrop style when the LCD style came out, then changed the CRT model to the eMac...
Are they stopping sales of the eMac? show me someone who bought an CRT iMac recently please.
moo.
Well, the blip wasn't as small as you might think. Without iMac, Apple might have been very insignificant by now and OS X wouldn't have been the most succesfull (and arguably the most innovative) consumer-oriented flavour of UNIX ever.
Jules Stoop
1997, I was a die hard PC user just begging for a reason to 'switch' (back then you called it getting rid of Win95). On the software side the Mac OS was already showing its age badly and Rhapsody was a pariah. Enter the iMac. When it was going to be a time consuming clusterfuck to finally get everyone onto the OSX-UNIX-NeXT-Carbon-Blue Box(anyone remember that?)-Cocoa new Mac OS they innovated int he only space left..Well enter 2003 and OSX is just growing up and users are still clinging to classic boxes. But the imac - a hardware revolution that brought Apple just enough limelight and revenue to keep it afloat- 5 years later and a recent slashdot poll pegged apple as going out of business: Never...
It was an eye opening computer to own and i love my daily use of its decendent, the flat panel.
At the least they will live on for YEARS as macquariums.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Too bad that external USB floppy drives are the number 1 peripheral.
I actually don't mind. I think that computer design has stagnated on the PC platform. Everything seems to be a variant on the box design. Go back through all the mod articles on Slashdot and you'll notice a common element (Box embedded in concrete, box with a picture window, etc). Now can anyone give a technical reason why this should be so?
Dipping into my unreliable memory the significance of the iMac (in desktop computing) was removal of legacy items: the floppy drive and the old serial port. It seemed to kick-start the USB peripheral industry (which was pretty much the only way to add devices to it - see removal of floppy drive ;-). It came with ethernet as standard which was rare in consumer models.
Well, there are a few suggestions. Your point about design is well made - I remember when even kettles tried to look like the iMac. Bizarre.
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/uc lickcomics/20030316/cx_ft_uc/ft20030316&e=3&nc id=
Cracks me up
Oh, wait.
Never mind.
This is just the first step in paving the way for a corporate partnership between Apple Computer and Hershey Co. The Hershey Kiss shapped iMac is just around the corner, available in brown, white, or brown and white striped. Consumers may upgrade to "with almonds" for $100 extra.
paintball
Neither was USB, the lack of a floppy drive, or a round and colored case. But the combination of these (and others) in one radically different computer probably changed the history of personal computers.
What a bunch of bullshit!
My iMac's not dead yet, I expect to get at least 5 or 6 years of routing and firewalling service out of it.
Seriously, the old iMacs (the DV version, in particular) make damn fine personal servers, with their reduced power consumption and perfect silence.
Please point me to where I can get a dual or quad Xeon system for $2800 from a commercial vendor that will provide support for it. Thanks.
I'm an übergeek, but my wife wanted an iMac because it was cute. When we went shopping for one I asked her what specs was she looking for, g3?, 500 Mhz?, ram?, dvd drive? She just looked around pointed and said, "I want the blue one." I swear, I'm not kidding! We took it home, I set it up in 2 minutes, plugged it into our home network, she used it for a while, but then went back to using my computer. The reason she gave was that her computer was too slow when playing computer games. It seems the Java VM sucked @ss and was very very slow. She used my highspeed, water-cooled, dual monitor, 500 MB RAM system to play Pogo games on IE. Now I have it boxed up sitting in a corner in our new house. I swear I'm going to get my money out of it as soon as I can get her a desk and an 802.11b router and a wireless card for her iMac.
Anyone want an iMac??
Oh the horror! The Horror!
What will the world ever do without yet another overpriced overblown computer?
Linux works just fine on my Athlon, thank you.
I had one of the original Bondi Blue iMacs. While other people were praising its beauty, I thought it was kinda ugly. As a fashion statement, the blue translucent plastic seemed somehow akin to bell-bottom trousers and leisure suits. The periodic release of new machines with different color schemes seemed to support that view.
But it was a fine computer. The original iMac was a brave departure from the beige boxes we'd all become so accustomed to. The compact all-in-one design simplified things for people who don't want to invest a lot of time in figuring out how everything goes together. (You or I may feel unfulfilled with any computer we haven't built with our bare hands from raw sand, but there are plenty of folks who just want to use the thing.)
The iMac moved things forward in part by turning its back on a lot of legacy stuff. The iMac upset a lot of long-time Mac fanatics who were upset that they couldn't plug their old ADB and serial peripherals into the USB ports. Some people were aghast at the absence of the floppy drive. Now that Dell has embraced the idea of computers without floppy drives, I guess the iMac's work here is done.
Snif... Drat... I promised myself I wouldn't cry...
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
(Yes, I know the old one didn't have tray loader, but I'm trying to be funny)
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
See what happens when you try to sell a computer with only one mouse button!
Are you speaking of years in production or sales volume? If it's the former of which you speak, the record holder remains the Apple IIe (1982-1993).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Yes, thank God the iMac showed the computing industry that they should focus on style and asthetics over features and functionality. I'm so fucking glad that Dell, IBM, and HP now feel the need to change the form factors of their machines every 3 months, and in the process give me some of the most horrible, badly designed machines ever made. iMac can kiss my ass. Anyway, my favorite iMac story:
I'm working at CompUSSR as a technician. It's a slow day, and I happen to be up at the front counter of the tech department, filling out some paperwork or something. A lady walks in the front door carting an iMac in hand, and from 10 feet away I can see the anger in her eyes. She steps up to the counter, and with one emphatic push, heaves the iMac up onto the counter, where it lands with a deafening *THUD*, loud enough the whole store takes notice. She takes a few moments to catch her breath from the effort, then looks me straight in the eye, and says...
"Jeff Goldblum is a fucking liar!"
It was a good 5 minutes before I could compose myself enough to speak.
Yeah, and fuk sega for dropping the 32x less than six months after they released it. And fuk Sony for deep sixing the ps one after all these years.
I always figured printers held that slot.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
The cheapest dual processor Xeon rackmount server from dell is a PowerEdge 2650. With all other options stripped and no OS, it's $5425 retail. For a single Xeon, subtract $500. Please don't give me some BS about how you can build some amateur-hour machine for $2800, because I really don't fucking care. The Xserve is a supported machine from a commercial vendor, with a supported commercial UNIX, with telephone support, optional onsite support, and the ability to beat the living daylights out of Intel stuff at certain tasks. So please, the original poster needs to get a grip on reality.
I think that I'm the last Ellen Feiss fan standing.
Here is a java game that I wrote with her in it, but it reportedly has display problems in M$IE/MSVM and j2re1.4.1 for OS X. I'll rewrite it as a JApplet when I get a chance.
And don't forget my classic Switch Article.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
These are retail prices; if you want to talk special acaedmic or volume discounts, the Xserve's price comes down too.
What the fuck is the point of your post?
More concerning is the trend to eliminate the parallel port, the serial port, the PS/2 ports... etc.
These days all those functions are on one super-IO chip the computer must have anyway, so at least throw us a bone and give us headers we can connect our "legacy" devices to.
Actually I am a big fan of apple in general (I am a graphic designer) but I like the Power Macs - you know those big grey boxes that you can actually upgrade extensively and actually rival window pc enthusiasts.
When the imacs came out I thought they were terribly useless - the monitor screen was too small (I like 19" minimum - altho I use a cinema screen 22" now) Also I didn't like the fact that I didn;t come across any imacs that had dual cpu's which was what I needed for my work. All in all i'm glad these cheep pieces of crap have gone away, let apple stick to making real computer i'd say...but then again they have the wonderful lamp light taking its place...
I guess they are just trying to be "hip" and get all the noobs using crap computers instead of focusing on making fast, powerful, and solid machines....
Ave Molech Setting
I don't think it's too much hyperbole to claim that the iMac was one of the most revolutionary computers -- ever.
I'm gonna nit-pick now. I know that's out of character for me, but y'all just bear with me.
I don't think "revolutionary" is really the right word to use here. I think a better word would be "influential."
The Apple II was revolutionary; it created the personal computer market from scratch. The Macintosh was revolutionary; it changed the way people interact with computers. The iMac was more evolutionary than revolutionary, but the combination of its design (rounded, transluscent, tinted, happy-looking) and its design philosophy (easy and fun to use) touch everything.
So I think I would say that the iMac was the second-most influential computer ever. The most influential? The IBM PC, of course.
I write in my journal
I thought the saddest iMac moment was that scene in Zoolander... Oh Well...
RIP? You make it sound as if my IMac is Dead and Burried!
And the Amiga's still alive and... um...
*hugs Amiga 1200 to chest and cries*
Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series
Bill,
Should we try to sign her up to do an ad for us?
-Monkeyboy
I agree, but it's not Apple's fault that the rest of the industry can't integrate style and functionality in one package.
And that's because YOU weren't their target market for them.
The iMac was designed to be used by grandmas and the like, to send e-mail and browse the web. People like grandma don't need expansion or upgrade capability. Grandma won't be swapping out her video card and processor over the weekend to squeeze a few more FPS out of Quake III. As long as the machine starts up and runs when she wants to use it, it will always be plenty fast for grandma.
Don't call them cheap crap just because they didn't meet your needs. They were very good machines, they did just what they were designed to do, and for whom they were designed to do it, period. If they didn't, the model wouldn't have survived on the price list for almost five years, so show some freakin' respect-- if not for the iMac, there might not have BEEN those Power Macs you like so much.
~Philly
You mean like SGI has done since the late 80s? :-)
You seem to be confusing "personal computer" with "the entire desktop machine market". There were several *very* innovative manufacturers that did creative things in the workstation scene that took years to filter down to the "PC" market ("PC" in the original sense, not just x86 machines). Examples: SGI (want to see where consumer graphics will be in five years? look at an SGI machine from five years ago.), Wildcat (on the x86 side).
What was revolutionary about the iMac was the near total dependence on the plug-and-play USB interface. We didn't fully appreciate it at the time, but computers became a lot easier to deal with when one did not have to mess around with a multitude of different interfaces and cables (scsi, parallel, serial, ps2, adb,etc).
/. posted the story on the introduction of the iMac. Whoa, flames galore!
Let's see what I have now. USB mouse, keyboard, zip drive, floppy drive, scanner, Palm Pilot cradle, SD/MMC card reader, laser printer, ink-jet printer, web-cam, and link to my digital camera. All hot swappable, all plug and play, and no rebooting.
What is kind of weird is that I can remember when
but didnt apple also stop selling the new flatscreen imac? so are imacs now extinct?
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Should the floppy really die?
As a software tester, test analyst, and now a test team lead, I have seen many an "over the baffle" solution thrown our way.
Sneakernet will always be valuable alternative in a high-pressure, low turn around time environment. Especially for small
When CD's are a penny a piece and reusable, I can see his, but not yet.
I remember when I use to work at Best Buy back in 1998. We started selling the green IMac. They didn't sell too well, so, a sales rep from Apple came to the store to try to sell more Imacs. He didn't sell one IMac. Eventually we stopped selling them all together because Best buy refused to sell all the different colors. They only want to sell the green one.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
It didn't take long.
duh
Eh? Sorry, I don't get it?!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
bzzt, wrong. try again. <$3k
HAHAHAHAHA omfg roflmao!!!
It's soooo true!
iMacs are actually complicated! Totally.
The original (Rev A) Bondi iMac had a tray (I had one); the slot loading iMacs came about later.
:)
Granted, it was a laptop-style tray (you know, the low-profile ones) and it didn't so much eject as release, but it had a tray
my parents got one when they first came out. been unhappy customers ever since. imho they were awful peices of junk to begin with. *ducks* even besides my extreme bias aggainst apple, i do have to say the newer non-clam powerbooks are pretty damn nice. There isnt an x86 varient on the market that matches its value. think ill get one when this vaio weares out.
Competition in America: If you can't beat 'em, Sue 'em!
The Dell starts at $2,300, for a single cpu, add the second cpu, and you're at the price of the Mac. Add in an OS (Say RedHat Advanced Server, for the support from Red Hat, to be equal with Apple, and your looking around $3,600.
This is by going to Dell, small businesses, find the 2650, customize and add a CPU, and OS of choice.
As you may know, the iMac design was inspired by the dyson dustbuster. Does this mean the end of the union of dustbuster and computer? :-(
This reminds me of the movie Zoolander. While idiotic, Ben Still is hilarious. Using the term Eugoogly. Kinda funny. Also, the scene where they are trying to get the "files from the computer", and the are shaking the IMac all around trying to figure out how to open it. Great stuff.
"I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin"
When I go to configure a 2650, and strip out everything it lets me strip out, it's $4K. So please, tell me where this 3K 2650 is.
Actually, the first ones did. They were stupid little laptop drives though, the kind that pop out an inch or so and you have to manually pull it out, snap the CD on the spindle, and push it back in.
I say its a fancy fish bowl.
Having read this I thought "right, go to ebay and buy one to run 'nix on). But they are still 75% more than an "equivalent" PC :-
The IBM PC? Though it was influential I would say it hardly holds a candle to the iMac. The PC's influence was purely on computers, while the iMac changed the way people designed phones, pencil holders, desks, etc. Seriously, when's the last time you saw a phone at Walmart with a case design like a PC? Hell, even PCs were influenced by the iMac.
Does it have a one button mouse as well?
1 Apple down, many more models to go, Apple dont stop here, drop them all, old and new!
DC's already got you beat with that.....
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
"Because all the bits you buy are shaped in such a way that the box is the easiest form factor to make. Apple had the advantage of being able to build their own bits for their boxes, the typical hobbyist does not."
Well the problem with this argument is that if you take a modern Mac apart. You'll notice that the majority of the parts are the same standard parts (smae form factor, same maker even) that go into PCs. Some of the parts that are Mac specific, aren't ground-breaking in the form-factor department either. BTW I was talking more about the indutry in general. Not just hobbyiest, although the hobbyiest has the same limitations that a manufacturer would (what shape is a CD-ROM drive again?).
On my machine right now, the mouse is plugged into the keyboard via USB, which is plugged into the monitor via USB, which is plugged into the computer via ADC, which is plugged into the wall. That's it. No other plugs.
:)
I guess if you need to escape out of the window real quick for some reason, you won't have to go looking for rope.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Still have two of the originals (almost), and the only time they gave me trouble was after a lightning hit to my home. Every ethernet device in the house went out, including two iMac motherboards. Insurance paid, but a year later I discovered after a lot of pain that the processor card had been partly fried but only showed symptoms when upgrading from 32 to 256MB RAM for OS X. Got a new processor card on eBay for $50, and it lives on and on, serving my daughters for all their school, chat, and music download needs... I expect they will drag the iMacs off to college in the next year or two. Better than worrying about an iBook being stolen!
Jobs' Mac gave us windows, icons, mice, and pointers. His NeXT computer gave us the WWW, his iMac gave us a network appliance, and his OS X gave us Unix for teenagers. Quite a set of lifetime achievements...
ThosEM
IIRC, the mezzanine slot was ONLY on the Rev.A iMac. It was never on the Rev. B. It was there in the first place for testing purposes and they left it on in order to meet the initial run. But they sold enough that some clever folks figured out a way to make use of it. Also, the Rev. A was based on a modified PowerBook motherboard and used SO-DIMMs. Later Revs used "normal" 168-pin DIMMs like their PowerMac brethren.
Also, eventually with the intro of the slot-loading DV iMacs (Rev. C?), they began using AGP for the graphics subsystem. I have one of those (blueberry) and it is truly a great computer. Runs OS X pretty well, too, though it spends more time in OS 9 right now. Great for e-mail and Diablo II.
i have an old 1998 233 mhz imac (with 4gb hdd and 6mb VRAM) that i upgraded to 160MB RAM. it runs jaguar great. can do all my LAMP (okay no L) development and even run office X (i know). try running XP on anything 5 years old. you can't. i haven't tried to run linux on it. pc hardware just deosn't have the lasting power, it seems. i wonder if apple tests their stuff on older hardware too. they might charge for jaguar, but many mac users can upgrade on their existing hardware. every new version of windows has required new hardware.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Would someone care to explain who George Foreman is?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
cluster node are newsworthy items, especially for the front page.
I agree with the original poster... the sooner that fad dies, the better. There's more to stylish design than translucent plastic, and blindly applying an idea to everything you can get your hands on because someone else did it successfully is just another form of conformity
I don't know you, but I'm still waiting for my Red Swingline. None of this new curved 747 crap, the true Classic Red Swingline qua Office Space.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
After your reply, she says "WHAT? I have to take it out of the fucking box??"
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/72007/wo/T37v6M2r3u0A3FPJx3v1QqTLWOu /0.3.0.3.27.21.0.0.1.0.3.1.1.0?104,54
:-)
They can design nice computers, they can design nice GUIs, but they obviously can't design sane URLs
...or maybe Insightful?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
George Foreman is a company/man, not sure which, who produces cooking grills in North America.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Heh, I think Twirly left the smiley off his last sentence ;-)
...and my rev. A is still going strong, albiet modded to the gills. It continues to serve my site 24/7 and does a fantastic job. Thanks for a great machine, Apple!
jaz-
Which, IIRC, has a CRT monitor and is superior to the original iMac in nearly every way.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
The case design retained the same basic look, but was actually changed fairly significantly in 1999 when they introduced the DV models. The original iMacs had an FCC-mandated metal RF shield surrounding most of the components and visible through the translucent case, obscuring the view of most of the actual functioning stuff; the surface of the plastic case was molded with a slight texture that somewhat artfully obscured the view of the shield/interior, allowing a "hint" of a glimpse of it. In late 1999, when Apple introduced the DV models, they introduced a new case design (codenamed "Kihei") that incorporated the RF shielding in the plastic, eliminating the need for the metal shield (and hence making the interior more interesting to look at). They slightly resculpted the entire case to be slightly shorter (taking up a tiny bit less space) and eliminated the texturing, making it easier to see through to the actual components inside; this also facilitated the convection cooling you mention. The new case also got rid of the door that covered the ports on the side of the old case, exposing the ports in a recess on the side, and also replaced the tray-loading optical drive with a car-style slot-loading one.
I worked at the Mcallen Texas store for a day as an Apple rep when they first came out. I had countless people asking about it, deciding to purchase it and when it came time to get one out of storage the sales people did not want to get them. Which had nothing to do with commision as I have heard some people bable on about since the employees get nothing out of any sale other that a pat on the back for a job well done. Instead they insisted that the customers get a Packard Bell (or HP, I can't remember which) several times throughout the day. Needless to say, they didn't take home the iMac. I think that Best Buy carrying the iPod is a step in the right direction.
I recently stepped in Compusa in Mcallen and was in heaven. A fairly decent selection of Apples. The sales people were very open about both platforms. If somebody wanted Apple thats what they got without any hassles and same goes with PCs. When somebody was asked the difference between the two, they were given a good explination and were given a choice as to where to go.
Ford no longer sells the 1998 model Taurus and has instead replaced it with the model year 2003 line. Anaylists were left baffled at this move. One remarked, "Who thougth Ford would make such a drastic move as this? Updating their models and not selling the older ones...I'm baffeled!" Similar trends have been noticed in just about every other freakin company on earth! So why is this front page /. news?
SIGFAULT
heavier but smaller. trust me on this one i carry a lot of both.
Is eMachines now free to sell their iMac lookalike?
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
It seems in short time I'll be able to afford an Apple, finally. This discontinued one, that is.
I trust it cab run Linux (Yellow Dog, probably -- any other version?).
Also, they should make excellent X-terminals since they lack de CPU box.
Now if only those MAc fanatics would make a lot of money so they can buy the new expensive Apples and sell this old iMac to me...
i own macintosh computers that i have bought. i also own linux, solaris, and sgi boxen. they have their strengths- but the mac is by far the 'easiest' to do movie editing, music, photog. etc.
so who needs to grow a penis? hmmm, MRS. geek?
[quote]With WindowsXP there is no need for Mac any more.[/quote]s/WindowsXP/Windows200/0 0/Windows NT/
s/Windows20
s/Windows NT/Windows 98/
s/Windows 98/ Windows 95/
s/Windows 95/Windows 3.1/
s/Windows 3.1/Windows 3.0/
s/Windows 3.0/Windows 2.0/
s/Windows 2.0/Windows 1.0/
It's good to have a dream.
incorrect. the "rev b" imac has the mezzanine slot...i know, i own one.
One of the fundamental laws of the universe is that sooner or later, everything becomes Office Space. Everything that doesn't become Office Space becomes This Is Spinal Tap.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
And as I said here, I'm only 16.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Try finding a 11AA.
Skiis.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
George Foreman is a man. He is a former Heavyweight boxing champ. His most famous bout was the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle with Ali in Zaire.
...is with an airport card. Make it into an airport hub, and use the ethernet cable to hook to your DSL.
Works a treat, and cheaper than an Airport hub, if you've got the computer already.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Sales volume is what I was interested in. I might be wrong in my initial assumption though :) Would be interesting to know.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
believe it. my mac guru buddy turned it into a fishbowl :)
The original VW bug is still made in Mexico and another third-world country I can't remember of. Guess nobodys cares as much for round colorful coputers as they do about cars....
In Canada, we don't fancy things like socks
--
"The difference between that which is real and imagined lies solely within one's perception. The true power of a strong imagination lies within one's ability to impose their reality upon others." - T. Dozier
No way, the original Macintosh or the Lisa was the most influential PC of all time. 100% of the market wouldn't be where it is today without it.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
TROLL DAMNIT
LaxMac: because Apple knows why your chair is brown...
:(
Because Apple's kiss is a sweet; disguised underneath is a marketing gimick from RiteAid's pharmacy
This post should be modded up - it's golden :)
Well in that case, I'll sell you a piece of history :-D I have a Rev B iMac sittin right next to me, haha. Remember, the price is at a premium now cuz it's a collectors item
-Alex
A hideous looking but magnificently functional design for its intended use. The best thing about them? Quiet. Who needs a quiet fan when you _ d o n ' t _ n e e d _ a _ f a n !
I had to support a variety of those iMac thingies over the years, and I was sad when they dropped the IR port. I nearly wet the floor when I was looking at that port and had the user's Palm III in my hand, then on a whim instead of setting up his cradle I just pointed it and pressed hotsync... and it did.
OK, I know it's normal for laptops, but usually fussy. This just... worked.
A few years later I was problemsolving a printing crisis with a bad ethernet cable and no crimp goodies. Again, point the oldy-but-goody bondi iMac and shoot at the HP printer with 20 seconds of configuration... and it prints. Damn!
And yes, after I realized they were just a laptop with a CRT glued on, I used the handle to lug them between buildings.
Even better, the heat vents were wisely on a slope, so the cats could never settle down on them.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I thought apple Stop Selling these Imacs two years ago. I must have miss something on the way to fry's eletronics.
Can sombody clarify processor/chipset development roles between the three companies?
Here in Ireland we can still buy original iMacs...
;)
-johnl
Look at the bottom of this page : The Apple Store (Republic of Ireland)
Maybe Apple likes us! Or maybe we're just technologically backward
I don't know what size the new iMac is. However, the eMac is both bigger and heavier than the iMac (although it's a bit less deep due to a shorter tube). iMac: 15.8" H x 15.2" W x 17.6" D (40lbs) eMac: 15.8" H x 15.8" W x 17.1" D (50lbs)
I'm really curious what the front of the screen is. It must be fairly thick.
Does this mean it's also the end of the iBrator as well?
:) They don't all like the new iMac, it reminds them that anal probe thingie...
I know of many women who'll be disapointed
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
About 6 months after the launch of the iMac my kettle blew up - and I replaced it with a translucent blue kettle.
Im convinced this is the only useful 'iMacalike' product out there - as you can actually SEE your water boiling.
Apple - been happily going out of business since 1985
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
iMac....iCrap
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
*sniff* We'll miss you, original iMac.
[quote]With WindowsXP there is no need for Mac any more.[/quote]
;)
Looks like SOMEbody's been spending too much time chatting with UBB!
Somebody in the ancient past here on /. made a great point about the CRT iMac once; they said the design was like a shark. It was simply evolved to the most logical, streamlined form given the necessity of the parts contained therein.
The flatpanel iMac really is a stupendous design. I'm the first to pick on the niggles, too: for instance, if the keyboard's legs are extended and located close to the iMac base, the disc tray bumps into it) but those are few and far between. Even the round base, which is the most likely target for the form-over-funtion argument, supplants this by offering the ability to rotate the iMac, thus giving you both a 'side'-mounted drive tray and access to ports...an Apple sales guy hit me with this when they came out. I mentioned that there should be easy-to-reach ports on the side at least, and he picked up the iMac - by the arm, which was also surprising at the time - and rotated it 90 degrees. That was slightly mindblowing.
Anyways. I think the only thing keeping the new iMac shape from becoming as ubiquitous for desktops as the Sony Trinitron black-matte design became for televisions is the fact that Apple won't likely let anyone get even close to that design without suing them for a trade dress violation.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
that was damn funny.
That doesn't make any sense. You blame Apple for the shortcomings of those other companies?
Hey, guess what. There's this supa-cheap knockoff of transluscent housing around the spectacularly lame case of my work PC. It's actually sharp enough to almost cut you when you reach for the CD drive. So fuck you, Apple, for providing an impetus of design that these lacklustre PC manufacturers just could not handle, even while they tried to capitalize on the new craze of coloured computers while not getting it at all.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Actually there is a fair amount of modding going around in the Apple world. It just seldom gets mentioned. The clamshell iBook was particularly popular for very beautiful custom paint jobs, and the quicksilver G4's have had people play with them quite a bit as well.
I guess I do kinda miss the days of spraypainting my PC to give it a neat color then hand-painting the faceplates of the CDROM and whatnot. Maybe just for masochistic reasons though....
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
The original iMac may have saved Apple.
Everyone assumes that. While the iMac surely did a lot to restore Apple's mindshare, in fact the company had already gone back into profitability with the G3 PowerMacs.
[quote]With Windows 2K there is no need for Classic Mac any more.[/quote]
s/Windows 2K/Windows ME/
s/Windows ME/Windows 98/
s/Windows 98/ Windows 95/
s/Windows 95/Windows 3.11 (and WFW)/
s/Windows 3.11 (and WF Workgroup)/Windows 3.1/
s/Windows 3.0/Windows 286 & Windows 386/
s/Windows 286 & Windows 386/Windows 2.03/
s/Windows 2.03/Windows 2.0/
s/Windows 2.0/Windows 1.0/
# Some on-line sources quote that Windows 2.03
# is actually Windows/386. It's strange, as I
# recall I'd installed Windows 2.03 on my AT-
# compatible machine featured 80L286-12, and it
# tooks at least 1 year for the Windows/286 and
# Windows/386 to be in the market.
[quote]With Windows XP there is no need for Mac any more.[/quote]
s/Windows XP/Windows 2K Pro/
s/Windows 2K Pro/Windows NT4/
s/Windows NT4/Windows NT3.x/
s/Windows NT3.x/Windows NTx.x/
The UK apple store isn't selling the iMac classics, however if you goto it (http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore/) , before the picture loads, the text and hover text says 'iMac clasic', but its a picture of new displays, uncanny!
Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory.
I'm old enough to remember when translucent phones and alarm clocks weren't sexy, they were cheap Taiwanese imports sold at discount stores. (This was also about the time when New Wave music hit the scene.)
How things change.
I pay about the same price now for a CD-RW as I did for a 5 1/4" SSSD floppy in the mid-'80s.
So, yeah, I think it is time for the floppy to go.
Whoops! I certainly didn't mean to suggest that "*nix is not for teenagers". In fact I'd been trying to teach some *nix to my kids for ages. OS X did it for me. Lindows or other Linux may do it for others.
FWIW, you can install fink on a Mac with OSX and apt-get to your heart's content.
ThosEM
They may now call it eOneMore...
The mezzanine slot was on Rev. A and Rev. B both. All revisions up to Slot-Loading(Rev. E) used SODIMMs, and were approximately equivalent to the low-end PowerBook at the time.
The Rev. A and Rev. B were at the same time as the "Wallstreet" PowerBook, which had a G3/233 on the low end at the time. Rev. C was a minor upgrade and matched the mid level PowerBook, also "Wallstreet", and had a G3/266. Rev. D matched the "Lombard"/Bronze Keyboard/1999 PowerBook, and had a G3/333.