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
It's cheaper. Eductational institutions are often compelled by budget restraints to buy lower cost items than other people/institutions. I'm sure Apple would rather they buy an older machine than no Mac at all.
I've never bought from them myself but they seem well talked of on Mac sites.
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.
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.
The main differences between the eMac and CRT iMac is that the eMac is a G4 (faster but requires more power and runs warmer) rather than a G3, and the eMac has a 17" CRT versus a 15" CRT.
Even still, the entry-level eMac goes for about $150-200 more than an entry-level CRT iMac... that definitely makes a difference for schools and companies on a budget.
Unlikely. The Fox family was using a Macintosh II-esque machine until they got their iFruit. That was, what, 1999? 2000? At least six years after that case style had been retired anyway. I'd express sympathy that Jason has to use such old equipment, but I figure since he's such a little shit he deserves it. ;-p
Sanity is relative. For some of us it's just a distant cousin.
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.
Check with University of Michigan's property disposition. They are an all-Mac school.
And they have some pretty good deals, too. I got an HP LaserJet 4M+ with Postscript module, MIO, and almost new toner cartridge for $100.
UofM Property Disposition
What?
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
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.
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.
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.
As others have pointed out, Apple didn't sell the same machine for 5 years. Here's a useful chart showing the different versions of the G3/CRT iMac. (I think there may have been some slight variations for the educational market, in terms of memory and drives)
Things which remained the same across revisions:
- Shape and size (height and weight changed slightly, I think this was due to CRT changes)
- 15" CRT (actually, I think different CRTs were used, but all were 15")
- USB
- CPU type (various revisions of the G3 processor family)
- Lack of floppy drive
- 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
- 56 kbps modem
Things which changed between releases:- Price (no, it didn't start out as a sub-$1000 machine!)
- color (Bondi blue, fruit flavors [strawberry, orange, lime, blueberry, grape], indigo, ruby, graphite, blue dalmation, flower power, snow)
- speed (started at 233Mhz, finished at 700Mhz)
- memory (32MB
... 256MB)
- hard disk (4GB
... 60GB)
- mouse (they eventually dropped that evil hockey puck but it took them too long to do that...)
- keyboard (changed when the mouse changed, I think)
- video card (Various flavors of ATI Rage cards, from Rage IIc to RAGE Ultra 128)
- IR port
.. quietly dropped in Revision C (when the fruit flavors were added)
- internal expansion
.. the never-supported "Mezannine" slot was dropped in Revision c)
- Firewire
.. introduced to some machines in 1999, but wasn't included with all machines until 2001
- Airport (802.11b)
.. slowly added to product line, same as Firewire
- Fan
.. Rev. A and Rev. B had fans, the fanless iMac began with Rev. C
- optical drive
.. CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW of varoius speeds (I don't think the Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) or SuperDrive (DVD-RW/CD-RW) were ever available)
A number of very different machines, but all basically looked the same (ignoring color) and were sold under the same name.-- Tim Buchheim
You mean the SETTLEMENT between Microsoft and Apple, due to Microsoft STEALING Quicktime technology? It was part of a cross licensing deal. Microsoft had to pay up.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.