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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?
Yikes, Im feeling old...
No sig for the moment.
iMac turns ten? You must mean iMac turns eX.
. . . for people putting the letter 'i' in front of words where it simply is not appropriate.
iPod? Okay, I can handle that. iCarly? What the hell. Stupid 'tween television.
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time this was just a faster replacement for the ADB bus that Apple had used as an universal bus before, and SCSI had been replaced by IDE as an internal connector before.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."
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
Anyone out there still have one of these? Have you put it to any good use, other than a fish tank?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I take issue with a few points in the article...
And it is worth noting that the iMac can also be attributed as the killer of the floppy disk.
Actually I think email and the internet can be attributed with that. And the usb flash drive really was the death knell I believe.
revealed the product that would save Apple, and become the best selling computer of all time: the iMac.
As someone pointed out in the comments of the article, I would say that iPod/iTunes actually saved Apple, not the iMac. Also pointed out, it was not the best selling computer of all time.
Other than that, I do remember them as being quite a novelty at the time.
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.
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.
Certainly it didn't look like any other other computer.
Yes, it did:
If I recall correctly, at the time pretty much everyone ended up buying a USB floppy drive for these things anyway. Not really a floppy-killer. I mean, how do you think people got info off their old floppies in the first place? Thinking really hard about Steve Jobs' shirts?
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.
I worked at a CompUSA when those beasts premiered. I remember when the new colors came out, and our store received something like 15 of each color prior to being allowed to sell them. Two things I remember from that:
First, before we were allowed to sell them, but had them in inventory (I know, highly unusual for CompUSA to have inventory), we had to enter them in with exorbitant prices. I think we had to list them at something like $15,000 so no sane person would want to buy them early.
Second, I remember moving them to top-stock (the catwalks that run the perimeter of the store, about 15 feet off the ground). We made a human chain up the rolling staircase to get them up there as quickly as possible. I was second or third from the top one time, and I recall finding out the hard way just how heavy those damned things were when the guy above me lost his grip and it fell straight on my head.
Yeah, I sure loved the iMac - didn't you?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...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!
...lame.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Hmmmm I remember those well. Beautiful Bondi Blue. The worthless mouse. Yup I remember I had an iBook too! Was orange and looked like a flattened clown shoe.
On a separate note, who remembers the TAM (Twentieth Anniversary Mac [?] ) ? Was beautiful and in some regards well designed (speakers anyone? tv tuner)and obviously in others not so good ( stock parts, underpowered, trackpad not a mouse, __W__A__Y__ overpriced) It is amusing as it is clearly a show of change as one can see the old dying and failing Apple trying to change, if only superficially, and is kind of a distant relative of the iMac.
I actually really wanted it, even though it was so s***** for its price it can almost be called a scam.
...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.
It had that IR port. Who the hell ever used those? Seriously, I never figured out what the deal was with that.
English is easier said than done.
I've got news for you: http://lowendmac.com/compact/original-macintosh-128k.html And you couldn't even upgrade the memory. Well, not officially, anyhow. The first iMac was more expandable than the 128K.
As for the puck mouse, the problem wasn't carpal tunnel syndrome, the problem was that you couldn't know which way it was oriented without turning your head to look at the cable. With an oblong mouse, you can feel which way is "up" on the mouse and adjust accordingly.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
That's true. I go tired of my pointer going sideways when it should be going up.
I remember 1998. I don't remember anyone criticizing them for the use of USB. At that time, as I remember it, lots of people were expecting PCs to ditch PS/2, parallel, and serial ports. Granted it's 2008 and a new PC you buy still has all three of these, but I heard them called "legacy" even in 1998.
Also, did the original iMac have ADB too? I have an old Mac that is slightly newer, and it has ADB...
My biggest gripe about iMac was that it wasn't a very expandible desktop. A trend which Apple continues to this day, unless you fork out the cash for a Xeon...
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.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
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 to upgrade anything on their system -- they'd be hard pushed to install more RAM or upgrade the OS, let alone swap in a new CPU or motherboard. If there were an industry to support it you might get them to *hire* someone to do it, like they do for their cars and whatnot, but they sure aren't going to do it themselves.
However that service industry can only exist if you can sell service for a very small fraction of the replacement cost. A car is worth $10k, so paying a few hundred dollars a year for professional services is reasonable. But there are a lot of people buying $300-$500 computers, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense to pay someone $50/hour plus $50-$100 in parts to upgrade the thing -- you could have a whole new system every 3 years for $100/year.
This isn't something new to computers or electronics or this generation. Think about how many 40+ year-old planes and buses are still in active service, versus the number of 40+ year-old sedans. Cars cost $10k, and rebuilding an old engine is rarely worth the maintenance cost, while busses cost $150k, and an engine rebuild is a much smaller proportion of the replacement cost of the vehicle. If everyone drove busses and had $5k computers, upgrades would be much more popular (as they were when computers did cost $5k), but while prices are low it's just economically unsound.
The iMac might last you 2-3 years max!
Nice try, we still have a few iMacs here and there, they are especially great for client kiosks as they don't die easily and aren't pre-loaded with crapware (well, maybe iPhoto).
While USB was great and all I think the iMac was the start of the crappy adapters, there were a bunch of partially compatible/reliable external floppy drives and nearly non-functional SCSI->usb adapters to deal with for the years it took to transition from older systems.
A previous post was about compact flash memory, that's just a recent development - back then we had those cheap Zip 100 MB drives or if you had the cash the MO drives.
Apple dropped SCSI, their proprietary connectors, and the floppy drive.
No, Apple wasn't quite done with proprietary connectors. After the iMac came out--years later--Apple came out with ADC for video (DVI-I plus power and USB) and that shitty "digital audio" system in the G4s--an audio jack that would accept nothing else, and speakers that won't work anywhere else. Happily, they have since dropped both--permanently this time, let's hope. My company has a good amount of dopey gear from that era--ADC Cinema Displays, several pairs of those otherwise-good (and pretty) clear round "nice pair of boobs" speakers--that will only work with a Mac from that era, or with an expensive adapter, or not at all.
And as long as I'm ranting about waste: as much as I like Apple, and think they make good gear, I have to wonder how big their 'green' commitment really is. Every display I've ever had has had a lifespan at least 2x longer than any computer I've ever had. And Apple won't even let you repurpose them--at least LCDs from Dell (which, in some cases, use the exact same panel as similar Apple displays*) have composite, S-Video, and/or component inputs so you can use them for something else. How cool (and useful, and green) would it be if every iMac could be used with a common VCR, DVD player, or cable box? Even limited to standard-def inputs it would still kick ass. (As my 20" Dell LCD does at home.) The iMac made all-in-one, dispose-as-one computing popular again, and it sucks.
* Yes, really. Anand even has pics of the internals.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Accessing *everything* on the original iMac was dead simple. Turn it upside down, remove a couple screws and a panel, unplug a couple of cables, and slide out the system tray. From there you have access to the CD, HD, memory, video memory, and processor card. Hell, even the modem was replaceable. The optical, HD, memory and processor all had third-party upgrades readily available.
I like to compare this to an HP Brio that needed a HD swap. Because of a single screw that attached the HD to the case was in a bad spot, the motherboard and everything else attached to it had to come out. Real smooth there, HP.
--
"I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
The round mouse was pretty much a throw-away, I agree, but not for carpal tunnel. You just couldn't easily orient it.
As to upgradability/usability - got an iMac DV SE circa 2000 that's going fine, being used daily.
None of them needed floppy drives. The floppy migration used old computers that were networked, since email was essential in '98. Once I used a terminal app over a modem to modem phone cord as a temporary network, though.
The cool thing about that first gen iMac though was its infrared port on the front. In one setup it was a connection to the printer (though the user had to lean over to get that to work, haha!). In another setup, I had the user's palm pilot syncing into a custom CRM database, email, offline web browsing, text docs, and sundry, with one button press as soon as he walked into his office. No amount of bluetooth dicking-around since then has been as cool or useful or seamless, it's still an IT high point for me--so thanks, iMac.
Damn those pesky terrorists
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 wirelessly sync a Palm with an iMac. (I don't know if you actually could sync a Palm with an iMac via IR, but I used to love doing that with my ThinkPad. And Palm's USB/serial kludge of the time (which stuck around for waaaay too long) sucked out loud.) A rising tide lifts all boats, and both companies would have benefited greatly.
Secondly, when Apple came out with the DV iMac a few years later--featuring FireWire ports and (gasp!) a DVD drive--they should have offered a remote. How much better would that have made the iMac for dorms and kids? Apple did, of course, wind up moving to remote-controlled, entertainment-oriented systems just a few years ago. They really, really missed an opportunity ten years ago. They never pushed the point of why there was an IR port--the marketing materials at the time pretty much said "there is one" and nothing more--and IIRC (I am too lazy to look it up right now) they dropped the port on the very first major revision. (When they went to 266 MHz.) It became just another body on the heap of potentially cool, unused, and eventually killed neat things from Apple.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Yup. Fortunately, some third party company made something called an iCatch, which cost about $5 and slid onto the puck to make it into a more normal shaped mouse. As for upgrades... my lime iMac has 256 MB of RAM, a 40 GB hard drive, a new CMOS battery (the old one died), and a nice quiet fan. The fan was the hard bit -- it involved taking the case completely apart, a lot of screws, and getting up close and personal with the CRT. Works great, though.
>The second was the Throw out and Replace mentality it pushed on consumers.
*cough* bullshit: most consumers *never* upgrade their computers, so it's quite sensible for Apple to make an 'all in one' computer.
.. for me in college at least. Coming from a low-income family I didn't have a modern computer of my own when I started college, so I went down to the university's surplus warehouse and saw G3 350's being sold for $10. Coupled with a standard PC mouse & keyboard, I found it surprisingly functional at the time for a 7-year-old machine. I gave it away last year to a friend, but seeing this thread made me remember how I got used to Apple.
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 in the original iMAC with its obtrusive CRT monitor was a nightmare.
Loosening eight screws, removing two plastic covers, and sliding out a tray isn't what I'd call a nightmare, I'd call it "two minutes with a long shanked number 1 Phillips screwdriver and a prying tool", myself. The secret is turning it upside down.
The iMac might last you 2-3 years max!
I gave a 2001 indigo model to a friend about two years ago, and since he rarely does anything more demanding than playing music, email and web browsing it suits him perfectly. Another friend's 2000 iMac just died of capacitor failure, but until then it still did everything he needed from it. And I know plenty of other people with CRT iMacs, so rather than 2-3 years, I'm seeing people getting 6-10 years out of them (despite the dodgy capacitors), while buying nothing more than RAM. Now perhaps I've got an eccentric world view, but it seems to me that a computer that does it's job as a single unit for that long is far less wasteful than the typical "grandpa's axe" beige box.
And that's one reason the iMac was a success: it was designed for people who wouldn't upgrade their computers component-by-component anyway, it was an appliance. Put bread in, set to medium brown, toast pops out, easy. Again, that isn't exactly a new direction for Apple, and their profitability over recent years suggests they might actually have a clue about who they're selling computers to.
Blank until
Using it as a Kiosk doesn't count. That's the one time you have a set task that the machine will perform it's entire life. The point is about personal use which the iMac was pushed for. I don't think you can even run OSX on the original iMac.
Maybe they don't upgrade the components in the comp itself but plenty of people keep the same monitor and buy just a new computer.
I hear this all the time, but I never had a problem with the puck. The trick is you cannot try to hold it like a normal mouse. Instead, if you hold it using your fingertips and thumb-tip, it is dead-simple to keep going the right way without cord confusion.
For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!
It won't be 10 until August 15th! You don't start counting your child's age from when you announced that you were pregnant to the world. The Indigo Blue iMac didn't make it's debut until August 15, 1998. I know. I worked for an Apple Authorized Reseller at the time. I'd quit a week earlier because of family problems (grandpa in the hospital, sister's wedding in 2 weeks, and college marching band camp starting in less than 2 weeks). Every single one we had in stock was pre-sold before we opened the doors that day. All we could do is take orders for more.
Errr, and how much more was that Mac than the PC alternatives?
Actually I think email and the internet can be attributed with that. And the usb flash drive really was the death knell I believe. Well I believe the iMac was, in fact, the prime factor in killing off the floppy drive in consumer desktops. It was the first major consumer model (perhaps consumer model, period) to dispense with it, and it was quite a topic of discussion at the time. Don't you recall? Compaq cloned the design and styling and tried to horn in on Apple's newfound "chic" racket, but their clone did not drop the floppy drive. The iMac was the first to drop it, all subsequent Mac models have followed suit, and PC vendors are still, 10 years later, reluctant to drop it entirely (cf. many *current* Dell and Gateway models).
Also, if you recall, USB "thumb" drives were not at *all* ubiquitous until the last 5 years or so, and were extremely rare in the years prior to and immediately following the iMac's introduction. The USB "drive" did not serve to allow Apple to abandon floppy drive because it was not a viable option at the time. The floppy drive did not serve
as a medium of transferring personal communications to other people the way email does. Do you recall typing letters into files and then physically transporting media (floppy discs?!?) containing said communications to others? Of course not. There were already paper, phones, and email for that.
...and the internet... Here I think you might have hit on something at least. If you recall the state of desktop computing in 1998, two things were happening:1) Writable, and sometimes re-writable optical drives were just coming into widespread use, which greatly eclipsed the capacity, speed and reliability of floppy disks.
2) Internet connectivity was becoming ubiquitous in the form of modem connectivity, and "broadband" was beginning to see wider adoption in the era that gave the very word its context.
At long last, the average user had *good* alternatives to the floppy disk/drive for transporting non- "email" information (i.e. actual files) around the world. That is why Apple was able to ditch the floppy drive. Other than that, I do remember them as being quite a novelty at the time. Yes; that's partly why Apple wanted to ditch the floppy: they adopted a colorful new "chic", "modern" industrial design and marketing approach which they have largely retained to this day, all spear-headed by the original iMac design.
You're right of course, when you talked about upgrading the computer I thought about the computer's internal components (which to a first approximation noone upgrade) not about the screen..
Sorry about that.
Note though that more and more people use laptops in their home, so they do change the screen when they upgrade the computer, so I still find it a bit strange to single out iMacs..
I guess it kinda makes you feel old to know these things, but I think we have adequate consolation prizes in the form of multi-core CPUs with 4~12MB of full-speed L2 cache, memory buses 4~7 times faster than CPU core frequencies of 10 years ago, and 10^12 byte (100 times larger) hard drives that run 8~12 times faster in the same 3.5" form factors, all for something like 1/4 to 1/2 the cost of similar market-segment parts of 10 years ago.
We may see the ceiling of "classical" computing within our lifetimes, when we just can't slice matter any smaller and figure out something New and Exciting. Depending on who you listen to, that could happen within the next 10-40 years.
Yeah, that iMac is running. But not running the newest OS X. In a year or two the only somewhat-current browser it'll run is iCab. Apple has really dropped the ball on this, and it's the reason I bought a ThinkPad instead of a MacBook Pro.
Case in point: In 1998, a (high-end) Mac from 1990 would run most current s/w just fine. There were plenty of IIfxes and upgraded SE/30s that had been passed along to grandmas and schools and still running Netscape/IE 3, albeit sluggishly at times. This was a major selling point for recommending Macs to those who weren't techies: less need to upgrade. If you had a 1990 Intel box... well imagine a 286 running Win95.
Since the introduction of OS X, Apple has gotten into the habit of obsoleting machines much more quickly. I've worked on plenty of iMacs that are still adequate machines for poking around the web, but running OS 9. New advances in web technology have rendered browsers that run on OS 9 obsolete, iCab is the only one that runs somewhat well. It's possible to put 10.1 on them, but there are two problems with that:
1) Where do I find a copy, legal or otherwise? Most install CDs you find are keyed to a specific model, so that rules them out.
2) 10.1 is a dog. I beleive OS X didn't come into it's own until 10.3, but 10.3 also has higher requirements than the machines in question.
3) Bonus! Linux??? I haven't found a good distro that supports NewWorld macs without hours of fussing.
With 10.5, Apple raised the requirements further. The low-end of the last generation of PPCs is now unsupported. Mac zealots might claim it's about improving the experience, but I believe it's all about selling more hardware. The inevitable consequence is that Apple is essentially forcing users to dump perfectly good machines for the newest boxen.
Returning to my earlier 1998 reference. My sister has a Vaio from 1999, running Win2K and using the latest version of Firefox, which it runs just fine (even with the overhead of the software firewall). The machine still is useful for web browsing and email.
It's sad to say that a 1999 model iMac is nothing more than a doorstop.
Posting anonymously to deflect karma-whoring charges...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHPtoTctDY
I disagree. My 2000 iMac DV is running Tiger, which is still supported well. Quarterly security updates are still released.
The only problem the machine's ever given me is that its old AirPort card doesn't like WPA2 networks using AES encryption. Otherwise, it's still running perfectly. And quite well, considering it's had at least two previous owners. At times, it runs Tiger quicker than Vista runs on a brand-new £500 (~$1000) PC. But, then again, Vista sucks, so that's understandable.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I had a Powermac 5200 all-in-one with a remote control AND a TV tuner.
http://www.roadflares.org/howtos/macos_television.html
I agree, Apple should have kept this idea going.
--saint
Remember, though, that the idea of the 'digital life hub' was still in its infancy in 2000. Although the iMac DV was more suited to video use, it was still mostly targeted at families, children, and those in higher education, who wanted a machine they could realistically save up for within less than a year, was easy to use, ready to start work immediately, and - most importantly - write their documents (letters, homework, dissertations etc). That's what most people expect a computer to do, and remember that Steve Jobs was still trying to convince other tech companies to partner with him in his 'digital lifestyle' idea.
As it happens, they didn't. And Apple are no worse off for it. Good on them.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Sure you can. Not the latest version, and not exactly speedily, but OS X 10.2 Jaguar will run just fine.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Fast fowrard 4 years. The Dell is dragging. But look, a Sony VAIO!
So it was around 2003-2004 when you bought that Pentium II Dell? The Pentium 4 was available in early 2001 and the Pentium 3 in early 1999. Like I said, your dates sound "off."As for my computer history which started around the same time as yours (1994 66MHz):
4 years later (1998), I built a cheap PC with a Celeron 266MHz (based on the Pentium II core) on a motherboard with Intel's 440BX chipset. I admit this was unusual for a cheap computer because the new BX chipset (first with 100MHz bus) was targeted at more expensive PCs (Pentium II) and the brand-new Celeron CPU was just starting to replace the Pentium as the low-end CPU. This proved to be my good buying decision at the right time.
9 years later (last year), that same computer was still running Windows 2000 (which still gets extended support until 2010) with various cheap upgrades over the years (900MHz P3-based Celeron, 384MB cheap RAM, TNT2 n64 graphics, 120GB IDE hard drive, DVD burner, 19" display).
The only reason I replaced the motherboard last year (but kept the other parts) was because a friend gave me her cheap Intel 810 chipset-based HP Pavilion (bought in 2000). It did not "drag" and ran a still-supported OS (Windows 2000). It probably would have struggled with Windows XP SP2 because of the old motherboard's RAM limit (384MB), but its very cheap replacement (512MB limit) can run Windows XP just fine.
It was the flashing that was the real nightmare. The first dozen or so Bondi's I ever dismantled all ended up wearing some of my blood on the inside somewhere - and given the translucent casing it was frequently visible. Popping the front cover on a fresh machine was truely 'teh suxor'.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
With 10.5, Apple raised the requirements further. The low-end of the last generation of PPCs is now unsupported. Mac zealots might claim it's about improving the experience, but I believe it's all about selling more hardware. The inevitable consequence is that Apple is essentially forcing users to dump perfectly good machines for the newest boxen.. How are users "forced" to upgrade? Because their still perfectly usable computers can't use the newest toys?
A G3 will still run 10.4.11 and every app it did before 10.5 came out; no you can't run many newer programs, but then almost all of them are Intel only anyway-- or require processor power far beyond what the G3 is capable of. There was a major processor shift, after all. And there are still a great many that DO support 10.4.11.
Additionally 10.4.11 is still supported by security fixes, so it's not like you're opening yourself up to a host of viruses by not going 10.5.
So please, what am I missing? What can't you do on your Flower Power iMac or G3 IBook that you can't because 10.5 isn't supported? Or are you just complaining for the sake of complaining?
I was syncing my Palm Pilot Professional and later the IIIx with my PowerBook G3 in the mid-late 90's via the IR and you could also print to a few HP laserjets that had IR ports, but serial and later USB (even with the adapter which worked fine on the mac) were much faster and less troublesome. Apple used better quality/faster speed serial ports (230.4kpbs) than most PC's at the time before switching to USB. I completely understood why Apple dropped the IR ports.
As far as having a remote for the iMac DV, the monitor was only 15" so watching a movie anywhere but right in front didn't make much sense.
>>I kept my PC going for 6 years with incremental upgrades. The iMac might last you 2-3 years max!
The iMac came out a time when OS 9 absolutely screamed on a G3, and later, quite paradoxically and unlike Windows, each new version of OS X ran faster than before. This was of course because the very unfortunately code-named Cheetah (10.0) was highly unoptimized and full of debug code. Each successive version was more optimized and less bloated, and thus ran faster. My company had slot-load 350s and 400s circa 2000 that were in use until mid-2007, running Tiger and Office 2004 in 512MB on 10 and 20GB drives. People got real work done on these iMacs and we got our money's worth many times over. We donated the bulk of these old iMacs to a African charity, who shipped them overseas for classroom use.
Supporting over 30 of these units, I got very adept at opening them to replace bad drives, swap bad optical drives, even an occasional mobo swap. I could swap a hard drive in less than 15 minutes (16 screws total on the slot-loads)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
You and Steve Jobs!
The massive reorg of Apple is symbolized with the birth of the iMac.
Disposable, shiny, pseudo-innovative...
1. Kill Newton
2. Kill (disguise?) Performa
3. Port NeXTStep
4. ???
5. Profit!
The Dell was a PIII. The Sony VAIO is a P4. Anything prior to that, it's just too old for me to remember the details.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I built the original iMac website. Apple was keeping this such a secret that I did not find out about it until the night before the launch, at 11pm. It was a lot of work, and I was tired, but it was great to be a part of such a great product. (Except the mouse.) It's been 10 years? I feel old.
The only way my wife will give up her Ruby Red iMac is to have it pried from her cold dead fingers. It does her email, spends money online (I do need to buy some stock it Victoria's Secret), watches videos, writes letters, keeps her spread sheets, etc. Perhaps she is right in asking for some "good" reason to upgrade.