Slashdot Mirror
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.
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time this was just a faster replacement for the ADB bus that Apple had used as an universal bus before, and SCSI had been replaced by IDE as an internal connector before.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
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.
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.
Absolutely correct. We bought a floppy drive with our Bondi-Blue rev.B iMac (it read 120MB "Super Disks" also, but we never used that). We needed it to copy old files from our previous Mac (which didn't have Ethernet). We (well, actually my wife) continued to use the floppy to transfer files to computers at her school until I bought her a USB flash drive. We finally retired it last summer when we bought a new iMac.
It was still working just fine when we retired it, but it was too slow for YouTube, and the last OS9-compatible Mozilla was incompatible with Yahoo's login system. It may serve as a classroom computer next fall--it's still better than nothing.
I would say that iPod/iTunes actually saved Apple
No, Apple was already back on its feet financially by the time the iPod shipped.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't think you can really accurately say that it was either the iMac or the iPod that saved Apple. Apple was never on the verge of shuttering its building, even though some pundits liked to pretend it was. Even in its lowest days, it still had lots of loyal fans, smart engineers, and a good pile of cash. Apple's biggest problem was a lack of focus. It had a huge and diverse product line that spread its resources too thin, and made it really hard to get some things done (IE, a revamped operating system).
The iMac is sort of a cornerstone example of the focus that Apple found. Instead of selling dozens of different desktop computers, they started selling just two, the iMac and the Powermac workstations. Instead of selling you Apple branded printers/scanners/cameras with your Mac, they gave you a couple USB ports and pointed you towards some third party devices.
The same focus that lead to the iMac eventually allowed Apple to release OS X, and then the iPod. The iPod has allowed Apple to reinvent itself to a significant degree, but I think they'd still be around even if their adventures into music hadn't happened. They wouldn't be near as big as they are now, but they'd still exist, they'd still be selling computers, and they'd still have lots of fans.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
...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.
Look at the bright side, the iEra ended the period where everything ended in Tron.
make world, not war
That's true. I go tired of my pointer going sideways when it should be going up.
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.
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.
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
Apple was never on the verge of shuttering its building, even though some pundits liked to pretend it was.
Actually, that's not quite correct. There was a low point in '96, when Gil Amelio pulled off a pretty amazing trick and got emergency bank funding from wall street. If the banks hadn't gone for his pitch, Apple would have been through. They were down to less than two months' worth of cash on hand.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No, Apple was already back on its feet financially by the time the iPod shipped.
But Apple got "back on its feet financially" largely because of cost cuts and downsizing (started by Amelio), not from increased revenues. If I remember correctly, the revenues didn't really start "rolling in" until the iPod became a cultural phenomenom.I remember Steve Jobs's first use (I'm pretty sure) of his "One Last Thing" catchphrase at Macworld 1998 to announce Apple's first quartly profit in ages. However, revenues were down half a billion dollars from the same quarter the previous year ($1.6 billion down from $2.1 billion).
Three years later, quarterly revenues would be down to about $1 billion and Apple would be losing money again. Apple had a net loss for the year 2001 and a net operating loss in 2003. Revenues/profits bounced back, then took off in 2004 and 2005. Note that iTunes Music Store and iTunes for Windows were launched/released during 2003. In January 2007, even with increased Mac sales, 48% of revenues were from iPod sales.
A nice page with Apple's income data over the last ten years: AAPL - Apple, Inc. Stock Report | Financial Statements
I'm not sure if the iPod "saved" Apple, but I don't for sure if Apple could have continued with Mac sales being their primary revenue source (without the iPod halo effect and a smaller share of the market).
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Of course Apple was on the verge of closing. They were beleagured. John Dvorak told me so.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
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 sometimes wonder if he was really as useless as he gets accused of being,
From what I've been able to piece together (although I didn't start working at Apple until after his time), he was unable to manage a company where people would say "yes" to what you told them to do, and then go off and do whatever the hell they wanted. Sculley let this happen, and trying to get a lid on it just about killed Spindler from stress.
When Steve Jobs came back, he made it very clear very quickly that people would get canned for behavior that was tolerated in the past. It doesn't actually take too many people getting the boot for everyone else to shape up.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."