How the iMac Changed Computing

There's a great article on the MacWorld site about the original iMac that started shipping on August 15, 1998 - yes, 10 years ago today! Here's an excerpt:

The Bondi blue wonder heralded the return of Steve Jobs as a visionary leader for Apple, and it halted Apple’s mid-1990s financial freefall. Initially marketed as an easy-to-use gateway to the Internet, the iMac transcended that simple role and redefined the desktop PC market—not to mention consumer industrial design—forever.

Direct link:
http://www.macworld.com/article/135017/2008/08/imacanniversary.html?lsrc=rss_main

Mossberg is Convert to the Mac Way

Without a doubt, Walk Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has been transformed into a Mac fan the past couple of years. While Mossberg once spoke of Macs with sarcasm and disdain, he now praises Apple for the beautiful machines and operating system Mac devotees have loved for two decades.

Mossberg's latest column praises the iMac G5 as the "gold standard" of personal computers. Way to go, Walt! Read the entire article.

Latest iMac Design Playful and a Joy to Use

From the Houston Chronicle, April 27, 2002

By Dwight Silverman

WHEN Apple Computer's new iMac arrived at my home for review, I first set it up on the dining room table. One of my daughter's friends was the first to see it, and her reaction was telling.

"Wow, look!" she said. "It's the moving computer!"

That's a reference to the infectious TV ad that shows a man stopping in a window to admire the iMac, and the machine mimics his movements. My daughter's friend actually hoped that the iMac would play with her, too.

Indeed, "playful" is the perfect word to describe this computer's design. Apple's ad campaign captures its spirit beautifully. And design is the primary thing the new iMac has going for it.

Other computers do what the iMac does -- functionally, it performs in the same way as other Macintoshes and many Windows-based computers do. What makes this different is the way it physically engages the user.

Apple and its often zealous followers have long maintained that the Macintosh is the friendliest computer to use, and in this case they've been referring to the operating system, the Mac OS. But this is the first time that Apple has designed hardware that does as well in communicating that friendliness.

In that spirit, let's add the word "inviting" to its description.

I later moved the iMac up to our guest room, and my in-laws came to visit and stayed in that room. My wife's 85-year-old mother -- who to my knowledge has never touched a Mac -- sat down at it (ignoring a Dell sitting next to it, by the way) and figured out how to sign on to America Online on her own. When she finished, she asked coyly what it would take to bring it back with her.

For those who haven't see the ads or the machine itself, it looks like no other computer you've ever seen, even though its components are familiar. It has a 15-inch flat-panel screen. The screen is mounted on a shiny, polished chrome neck that's about 8 inches long, allowing the screen to move freely. The neck comes out of the center of a milky white hemisphere that's about the size of half a basketball. The computer's lone drive -- which can burn both CD and DVD discs -- pops out of the front of the hemisphere. Various connections are in a row along the back and bottom of the hemisphere -- Ethernet, FireWire, fax modem, USB. Even the speakers are cool -- they're a pair of clear spheres with impressive sound. They are a vast improvement over the speakers found in the original,
wedge-shaped iMac.

The version I tried came with an 800-megahertz PowerPC chip, 256 megabytes of memory and 60-gigabyte hard drive. About the only thing it lacked was an AirPort card, Apple's version of 802.11b wireless networking.

It also has a full-size keyboard and a cool-looking -- if somewhat limited -- clear optical mouse. I've complained about this before, and here it is again: Apple's stubborn adherence to a one-button mouse is a disservice to users. Fortunately, almost any USB mouse will work with this computer, which will give you two or more buttons for better productivity and convenience.

The price for this particular model -- the flagship in the line -- is $1,899. Less expensive models with slower processors and lacking DVD burners are $1,599 and $1,399.

Early reviews made the point that, given the flat-panel display and DVD burner, the iMac was a good value. Windows-based PCs could not match that price at the time, but that has changed since. For example, it's possible to configure a Dell Dimension 4400 with similar specs and pay $1,866.

The iMac comes with Mac OS X 10.1, which can run both native OS X applications as well as programs designed to run on the "Mac Classic" OS. At this point, though, it's possible to go with a pure OS X setup.

The combination of OS X -- with its attractive, intuitive interface -- and the unique physical design of the iMac are what makes this such a joy to use. I suspect even those who sneer at Macs as toys would be won over after an hour or so of use.

The iMac comes with a suite of multimedia applications aimed at making work with music, movies and photographs easy. Both the MP3 player and cataloguer iTunes and the video editing program iMovie, found on earlier Macs, are included. What's new is iPhoto, a basic image-editing and organizing program. Plug a USB-based digital camera into the iMac, and a simple dialog box lets you import the pictures you've taken. If you like, you can have iPhoto launch automatically to do the import. This makes getting digital photos into your computer a snap.

While the image-editing features of iPhoto are limited, they should be enough for most home photographers.

Besides the use of a single mouse button, I have only one small gripe about the hardware here. In most cases, the flat-panel display is beautiful, and is well-matched with an nVidia GeForce2 MX graphics card. But I found that small text on the screen tended to suffer badly from the "jaggies." Settings in the OS X control panel for font smoothing didn't seem to help.

Other than that, this is a great choice if you are shopping for a computer. If you are a Macintosh user and it's time to upgrade, you should snap up one of these.

But what about Windows users? Is this compelling enough to pull market share away from the dominant personal computing platform? I'd say that, for the first time in a long time, it may be. The trick is to convince Windows users to give up their investment in the software they've accumulated. While the iMac comes with just about everything you'd need to do most jobs, longtime computer users have programs they don't easily abandon.

However, this computer is so friendly, stable, easy to use and fun, I think anyone who is in the market -- regardless of what she or he has now -- should take a serious look at it. I know I will the next time I buy a computer. Send e-mail to dwight.silverman@chron.com. His Web site is at www.dwightsilverman.com.

Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

The Big Apple in the Big Apple!

If you lived out in the boonies like I do, you would sometimes forget there's a whole another world out there. Let's face it. Life in a community of 40,000 or so people is much different from say, Chicago, New York City or San Francisco.


On a recent trip to New York City, the fact that I live in a small and isolated Midwest town really hit me between the eyes! As I rode in a taxi from a New York Airport I watched as we passed billboard after billboard. But one billboard caught my eye. It was a huge photograph of an iMac DV Special Edition. In addition to the "Think Different" slogan in the lower right of the billboard, the only words on the ad were "Super Model." There it was: The Big Apple in the Big Apple!


While I did not get a chance to do much sightseeing, the offices where I visited used lots of PCs, but Macs as well. During a field trip along numerous Manhattan streets, I strained to peer into office building windows. Yes, they were there. Macs were everywhere.


The night before I was scheduled to leave the city, I got the opportunity to walk to Rockefeller Center from the Hilton Towers where I was staying. As I strolled past downtown storefronts, something caught the corner of my eye. There they were, four colorful iMacs in the window of The Computer Experience. Having my trusty digital camera in hand, I managed to snap a quick picture (at left).


To top it off, on the return flight I picked up a copy of Business Week. There he was, Steve Jobs, recognized as one of the top CEOs of 1999 (see photo above).

All in all, it was a good to see Apple and Macs (and Steve Jobs for that matter) are making a big impact in big places -- not just Mid-Missouri!

$699 iMacs at Sams!

Who said Macs are expensive? If you don't believe me, check out your local Sam's Wholesale. But you better do it quick, because the low-cost Macs I saw were flying off the shelves!

I'm talking about the $699 iMacs at Sam's. They're not the latest and greatest, but last year's 333 mhz, no-DVD version. They only have 32 megs of ram, but hey, they're Macs. A Sam's I visited over Christmas had a ton of these Macs on display for $849 (Grape and Tangerine only). That wasn't bad, but still not all that good, considering Apple had just introduced the $999 iMacs running at 350 mhz. I image some folks who have been curious about Apple and its products over the years bought one. But at $849, it probably wasn't many.

With a "6" in front that number (around Christmas) I would venture to say the boxes wouldn't have lasted long at all. In some ways, it could have been a real marketing coupe had Apple sold the machines to Sam's at a loss to get the iMac prices down and into homes and businesses. That way a lot of folks who are not exposed to the quality and reliability of Apple products would have purchased one. After all, the only competition in the $600-price range are some PC boxes with a name no one has ever heard of!

Many Mac watchers have dreamed of a sub-$500 Macintosh for years. While $699 is still a far cry from that, it sure is getting close and if you would have told me just two years ago that Macs would be selling below $700, I would have said you were crazy.

I would love to see sales figures of the iMacs once the price was reduced at Sam's. After all, Sam's shoppers are supposed to be bargain shoppers. People who know value when they see it. Once the price dropped, I bet the iMacs flew off the shelves, both into the hands of long-time Mac users and newbies as well.

While PC users will argue with Mac users about a lot of things, rarely does the argument ever focus on the shoddy quality of Apple products. That's because Apple is known in the industry as the leader in manufacturing good quality computers.

That's something the Sam's shopper who picked up a bargain-basement iMac will discover and who knows, perhaps one day, they'll buy Mac No. 2.

The Second Coming of the Macintosh

Love it or just like it, the iMac is doing something very important for the Macintosh community. It's bringing the shine back to the Apple logo.

It's been a long time in coming. Mac users haven't had a machine like this to crow about since the days of the original Mac. The iMac is innovative, it's cool and it's the computer to want and to own. Apple is going to sell lots of these things, believe me. There is some indication Apple has managed to get some Windows users to switch, as well as attract "newbies" who have never owned a computer of any kind.

PC users thought it was all over as recently as a year ago and that Apple Computer was all but out of business. I have to admit that I wondered a times myself, really for the first time since buying my first Mac in 1987. How wrong we were!

Not only is Apple back, but in a big, big way. Apple is taking chances again and working hard to become the innovator that made the company a legend. From what I'm reading in the Mac press, we haven't seen anything yet! Look at what's coming to an Apple retailer near you ...

The iBook Cometh ...

Soon to come from Apple is a new consumer portable, which some are dubbing the iBook. Speculation is running amuck on this new machine, but one thing is certain, it will be different if the iMac is any indication of Apple's new direction. Let's just hope that it runs the complete Mac OS and not some "Lite" version!

PowerPC is Getting More Powerful ...

While Intel and the Windows world is nearing the end of the road with its CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) microchips, the PowerPC RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) is just now hitting its stride. While Mac computing has gotten faster the past couple of years, wait until System X takes full advantage of PowerPC and IBM's copper chip technology. Talking about screaming!

Apple, the Mac and Microsoft ...

Microsoft has problems with the government and many of its customers who must live with "The Microsoft Solution." Microsoft's attempt at total world dominance hasn't worked out the way Bill Gates planned. Microsoft isn't cool any more (Mac users know it never was!). Apple and the Mac is regaining its status as the cool computing platform for those who desire to stay Microsoft-free. Look for this trend only to continue.

Some Problems (or should I say Opportunities) Still Exist ...

Apple needs to figure out how it can allow other computer manufacturers to build its machines without giving away the store. I don't necessarily mean the reinstatement of clones, but perhaps "agreements" that will allow other manufacturers to build iMacs and other Mac machinery. There is just no way Apple Computer, absent other manufacturers, can build enough boxes to significantly impact market share. Of course, this is all predicated on Apple continuing to produce innovative products like the iMac that create enormous demand.

"The Road Ahead," to use the title of Bill Gates' book on total world dominance (who read it anyway?), looks bright for Apple and the Mac.