Tech Throwback: iMac 20th anniversary

I like to take a look at where I’ve been to evaluate where Im going. Technology is cyclical after all… wait no its not. That said I still like all the feels that come rushing back like a flood of nostalgia every time I get my hand on the tech I grew up with. Im going to go back periodically and take a looking at the stuff that used to blow our hair back and get our minds rolling. Some of these device blew up and changed the world, some where ahead of their time and some just fell flat and became colossal failures. Today we are going to talk about the original iMac on its 20th anniversary

Its been twenty whole years since  Steve Jobs introduced iMac on May 6th, 1998. It was a truly ambitious new Mac, with a very specific Internet  access ease-ability. It not only redefined the design and styling of tech products but charted a strategic course that would take Apple from being a that one PC maker from the 80s to the world’s most valuable  company. This computer set the path for apple to become more valuable then all but 17 countries in the world. Most importantly, iMac had an impact because it courageously made bold decisions that conventional thinking assumed to be wrong. The iMac, take aim at a broader market of individuals who wanted a practical, easy way to get on the Internet. What can you say about Steve Jobs that hasn’t already been said, the man just got us.

Before unveiling the new iMac, Jobs outlined how it would be different. For starters, Apple was using a modern 233MHz G3 processor, the same chip it had used in its entry-level Pro Power Mac G3 just six months prior at a price $300 higher. That new generation Power PC chip boasted a performance edge “up to twice as fast” as Intel’s Pentium II processors at similar clock speeds. I had forgotten about the G3 processors, but this gives me a lot of anticipatory feelings for the next line of iMacs that apple is set to make there own chips again for starting next year.

At a time when PCs generally needed an external modem to connect to the Internet over phone lines, the new iMac built in both its relatively fast modem (making it easy to connect by only plugging in a phone cord) and 100Mb Ethernet.USB ports had already appeared on PCs, but it generally sat unused because device makers kept building slightly cheaper products using RS-232 serial ports, PS/2 cables for keyboards and mice and Centronics Parallel ports on printers and disks. The new iMac also included IrDA, a way to beam (like a TV remote) data using invisible light. It wasn’t nearly as fast as the wireless technology Apple would roll out in the future, including Bluetooth and WiFi, but it offered an early way to transmit photos and other basic data without requiring cables at all.

Quick Spec Look

• Screen Size 15 inches
• Processor 0.35 GHz PowerPC G3
• RAM 32 MB
• Hard Drive 20 GB
• Graphics Coprocessor ATI Rage 128 Ultra

The Final Thought

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the iMac G3. The iMac G3 ushered Apple in to the future, and on its translucent back, Steve Jobs rebuilt the company. It was the end of the beige computer and everything we thought computers had to be. The i in iMac stood for 5 things, internet, individual, instruct, inform, and inspire, it most certainly did all off those things for the last 20 years.