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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."
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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?
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?)
...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.
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.
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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
I've never bought from them myself but they seem well talked of on Mac sites.
the only macs I get are covered in grease.
Those are called "Big Macs".
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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!
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.
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.
You do know that just because they aren't selling them anymore does not mean that the one on your desk is going to disappear...right?
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
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.
It's not a matter of old equipment, it's a matter of the right tool for the job. The old imac is a perfect computer for some of the applications that schools have. For instance, in a school library what are the computers used for? 1) Searching for books, and 2) doing research online. You don't need a G4 or a P4 to use Google, or to search for a book in the stacks. Apple isn't pawning off old crap on schools, they're giving sys admins more choices.
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
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!
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.
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...
And the Amiga's still alive and... um...
*hugs Amiga 1200 to chest and cries*
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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
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
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
how about for $2803?
Here
http://www.xicomputer.com/
These guys make some of the best x86 CAD systems around. The the machine I got the above quote for is a dual Xeon 2.0, half a gig of RAM, SCSI Raid 5 (40Gb), & 1Ghz ethernet.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
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
Is eMachines now free to sell their iMac lookalike?
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
[quote]With WindowsXP there is no need for Mac any more.[/quote]s/WindowsXP/Windows200/0 0/Windows NT/
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