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20 Years Ago Today, Apple Unveiled the eMac

I miss my 1.42 model so much! 😭😭😭😭 My favorite computer I ever owned, and I doubt that'll change as long as I live. I bought it off of eBay in 2009 for $200, and it served as my primary desktop computer for the next 10 years. It was a real trooper making it through several moves and life events, always there for me doing whatever I asked of it. I loved that thing to death, but when the power supply bit the dust in 2019, as much as I wanted to just couldn't justify spending the money and keeping it around anymore, I needed something newer. Broke my heart when I had to drop it off at a recycling center. 💔 Luckily still have a few pictures of it, this one is from mid-2017.

 
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My 2nd ever personal Mac!! Dad got one for me. I had a G3 model which was super fast compared to anything else I had used before. I remember how constantly loud they were from the big fan, but it was iconic.
I then eventually upgraded to a G4 model which was even faster.
 
I had one of these for a while, will re-add it to my collection when I make enough room to properly store it. That sucker is big. Tech seems to be one of those things people hoard till they die thinking its going to sell for as much as the Apple 1 did. When they are no longer here the family puts it back into the market, even if it goes into the trash...it still ends up back on the market. Hopefully the plastic on these holds up better than the iMac. Those are about as sturdy as a cracked egg if the plastic has yellowed.
 
Several people in my family got one of these. They were a nice spec upgrade over the original iMac G3. I never felt it was slow, the screen was excellent, speakers were good. Great gaming rig at least for the games I played. Upgraded later to a Powerbook G4 and then the PowerMac G5.
 
I had one of these. Great machine except it died prematurely because I had one from a batch that had defective capacitors in it. One month outside warranty, Apple wouldn’t hook me up. Think I went to a cheesegrater used for $700 and then rocked that for 8 years.
 
My first Mac... not an eMac, but I loved Macs ever since... until the Intel switch. Now THAT phase is over and I can get back to loving Macs again! :D
 

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I remember as a kid, my elementary school got a bunch of these when they were first released, and we all thought they were SLICK!
 
I remember taking one apart to get the drive out prior to scraping the computer -- the thing was built like the proverbial brick shithouse! Probably the most rugged Mac I'd seen, able to withstand a lot of physical abuse such as might be heaped upon it in a school setting.

And the weight! 50ish lbs! And a design that made it hard to carry. Obviously a selling point in the educational market: pretty hard to steal and carry out the door...
 
bluespark said:
They do, but that doesn't mean much to school districts and families strapped for cash.

You're certainly correct as to Google's economy, but Apple competed on price when the eMac was released (albeit against different competitors) and could make much more of an effort to do that now. Also, while Apple isn't in the data-mining business, it certainly has a long-term interest in building Apple loyalty/familiarity, and it has a services revenue stream that could pay for a lot of hardware, particularly if it were to expand its focus on education-related services.
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Well when you pay teachers $150k plus benefits it adds up.

(And yes, there are many upon many thousands of teachers who make that or more. Most districts you can look up what teachers earn by name online. Some of the loudest “we are underpaid” asvocates are making 3x the average income in the area, plus benefits and lifetime job security. And they get 12 weeks vacation throughout the year.)
 
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I used these to provide Apple phone support from a third-party Apple call centre in Ontario, Canada. We had quite a few of them in the office!
 
I would love to have one of those vintage iMacs running some modern-ish version of macOS...they are just so cool looking even by today's standards.
 
I bought 1 GHz G4 eMac in late 2003. In retrospect, I wish shelled out a couple of extra hundred dollars for a comparably spec’d iBook instead. That’s because the eMac was very heavy and also had a shape that made it very difficult to hold, carry, and transport. Every time I held and carried it, it felt like it could fall out of my hands at anytime.
 
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jakey rolling said:
I sold a lot of LaCie CRT monitors along with G4 towers during the early 00's. LaCie had an amazing 21" CRT for doing photo work.
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Yeah, the time when Sony's Trinitrons and NEC/Mitsubishis' Diamontrons were the peak of the CRT technology. These were used by many companies (Iiyama, SUN, SGI, Philips etc.)

But it soon ended somewhere in the middle of the 2000s. The era of the LCDs for the masses has begun.
 
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