Apple Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Steve Jobs Unveiling the iMac

[gnasher729]

Once the whole computer is basically a rectangle whose size and shape is determined by the display and the minimum volume needed to keep the electronics cool, what is there to change?

Especially now that you can buy an iMac with 18 cores and 128GB RAM. The next new design will be holographic display and the computer is all in the keyboard. The design after that is the computer in your wrist watch and direct connection to your brain.

 

[Guy Clark]

Mine is a 2008. God that thing is pretty. And reliable. And silent.

Not wishing to rain on your parade but you are one of the lucky ones. 2007 and 2008 had the highest GPU failure rate in both 20" and 24" models.

 

[gnasher729]

Have you ever considered perhaps the "whining" is justified?

Never. Cook should be fired, bring Forstall back, nothing new at all, all that rubbish just gets on my nerves.
[doublepost=1525711892][/doublepost]

It's true. There are very few users I recognize on this site, but this is one of them. Every time I see a comment from Naraxus I can always count on it being negative and cynical. Like get outside once and a while see the world for more than just Apple's shortcomings

Outside? It's raining, and it's Apple's fault. Wouldn't have rained when Steve Jobs was there. And Samsung's rain is warmer.
[doublepost=1525712266][/doublepost]

Well Lisa came first, but he was deeply involved with the launch of the first Mac in 1984.

He didn't support the Mac one bit in 1992 and 1993. Yes, he was involved with the launch of the first Mac, as you would expect from the CEO of the company, but there wasn't one bit of support before that.
[doublepost=1525712502][/doublepost]

2002 "lamp" design is still the best looking one to me. Fully adjustable screen was a GREAT feature. I know it is not going to happen, but I'd love to see the internals taken out of the screen and put back into the stand. Think of it like a lighter screen sitting on a Mac Mini with the design clever enough that the two parts can be replaced and fixed separately.

I had a look on eBay UK, and you can buy one in working condition for under £100. There are two more "for decorative purposes".

 

[groove-agent]

Steve died late 2011. The last mac pro refresh was in 2013 and Mac Mini was in 2014. So, the neglect happened AFTER Steve died.

Funny reading through the comments like this through the thread. People sure have tinted their memory.

The Mac Mini and Mac Pro were both neglected LONG before Steve died. In fact, if Steve was still around, I would bet money that the Mac Mini would be axed by now.

 

[DakotaGuy]

Never. Cook should be fired, bring Forstall back, nothing new at all, all that rubbish just gets on my nerves.
[doublepost=1525711892][/doublepost]
Outside? It's raining, and it's Apple's fault. Wouldn't have rained when Steve Jobs was there. And Samsung's rain is warmer.
[doublepost=1525712266][/doublepost]
He didn't support the Mac one bit in 1992 and 1993. Yes, he was involved with the launch of the first Mac, as you would expect from the CEO of the company, but there wasn't one bit of support before that.
[doublepost=1525712502][/doublepost]
I had a look on eBay UK, and you can buy one in working condition for under £100. There are two more "for decorative purposes".

I do agree with Tim Cook being replaced with Scott Forstall as CEO. Scott is a visionary and Cook a bean counter. At some point Apple starts losing it's direction when you put a bean counter in charge. It eventually happened in the John Sculley era and it will happen again given enough time.

 

[tubular]

Had a Model A the first day you could buy one. Ordered it six weeks in advance. They hadn’t quite worked out that having a dead USB meant you couldn’t restart from the keyboard, and you had to do a hard reset with a paper clip.

 

[jgdeschamps]

Quite the good looking machine for the time. However, that mouse... I remember cable modems were just coming to market in my area. Notably poor performance just doing something like web browsing. Maybe that said something about PowerPC? Maybe the fanless design? Anyway, glad to see these machines vastly improve after a few years.

What are you talking about? I owned 2 of them: the solid plastic orange one, and the graphite SE G3 iMacs (not at the same time, of course,) and none of them had issues with cable modems or browsing the web. I had them mainly for architectural design using ArchiCAD, Photoshop and Lightwave 3D. They were not underpowered at all. At that time, in MacOS 9 you could override default RAM usage and increase manually the amount of memory each application used so you didn't have any issues when running your software. I clearly remember ArchiCAD using only 64MB of RAM with 128MB manually assigned, and I had maxed out the SE iMac RAM up to 256MB. Flawless, stable performance... I actually miss those machines.

 

[groove-agent]

Sales or stock prices doesn't mean a product is good.

Look at Microsoft in the mid 90s. Was Windows 95 really that good? Not really, but it was the best thing (the only thing?) at the time. They marketed it well and it sold.

A lot of people are invested in the Apple ecosystem dating back to the Steve Jobs era. I'm one of them. They can either plow through or go back to Windows. Apple despite the short-comings (product neglect, sloppy programming, bad MBP keyboards) is still better than going back to Windows (although I admit the has closed quite a bit).

AirPod are good. But really, they do fall short in a few areas. Despite any shortcomings a lot of iPhone/Mac users are going to buy them over another brand because it fits into their existing ecosystem. Unless there's a huge design flaw, they will be a hit regardless.

High stock prices also doesn't mean Apple is better than ever. Stock prices are a result of public perception of the company. We all know Apple is genius when it comes to marketing. Proof of this can be found with today's article:

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/07/aapl-all-time-high-above-187/

He’s sucked the magic out of Apple so much that they are now more profitable and have a slew of popular products that people just keep buying.....

Under Cook we have seen AirPods and Apple Watch both of which are VERY popular, not only that but the iPhone has grown to do really well now with the Plus model and the regular! Oh and don’t forget the iPad is doing well also.

The iMac has saw a more thinner design change in 2012 (my first iMac and I love it) Apple also added both 4K and 5K iMacs, that doesn’t seem to be appreciated.

Oh and the MacBook Pro and MacBook sales have also been doing really well.

I don’t see what the problem is here

 

[flyinmac]

Had a Model A the first day you could buy one. Ordered it six weeks in advance. They hadn’t quite worked out that having a dead USB meant you couldn’t restart from the keyboard, and you had to do a hard reset with a paper clip.

The paper clip, the one tool every house should have. Fixes everything. I’m always pulling one out for various things around the house. I keep two straightened ones on my desk. Locks to computers... everything.

Imagine the trouble we’ll be in when we become a true paperless society.

“Hey... you got a paper clip???”

“No???”

“Get on eBay, and see if you can find a paper clip.”

 

[LordVic]

The paper clip, the one tool every house should have. Fixes everything. I’m always pulling one out for various things around the house. I keep two straightened ones on my desk. Locks to computers... everything.

Imagine the trouble we’ll be in when we become a true paperless society.

“Hey... you got a paper clip???”

“No???”

“Get on eBay, and see if you can find a paper clip.”

"what's a paperclip"

 

[jonblatho]

It's one thing to criticize, but this site has turned into a perpetual whine fest. The constant negativity is just annoying at this point. Seems that some people here do it just to seem "cool" and rack up the thumbs up.

Yeah, but if Steve Jobs were still alive we’d have self-driving hovercars and holographic Macs by now. Haven’t you heard?!

 

[Dave245]

Sales or stock prices doesn't mean a product is good.

Look at Microsoft in the mid 90s. Was Windows 95 really that good? Not really, but it was the best thing (the only thing?) at the time. They marketed it well and it sold.

A lot of people are invested in the Apple ecosystem dating back to the Steve Jobs era. I'm one of them. They can either plow through or go back to Windows. Apple despite the short-comings (product neglect, sloppy programming, bad MBP keyboards) is still better than going back to Windows (although I admit the has closed quite a bit).

AirPod are good. But really, they do fall short in a few areas. Despite any shortcomings a lot of iPhone/Mac users are going to buy them over another brand because it fits into their existing ecosystem. Unless there's a huge design flaw, they will be a hit regardless.

High stock prices also doesn't mean Apple is better than ever. Stock prices are a result of public perception of the company. We all know Apple is genius when it comes to marketing. Proof of this can be found with today's article:

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/07/aapl-all-time-high-above-187/

If people are buying something in the millions with high satisfaction rates (AirPods and iPhone X) then it means people really like the products which means it’s good, obviously not everyone in the world is going to agree but that doesn’t mean a product is doing bad or is bad just because you may not like it.

People like to talk about a lack of innovation and so on but just look at something like the Surface or Surface Book it’s sales are not even touching the Mac which means people are not buying it, does that mean it’s a bad product? It’s not as popular that’s for sure but is that because of Windows or because people don’t want hybrid 2 in 1’s? My point is regardless of a few people posting on these type of forums it doesn’t look like Apple is the failure that some people have been saying for a while now (Apple is doomed nonsense).

 

[jonblatho]

Take a look at this picture. The iMac got a design refresh roughly every two years. The current design is 5 years old and counting.

It’s almost like they’re running into combined physical and technical constraints or something. Oh, wait.

 

[otternonsense]

He’s sucked the magic out of Apple so much that they are now more profitable and have a slew of popular products that people just keep buying.....

Under Cook we have seen AirPods and Apple Watch both of which are VERY popular, not only that but the iPhone has grown to do really well now with the Plus model and the regular! Oh and don’t forget the iPad is doing well also.

The iMac has saw a more thinner design change in 2012 (my first iMac and I love it) Apple also added both 4K and 5K iMacs, that doesn’t seem to be appreciated.

Oh and the MacBook Pro and MacBook sales have also been doing really well.

I don’t see what the problem is here

I don’t think “magic” means what you think it means.

A revolutionary product can have poor sales and a lame derivative iteration can sell millions. Sales =/= magic, unless you’re a stockbroker or statistician.

Also, thinning =/= design change, and the MacBook Pro sells “very well” (actually Mac sales dropped YOY) because of a captive audience starved for a meaningful upgrade (which they didn’t get, but still needed a new computer)
[doublepost=1525719372][/doublepost]

I do agree with Tim Cook being replaced with Scott Forstall as CEO. Scott is a visionary and Cook a bean counter. At some point Apple starts losing it's direction when you put a bean counter in charge. It eventually happened in the John Sculley era and it will happen again given enough time.

Same difference with Sculley productwise. The big difference is that Apple is now crazy profitable thanks to Jobs’ legacy.

 

[hwy1trd]

Those expansion bays were sweet! You could run two batteries, one battery and a ZIP or floppy drive -- or, if I recall, you could run off AC with zero batteries and both expansion bays used for other things. I know modularity adds bulk but man was it useful.

and don't forget the first FW400 on the Pismo!

 

[Yvan256]

"What's a paperclip?"

"What's paper?"

 

[UltraNEO*]

I remember having one of those, loved it to bits!!
However, I've not brought an Apple product for several years now, their innovation has become somewhat stagnate

 

[Sean4000]

Commercial success or not, the Surface Studio is the closest attempt in recent years that captured some of the G4 iMac's magic and ingenuity.

Sadly, for all their billions and talent, the Mac ecosystem is in tatters and Apple designers have been resting on their laurels since 2012.

Man that's a nice computer, I just looked it up. I'm more of a function over form kind of guy but I appreciate it when form and function compliment each other nicely. The MS Studio would make a nice Debian KDE system and I'd love to see it run Krita.

 

[theluggage]

but just look at something like the Surface or Surface Book it’s sales are not even touching the Mac

Microsoft are playing a slightly odd game with the Surface range: MS have got fat on a rakeoff for every PC of any brand sold (plus, a new soul to add to their roster) and don't want to end that arrangement anytime soon so its not in their interest to compete too hard with the other PC manufacturers. I'm sure that they could price the Surface Pro/Laptop/Book/Studio more keenly, but they've actually gone for super-premium prices that put them firmly in Mac territory, if not beyond.

I think they're meant as Windows "flagships" designed to encourage other PC makers to up their game and start taking the fight to Apple - and that seems to be working.

The Surface Book is actually a pretty neat machine that does come pretty close to shaking Apple's tree - shame about "sleep of death" though (disclaimer - I bought one. I liked it. Then it died).

Meanwhile, Apple are regularly in the top 5 of laptop market share surveys, but they're hardly dominant. HP, Lenovo and Dell tend to top out the charts, and they do have some - at least superficially - interesting laptops, e.g. HP spectres "convertibles" with active pens (possibly spurred by the surface book). Apple are going slightly out on a limb by sticking with the strict tablet/laptop divide (and they may be right).

"what's a paperclip"

 

[eatrains]

As you can well see in the picture, the iMac design has BARELY CHANGED since 2004.

14 years with the same design...In computer time that is an eternity.

Sadly, that shows how little Apple cares about its computer line up.

As someone said before, Tim Cook sucked the magic out of Apple.

By that ridiculous logic, laptop designs haven't changed since 1991.

 

[Chambers McMac]

That's when Apple brand entered my consciousness. It was Apple using different colored cases of iMac that amazed me. Up to this point everything was beige and it was boring boring boring! Then in 2002 I finally took the plunge and purchased the iLamp G4 iMac from Comp USA in Emeryville, CA. I used it primarily with Motu Digital Performer. I recall OSX was released soon after. That would be the only iMac I ever owned. I had a NetZero dial-up account for internet access and my mobile device was a Palm Pilot in light blue. I was on the cutting edge of technology.

 

[swamprock]

<snip>

The original iMac pioneered many industry firsts such as USB, FireWire, and quiet fan-less operation </snip>

There's nothing fanless about the Bondi iMac. There was a system fan in there, the last time I had mine open (a week ago). The fanless iMacs came later with the slot-loaders IIRC...

 

[jicon]

What are you talking about? I owned 2 of them: the solid plastic orange one, and the graphite SE G3 iMacs (not at the same time, of course,) and none of them had issues with cable modems or browsing the web.

The original Bondi blue base model easily had worse download speeds than other Pentium II/III machines with the brand of cable modem available in my area. Terayon cable modems with base TCP settings were getting about a third of the download speeds as an out of the box. Typically 70/80KB/s. 10Mbps Realtech PCI NIC installed on a Windows 98 machine would usually do 220/210KB/s. I think there was some tinkering with packet sizes we typically did to help improve speeds, but there had always been lag. Maybe indeed that did sit on Microsoft's Internet Explorer on Mac OS in some way, Terayon? The TCP stack? Anyway, ancient history. DOCSIS upgrades, hardware improvements, OS improvements it improved in a few years.

 

[fairuz]

They had these in my school. Best PCs ever made for the time, and they lasted forever. One of my friends used a newer iMac G3 until 2010. It was until the new web standards and accompanying crappy websites around 2012 that they became basically unusable. Well, unless you valued your eyesight and didn't want to stare at a CRT.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

The original iMac pioneered many industry firsts such as USB, FireWire, and quiet fan-less operation…

I’m pretty sure (and Mactracker seems to confirm) that FireWire debuted in the blue and white Power Mac G3 a few months before it appeared in any iMacs. The original iMac models definitely didn’t have it.

There's nothing fanless about the Bondi iMac. There was a system fan in there, the last time I had mine open (a week ago). The fanless iMacs came later with the slot-loaders IIRC...

So of the three "industry firsts" that this article mentions, "USB, FireWire, and quiet fan-less operation," only USB was actually pioneered by the original iMac.

And then there's the wild assertion that "by the mid-1990s, Apple was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt," which I dealt with earlier.

Would it be too much to ask that MacRumors actually fact-check stories before posting them?