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iMac Turns 10
Posted by
timothy
on Thu May 08, 2008 11:20 AM
from the nifty-design dept.
from the nifty-design dept.
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."
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iFirst? (Score:4, Informative)
10 years already? (Score:3, Insightful)
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It just worked (Score:5, Insightful)
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time this was just a faster replacement for the ADB bus that Apple had used as an universal bus before, and SCSI had been replaced by IDE as an internal connector before.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."
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Re:It just worked (Score:5, Informative)
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 [youtube.com].
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.
Parent
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I know that person; he keeps phoning me for advice. Does anyone know of a service that will home deliver a clue?
Still got one? (Score:2)
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Incidentally, the rev C really is bondi blue - that was only supposed to be used on rev A and B (C was the introduction of the 5 'fruit' colored models, and the blue was a deeper color than A or B). I guess they had leftover bondi cases and built
I can remember (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I can remember (Score:5, Interesting)
They had no idea that an HP USB mouse could be plugged into a Mac.
They had also never heard of Unreal Tournament before, although a very attractive girl from the appliances department wandered over and mentioned that she had seen her boyfriend playing it at home. I was shocked that none of the computer salesmen were aware of such a popular game. It was definitely an eye-opening experience.
This is why Apple now has their own retail stores.
Parent
Cat got your tongue? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
It looked like an ADM 3A (Score:2, Interesting)
Certainly it didn't look like any other other computer.
Yes, it did:
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The iMac was known for several things:
AiO
Color
Cute
The ADM-3A lacks color or cute.
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I don't know, maybe if you're color-blind and deaf.
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It's not just a dumb terminal, it's a very dumb terminal. It's all done in TTL logic. DEC's famous VT-100 used an actual CPU, and I'm sure that the VT-52 did too.
I have one that doesn't work right. Its raster works, but I was barely able to get it to show any characters on the screen. I found a schematic on the internet somewhere, so maybe someday I'll try to fix it.
floppy drive (Score:2, Informative)
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?
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It was still working just fine when we retired it, but it was too slow for YouTube, and th
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As a counter point. I know several people that owned early iMacs and later iMacs and not a single one of them bought the floppy drive.
For many people the floppy was already dead by the time the iMac came out. I had long since stopped using sneaker net to transfer files around.
It was about the network. (Score:2)
If I recall correctly, at the time pretty much everyone ended up buying a USB floppy drive for these things anyway.
I deployed quite a few of these at non-profits and educational sites in '98. Those sites were already networked, either with ethernet or LocalTalk or both (usually both, to support a mix of platforms and old machines).
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
It wasn't all roses. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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My only complaint about the Mighty Mouse is that because the left and right buttons aren't separate buttons, if I try to right-click without first lifting my left finger off the button, it'll register as a left-click. Aside from that, it seems to work pretty well.
Any one else remember selling them? (Score:2)
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 reme
So can we now be told... (Score:4, Interesting)
I also seem to recall somebody actually released a product or something that used it, though I can't remember anything about it.
Re:So can we now be told... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm still not sure what it was supposed to be for, either.
Parent
Not quite (Score:2)
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 D
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Ahhhhh the C64. Good times.
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Instead of giving somebody a floppy with a copy of a work recorded on it, you could e-mail a copy to her.
No, they would just put it on a CD.
The use case with CD-R is a lot different from the use case with a floppy or USB flash drive in three ways that I can see:
Your reasons are real nice except for the fact that floppy was long dead before the mass adoption of flash. Flash drives didn't even come out until late 2000 and by then floppy was already all but dead.
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1. A lot of computers with a CD-ROM drive lacked and still lack a CD recorder. With floppies and USB drives, any machine with a reader also had a writer.
Yeah, that's why places had long replaced their floppy backups with tape drives.
2. Discs get scratched easily, and frequently rewritten CD-RW discs develop errors from normal wear much more quickly than a USB hard drive or flash drive.
And yet optical disc usage probably still surpasses the use of flash by a many, many times. Guess your theory fails there too.
3. Most importantly, writing to a CD is much more momentous than writing to a floppy or USB drive. After writing to any storage medium, you have to finalize it before you remove it. Floppies and USB drives get finalized within five seconds after you tell the OS to eject them. CDs, on the other hand, typically have all their writes queued up so that you have to wait five to ten minutes for the disc to record and finalize before it is ejected. And then if you run out of new space for files on a CD-RW disc, you have to copy all the files to the PC, erase the disc, and then copy all the files back.
Yep, this is definitely why you see so many companies using flash drives to archive their work. Oh wait, they still use tape drives and optical discs instead. Guess this point fails too.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Apple was already back on its feet financially by the time the iPod shipped.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, Apple was already back on its feet financially by the time the iPod shipped.
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 [news.com]. 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 [news.com], 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 [wikipedia.org].
A nice page with Apple's income data over the last ten years: AAPL - Apple, Inc. Stock Report | Financial Statements [morningstar.com]
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).
Parent
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 c
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Of course Apple was on the verge of closing. They were beleagured. John Dvorak told me so.
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Re:iblame imac . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:It's as if a thousands hands screamed out in pa (Score:2)
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.
I've got news for you: http://lowendmac.com/compact/original-macintosh-128k.html [lowendmac.com] 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.
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Re:It's as if a thousands hands screamed out in pa (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:It's as if a thousands hands screamed out in pa (Score:3, Interesting)
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 car
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As to upgradability/usability - got an iMac DV SE circa 2000 that's going fine, being used daily.
Re:It's as if a thousands hands screamed out in pa (Score:3, Informative)
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