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Happy 20th Launch Anniversary, iMac
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Got a refurbished iMac 21.5 last month with the 1TB SSD and couldn't be happier. The 5400 RPM disc drive of our previous iMac had become a massive bottleneck to performance. But still, my all-time favorite was the lamp iMac - I remember thinking its design truly was magical. 
Other than the Apple IIe, the products you listed are all of equal importance sequentially. iMac would never have existed without the original Macintosh, iPod would never have existed without the iMac, and iPhone would never have existed without the iPod.
Thank you, would love to get the Millennium Falcon as well, but that is a huge piece and not enough room in the office for that, my wife would not let me put it in the rest of the house. Just out of shot I also have a UCS Tie Fighter as well. I am tempted by the newly released Y wing though, which would not take up so much space.
I’ve been meaning to get my Rev. B iMac set up again. It’s been boxed for 5 years. I think today’s the day.
Here it is, running 10.4.11 (plz don't tell apple I'm running an unsupported OS)
Here it is, running 10.4.11 (plz don't tell apple I'm running an unsupported OS)
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Don Draper had it right when he recounted the literal (Greek) meaning of nostalgia...pain from an old wound, more powerful than memory alone.
That's how I think about the original iMac (with a nod to its impressive successor the Luxo). Ever since they've been steadily regressing in design, personality and relevance. Functional but not loved.
That's how I think about the original iMac (with a nod to its impressive successor the Luxo). Ever since they've been steadily regressing in design, personality and relevance. Functional but not loved.
Thank you for sharing the promo, its a shame the Apple does not really promote OS X in the way that it used too, I guess partly because Windows has caught up to a large extent these days.
I remember the unveiling. It was so unexpected. You can't understate how much the iMac changed things. It even changed industrial design, igniting a translucent plastic fad.
"How am I going to plug any accessories into it? How will I exchange files? Dongles! This is doomed to fail!!!"
Jobs quip aside, that's exactly what the reaction was like from the neckbeard crowd.
"How am I going to plug any accessories into it? How will I exchange files? Dongles! This is doomed to fail!!!"
I remember playing Oregon Trail on the G3 back in high school, I thought the design for a computer was really unique in that time.
I think it would be cool if they used one of those colors on their upcoming iPhone (Preferably the Royal Blue). Just for nostalgia reasons.
I think it would be cool if they used one of those colors on their upcoming iPhone (Preferably the Royal Blue). Just for nostalgia reasons.
Good too see a celebration of the launch anniversary as well as the reveal anniversary. You can expect design changes, also 9th gen chips rather than 8th gen. It will be quite a significant year, and to those who say Apple never mention anniversaries, it will be mentioned in the keynote.
Most computer users never upgrade; they get rid of their old computer by passing it on then get another one. That's the circle of life in the consumer industry. That's the upgrade cycle for iPads as well. In fact, I have a bunch of old iDevices from my family, because they're incredibly useful (even the 32-bit ones). As long as the last 32-bit version of the app still works the old-gen devices are still worth it. Heck, I know someone who's using their iPad 2 as a facebook live streamer.
Think about your TV. Do you ever throw it away? Not really. You move it to another room, or give it to your kids, or a friend, or to goodwill. That's basically what happens to older computers today.
We've had two iMacs, a 2004 G5 one and an early 2009 Core2Duo 24". The G5 was a tank and was silly easy to work on. The design of that thing was GREAT. The 24" was a total lemon. Failed HDD, Kernel panics due to memory, slow, bleh. My wife thinks it's cursed.
I kinda wish they would go back to a design that was less of a glued together mess, and more of a 'I can service my computer!' setup. One of the things that got me to switch to the mac in the first place was I could use standard memory/hdd's in them without any fuss. Now, they solder things in, use proprietary SSDs, and basically make it really difficult to do anything to it. It's probably going to get worse before it gets better too.
Nevertheless, you can't argue with the importance of the machine to Apple's legacy. Without the iMac, they wouldn't be here.
I kinda wish they would go back to a design that was less of a glued together mess, and more of a 'I can service my computer!' setup. One of the things that got me to switch to the mac in the first place was I could use standard memory/hdd's in them without any fuss. Now, they solder things in, use proprietary SSDs, and basically make it really difficult to do anything to it. It's probably going to get worse before it gets better too.
Nevertheless, you can't argue with the importance of the machine to Apple's legacy. Without the iMac, they wouldn't be here.
swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
I had a rev. B Bondi (rev. B had a little more VRAM).
It was $1,299.
Unlike today's iMac Pro, the RAM on the very first iMac was user upgradeable. Granted it was incredibly difficult, but still possible. Was, however, very easy to do on the slot-loading iMacs that came later.
It was $1,299.
Unlike today's iMac Pro, the RAM on the very first iMac was user upgradeable.
Granted it was incredibly difficult, but still possible. Was, however, very easy to do on the slot-loading iMacs that came later.
Yes, you are correct, megabytes, not gigabytes.
The base iMac shipped with 32MB of DRAM (upgradeable to 128MB) and a 4GB HDD - https://support.apple.com/kb/SP136?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Windows has broadly caught up with OS X / macOS (although not until Windows 7 did it really catch up with the performance, reliability and features of OSX, and by then the mobile battle was well underway with Apple streaking ahead with the iPhone). I still use a mac at home, a 2017 MacBook 512GB, shared with my wife as my daily driver is a 10.5 iPad Pro.
That said I watched the heck out of that promo back in the day, in 5 mins it neatly surmised everything I’d come to despise about WIndows as a home computing platform. Between seriously investigating switching from Windows and buying the eMac G4 + Panther, I was watching that video 3 or 4 times a day. I even remember the checkout girl’s reaction to the Panther box when I bought it. ‘What is this?’ when I put down the all black box with a black embossed X on the front. Compared to the logo festooned boxes for Windows XP, the Panther box looked as though it meant business!
So glad YouTube is around to preserve all of those Apple promos and adverts. Despite the Goldblum era adverts being before my own switch, I still get a kick out of hearing them, especially ‘There is no step 3....’
I was taking a 2 year high school course at the time in Japanese languages, and entering Japanese script (hiragana & katakana) via entering the Romani equivalent on Panther with Office X was simplicity itself. On Windows XP with Office? Ugh. That ease of ‘just getting what I want to do done’ has never left the mac. Not to mention the fast user switching and the eMac G4 was a pleasure to use between my wife and I, whereas PC/XP was a never ending exercise in fixing, patching and lousy multi-user support.
Most of the appeal of macOS these days is it working hand in glove with the iOS/iCloud ecosystem. Windows has kept me gainfully employed for years, still does and has already bought my house. For home use though? Happy to pay the BMW price tag and enjoy the BMW performance and have been since 2003. The promos still bring the warm glow of nostalgia.
When Steve stood on stage and announced the intel transistion, he said that the soul of a mac was in its operating system. I, along with all of those people in the room at the keynote, nodded and agreed. Macs have souls, even my old eMac G4.
That's the year I started my first real job as a classroom teacher, and I really wanted one of those colorful iMacs in my classroom to make myself look like a "cool" teacher.
The thing about the iMac was that even though Apple was very small back then they had a big influence in pushing USB. You could go to any store and see a variety of candy colored USB peripherals that copied the iMac style and worked with Mac and PCs. Not so much with USB-C. It's mostly a subset of storage devices or a hub that converts to other ports.
I agree to some extent about user upgrability; Apple talk extensively about recycling etc but what’s “green” about computers that have a limited shelf life if everything is glued/soldered down?