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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?
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.
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?
People weren't criticizing USB on the iMac as a replacement for ADB; they were criticizing it as a replacement for serial and parallel. When the iMac was announced, there were no USB printers on the market. None. That would mean that if you bought an iMac, you couldn't print from it. And the only USB scanner most people had ever seen was this one.
Of course, the release of the iMac created a huge market for USB peripherals; Epson was the first to step up to the plate and release a USB printer. It was translucent blue.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
There was, I believe a SCSI adapter for it and a Voodoo2 video card. The voodoo2 was the best upgrade you could get for one of those at the time.
I'm still not sure what it was supposed to be for, either.
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.
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