Chicago (IL) – Yes, we are one day late, but we did not forget: Apple’s iMac celebrated its 10th birthday yesterday – reason enough for us to look back into the single most important product that took Apple from an almost-breakdown to the company that developed a product portfolio that is the envy of the IT, entertainment and consumer electronics industry today.    

Most of us probably perceive the iMac as a fresh product and some of us may be surprised to hear that the iMac it has grown into one of longest continuations on the PC market with a decade-long history. The original iMac was introduced on May 6, 1998.

Ten years ago, Apple was a very different company than it is today: In late 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $429 million and bring Steve Jobs back to Apple as an interim CEO, in a desperate move to save the company that was bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars quarterly. Starting in March 1998, Jobs began working hand in hand with Jonathan Ive, today's head of Apple's industrial design group, as well as other key employees on a secret project.

Apple needed that winning product that could save the company from oblivion. On May 6, the company was ready to reveal what it has been working on:  Apple invited journalists to a special event at the Flint Center in Cupertino to show off the first iMac. You can watch Steve Jobs unveil the first iMac in this YouTube video.

The original “BondiBlue” iMac was powered by a 233 MHz PowerPC 750 “G3” processor, came with a 4 GB hard drive, a 24x CD-ROM, 32 MB standard RAM (128 MB optional), ATI Rage IIc graphics (2 MB memory), a 100 Mb Ethernet port, an infra-red port hidden in speakers that were placed below the screen, a 33.6 Kbps modem, two USB slots and audio in/out ports. The 15" CRT display had a 13.8" viewable area an offered a 1024x768 resolution.

The computer arrived in a time when the Internet was gaining popularity quickly and Apple heavily marketed the system as the "Internet in a box". Users were able to unpack the computer, plug it in and go online within 15 minutes, something that wasn’t quite possible with the typical beige boxes at the time.

The original iMac became an instant hit, but, of course it was not a perfect product. With a starting price of $1299, it was substantially more expensive that the traditional PC, which had cracked that $1000 mark at the time. The omission of a floppy drive left users without a possibility to transfer data from one system to another – other than using email. Apple later on market Internet storage (iDrive) as an online data exchange medium, but the company missed the boat on CD-RW drives which rapidly gained popularity in the 1999-2000 timeframe. Apple did not add a CD-RW drive to the iMac until February 2001.

And who can forget that hockey puck mouse that was described as the “most gorgeous mouse on the planet” by Jobs, but surely wasn’t as comfortable to use as mice that were not as pretty but came in a traditional form factor. There were a few other issues, such as difficult hardware upgrades, but all of these drawbacks did not impact the success of the device.
 
If you want to relive the past, you can read the original Macworld magazine iMac cover story here.

Today, the iMac is a completely different beast and the system has evolved into a very capable (multi-media machine. Some things, however, have not changed: Pricing and the approach to maintain a cutting edge design. The original iMac model cost $1299, whereas today's entry-level iMac stands at just $100 less. There is still an all-in-one design, but we have transitioned from the all-in-one box to teh lamp design and eventually to today's flat-panel thin aluminum appearance.

The rest of the industry mostly ignored the iMac's form factor and stuck to the usual beige (or grey) box design. There were some iMac-inspired computers, such as the Dell XPS One, the Gateway One and the HP IQ770 Crossfire, but all of them failed to replicate the kind of success and influence iMac has been enjoying over the past decade.

There are no signs that Apple will retire the iMac anytime soon. From time to time, we read about rumors that predict a "radical new form factor" for the next iMac. Although Apple did change iMac's form factor over time, it is hard to imagine that the company will depart from the one-box idea. What seems certain, however, is that the next major revision will bring a multi-touch screen.

If you ask people what they will think about when they hear the name of Apple, most will probably say “iPod”. But it really was the iMac that turned the company around and enabled Apple to become what it is today.

very capable for $1299.

May 08, 2008 08:58     

For $1299, it better be capable. You can get a super low end under $400 system doing the same thing from DELL, HP, ACER . Or for the price of $600-$700 get a laptop and go mobile... Or for $1299...(actually lower) get a base model of the DELL XPS which blows the imac in performance. So after all these year, apple is still selling overprice $1299 imac that can't even have enough graphic power to play games.

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imac

May 08, 2008 09:01     

"If you ask people what they will think about when they hear the name of Apple, most will probably say “iPod”. But it really was the iMac that turned the company around and enabled Apple to become what it is today." Well, ipod is the best seller that give apple the cash and monopoly in music industry they needed. The ibook is the best seller laptop that give them more computer market share. imac is the overprice and under perform computer that is still stuck with the same market share. end of story. It's a cute little machine for girls.

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Retro iMAC?

May 08, 2008 09:10     

It would be neat to see a 'retro' iMAC; an iMAC with an lcd screen and newer electronics but still have that 'older' iMAC look. :) Someone did something similar with the MacIntosh computer. http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/mac-itx/ :)
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