iMac

For other uses of the term "IMAC", see IMAC.

The iMac is Apple's desktop line of all-in-one computers, the company's consumer flagship since 1998. Having evolved through three basic iterations, the iMac has been a largely successful innovation that, along with the iPod, has contributed to Apple's success in gaining a significantly increased share of the computer market.

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The original iMac model

History

Immediately after becoming Apple's interim CEO in 1997, Steve Jobs streamlined the company's large and confusing product lines. By late 1997, Apple had trimmed its line of desktop Macs down to the beige Power Macintosh G3 series. Having discontinued the consumer-targeted Performa series, Apple sought a replacement for the Performa's price point. The company announced the iMac on May 7, 1998, and officially started shipping the machine on August 15 of that year.

The launch of the iMac was a landmark event for its time and had a massive impact on both the company and the computer industry as a whole. At the time, Apple was already unique in producing all-in-one desktop computers, in which the CPU and the monitor are contained within one enclosure. Aesthetically, the iMac was dramatically different from any other mainstream computer ever released before it. It was made of translucent "Bondi blue"-coloured plastic, and was egg-shaped around a 15-inch CRT. There was a handle, and the computer interfaces were hidden behind a door that opened on the right-hand side of the machine. Two headphone jacks in the front complemented the built-in stereo speakers. Jonathan Ive, currently Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, is credited with the design.

Legacy Macintosh peripheral connections such as the ADB, SCSI, and Geoport serial ports were eliminated in favour of USB ports; the floppy drive was discarded. Although these were already aging technologies, Apple's move was considered ahead of its time and was heatedly debated. For example, there was no analogous way to exchange small files with other existing machines, possibly requiring owners to buy an external USB floppy drive. Creating backup copies of files was slow over the USB 1.1 connection, which operates at 12 Mbit/s (1.5 MB/s). Purists felt that files should be transferred by network file-sharing or via email.

The original iMac's mouse

The iMac keyboard and mouse were redesigned with translucent plastics and a Bondi Blue trim. The keyboard was smaller than Apple's previous keyboards, with white letters on black keys, both features that attracted debate. The mouse was of a round, "hockey puck" design, which was instantly derided as being unnecessarily difficult for users with larger hands and considered particularly reprehensible from Apple, the pioneer of the graphical user interface. Apple continued shipping the round mouse, adding a divot in later versions so that users could distinguish where the button was. Eventually, a new oblong optical mouse, known as the Apple Pro Mouse, replaced the round mouse across all of Apple's hardware offerings. Apple ships the same (somewhat controversial) one-button Apple Pro Mouse with their desktop computers to this day, although the more recently introduced Apple Mighty Mouse is an optional purchase.

Technical

Internally, the iMac was a combination of the MacNC project and CHRP. Although the promise of CHRP has never been fully realised, the work that Apple had done on CHRP significantly helped in the designing of the iMac. The original iMac had a PowerPC 233 MHz G3 (PowerPC 750) chip, with 512K L2 cache running at 117 MHz, which also ran in Apple's high-end Power Macintosh line at the time. It sold for US$1,299, and had a 4 GB hard drive, 32 MB RAM, 2 MB video RAM, and shipped with MacOS 8.1, soon after upgraded to OS 8.5. Parts such as the front-mounted IrDA port and the tray-loading CD-ROM drive were borrowed from the Apple notebooks. Although the iMac did not officially have an expansion slot, the first versions had a slot dubbed the "mezzanine slot". It was only for internal use by Apple (though a few third-party expansion cards were released for it, including some CPU upgrades from Newer Technology), and it was removed from later iMacs.

Impact

Popular culture

When the iMac was first announced, an appreciable amount of buzz appeared among commentators, Mac fans, and detractors in the press and on websites. Opinions were polarised over Apple's drastic changes to the Macintosh hardware. At the time, Apple was revamping its retail strategy to improve the Mac purchasing experience. Therefore, computer buyers were relatively aware of the iMac. When released, iMacs were the best selling computers in the US and Japan for months, and Apple was unable to meet demand for some time.

Apple famously declared that "the back of our computer looks better than the front of theirs". The distinctive aesthetics was easily "spotted" in public. iMacs were recognisable on television, in films and in print, sometimes via Apple product placement. This increased Apple's brand awareness, and embedded the iMac into popular culture.

Apple declared that the "i" in iMac to stand for "Internet". Attention was given to the out-of-box experience: the iMac purchaser needed to go through only two steps to set up and connect to the Internet. "There's no step 3!" was the catch-phrase in a popular iMac commercial narrated by actor Jeff Goldblum. Another commercial, named "Simplicity Shootout", pitted an eight-year-old boy named Johann Thomas and his border collie Brodie (with an iMac) against the editor of PC Magazine (with a Windows PC) in a race to set up their computers; the boy and his dog finished in 8 minutes and 15 seconds [1], whereas the magazine editor was still working on it by the end of the commercial.

Apple later adopted the "i" prefix across its consumer hardware and software lines, such as the iPod, iBook, iLife (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes), and iSync.

USB

A third-party cottage industry sprang up around the iMac. Via the USB port, hardware makers could make products compatible with both PCs and Macs (sometimes Macintosh driver software was required).

Before the iMac was released, Windows-based machines shipped with both USB and legacy connections, providing little incentive for third-party hardware manufacturers to create USB peripherals. Therefore, the iMac is credited with the proliferation of USB devices, also allowing current Macintosh users to use a large selection of cheap devices such as hubs, scanners, storage devices, mice, and cables. Oddly, although USB was invented by Intel and was also available on the PC, many of these USB peripherals were made of translucent coloured plastic, a trend that still continues. After the iMac, Apple continued to remove legacy peripheral connections and floppy drives from the rest of its product line; other computer makers have started to follow suit.

The successful iMac allowed Apple to continue targeting the Power Macintosh line at the high-end of the market. This foreshadowed the similar strategy in the notebook market, when the iBook was released a few years later. The company has continued with this strategy of differentiating the consumer vs. professional product lines. Apple's focus on design allowed each of its subsequent products to create a unique distinctive identity. Later releases of the Power Macintosh, iPod, PowerBooks and the Mac OS would have the same striking "Apple-look". Apple derided the beige colours pervading the PC industry. The company would later use brushed metal and white acrylic.

Legal action

Apple protected the iMac design by aggressive legal action against computer makers such as eMachines who made lookalikes. Some manufacturers conspicuously added translucent plastics to existing designs. In 1999 Apple obtained the ___domain name appleimac.com from cybersquatters, after legal intervention.

Updates

The iMac line was continually updated after initial release. Aside from increasing processor speed, video RAM, and hard-disk capacity, Apple replaced Bondi blue with new colours—initially blueberry, strawberry, tangerine, grape, and lime; later other colours, such as graphite, ruby, emerald, sage, and indigo, and the "Blue Dalmatian" and "Flower Power" patterns. A later hardware update created a sleeker design. This second-generation iMac featured a slot-loading optical drive, FireWire, silent fanless operation (through convection cooling), and the option of AirPort wireless networking. This line of iMacs represented Apple's entry into digital video making, with capabilities far ahead of any consumer desktop. Apple continued to sell this line of iMacs until March 2003, mainly to customers who wanted the ability to run the older Mac OS 9 operating system.

USB, FireWire, modem, ethernet, wireless networking soon became standard across Apple's entire product line. In particular, the high-speed interface, FireWire, corrected the deficiencies of the earlier iMacs. As Apple continued to release new versions of its computers, the term 'iMac' continued to be used to refer to machines in its consumer desktop line. However, later redesigns of the iMac were usually more expensive to the consumer and never matched the first iMac in sales.

G4, G5 iMacs and the eMac

By 2002, public sentiment was that the CRT iMac needed to be superseded—in particular, the G3 processor and 15-inch monitor were fast becoming dated. Speculation raged over how Apple would fit a G4 and larger monitors into an all-in-one design. In January 2002, a flat panel iMac was launched with a completely new design. A 15-inch LCD was mounted on an adjustable arm above a hemispherical dome containing a full-size, tray-loading optical drive and the G4 CPU. Apple advertised it as having the flexibility of a desk lamp, similar to "Luxo Jr.", who was featured in a short film produced by Pixar (another venture of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs). This LCD computer was known and sold as The New iMac throughout its production life, but after it was discontinued, it was retroactively labelled iMac G4. The iMac G3 CRT model was kept in production, primarily for the educational market.

The iMac G4 was incrementally upgraded. They were made available with 17 inch and then 20-inch widescreen LCDs over the following two years. By then, Apple had all but eliminated the CRT machines from its product line. However, the LCD iMacs were not able to hit the low price point held by the previous G3 iMacs, largely because of the cost of the LCD screen.

Because the G3 iMac was obsolete and low cost machines were particularly important for the education market, the eMac was released in April 2002. The eMac is a G4-powered Macintosh that resembles the original iMac G3—with the egg shape encasing a flatscreen 17-inch CRT in an all-in-one design. It was initially sold only to the educational market (the "e" stood for "education"), but Apple started selling it to the general public a month later, to make inroads into the low-cost part of the market. The eMac is essentially the 17-inch iMac that users had been requesting a few years earlier.

In August 2004, the iMac design was overhauled yet again. By that time, the PowerPC G5 chip had been released and was being used in the Power Macintosh line. Famously, the Power Macintosh G5 needed multiple fans in a large casing because the G5 is a particularly hot chip. Apple's new design managed to incorporate the G5 into an all-in-one, while maintaining a distinctive form factor. These used the same 17-inch and 20-inch widescreen LCDs, with all of the CPU and optical drive mounted directly behind the LCD panel; this gives the appearance of a thickened desktop LCD monitor.

Models

iMac (Tray Loading) (aka iMac G3)

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The "Five Flavors" iMac G3

August 15, 1998 – iMac 233 MHz (Revision A) (M6709LL/A). 233 MHz processor. ATI Rage IIc graphics with 2 MB SGRAM. Available in Bondi Blue only, reset hole on side panel.
October 17, 1998 – iMac 233 MHz (Revision B) (M6709LL/B). Minor update featuring new Mac OS 8.5, ATI Rage Pro Graphics with 6 megabytes of SGRAM, reset by holding power button.
January 5, 1999 – iMac 266 MHz (Revision C, "Five Flavors") (M7389LL/A, M7345LL/A, M7392LL/A, M7390LL/A, M7391LL/A) . 266 MHz processor. IrDA port and mezzanine slot removed. ATI Rage Pro Turbo graphics with 6 MB SGRAM. Available in Strawberry (red), Blueberry (blue), Lime (green), Grape (purple), and Tangerine (orange). Price reduced by $100.
April 14, 1999 – iMac 333 MHz (Revision D). 333 MHz processor. Updated mouse with indentation on the button.

iMac (Slot Loading) (aka iMac G3)

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The slot-loading iMac G3

October 5, 1999 – iMac/iMac DV/iMac DV SE. First revision with FireWire support. 350 or 400 MHz processor, slot-loading optical drive, same colours as rev C/D iMac, plus Special Edition in graphite colour. Used ATI Rage 128 Pro Graphics with 8 MB of VRAM
July 19, 2000 – iMac/iMac DV/iMac DV+/iMac DV SE. 350 or 400 or 450 or 500 MHz processor, colours indigo (blue), ruby (red), sage (green), snow (white) and graphite (grey).
February 22, 2001 – (patterns). 400, 500 (PPC750CXe), or 600 (PPC750CXe) MHz processor. Available in Indigo, Graphite, and "Blue Dalmatian" or "Flower Power" patterns. 750CXe models features a new "Pangea"motherboard with a 16MB ATI Rage 128 Ultra graphics chip.
July 18, 2001 – (summer 2001). 500, 600, or 700 MHz (PPC750CXe) processor. Available in indigo, graphite, and snow.

iMac (Flat Panel) (aka The New iMac in production, iMac G4 after discontinuation)

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The Flat Panel iMac G4

January 7, 2002 – Apple introduces a new iMac line with three models. It has a new futuristic form factor and contains a 700 or an 800 MHz G4 processor, and is only available in white. The display is now a 15-inch LCD, easily positioned by the "swing arm" attaching it to the base. (15-inch, 800MHz is M9250LL/A)
July 17, 2002 – A new 800MHz model with a 17-inch screen and an updated GPU is added to the line.
February 4, 2003 – The line is slimmed down to two models, one with a 15-inch LCD and a new 1GHz model with a 17-inch LCD (M8935LL/A). AirPort Extreme as well as Bluetooth are available on the 17-inch model. The 15-inch is largely identical to the January 2002 models.
August, 2003 – The iMac 15-inch and 17-inch models are upgraded to a 1 GHz and 1.25 GHz G4 processors, respectively (M9285LL/A, M9168LL/A). New features are USB 2.0 and DDR memory, and they both now support AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth.
November 18, 2003 – 20-inch screen model (M9290LL/A) is added that is capable of a 1680 x 1050 pixel screen resolution, and features a 1.25 GHz G4 processor.

iMac G5

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The new iMac G5

August 31, 2004 – Apple releases an all-new iMac line, with both the LCD screen (17-inch or 20-inch widescreen) and computer (including power supply) contained in a 2-inch flat-panel housing, powered by a PowerPC G5 64-bit processor at 1.6 or 1.8 GHz and featuring a Serial ATA hard drive (Parallel ATA in the Education Model) and an Nvidia GeForce 5200 Ultra graphics chip. USB 2.0, FireWire 400, 10/100Base-T Ethernet ports, a V.92 modem, a video-out port, an analogue audio-in jack, and a combination analogue/mini-TOSLINK audio-out jack (like the one in the AirPort Express units), as well as the power button, are all arranged at the rear of the unit. The enclosure is suspended above the desk by an aluminium arm that can be replaced by a VESA mounting plate, allowing the unit to be mounted using any VESA-standard mount. Apple boasts that it is the slimmest desktop computer on the market. The iMac G5 is available in three retail models (17-inch, 1.6GHz is M9363LL/A; 17-inch, 1.8GHz is M9249LL/A; 20-inch, 1.8GHz is M9250LL/A) plus one education-only model that has no optical drive, no modem, and a more modest GeForce MX4000 graphics system.

The iMac G5, on display at the Apple Expo in Paris, August 2004

May 3, 2005 – Apple releases "Rev. B", or the "Ambient Light Sensor" line (the name refers to a new light sensor on the bottom of the iMac that adjusts the glow intensity of the white pulsating sleep indicator light according to the ambient light). The entry model is now 17-inch, 1.8 GHz (M9843LL/A). The mid-model is 17-inch, 2GHz (M9844LL/A) and the top model is 20-inch, 2 GHz (M9845LL/A). All models now feature 512 MB of RAM standard; the hard drive capacity is increased to 250 GB on the top model, with an option of 400 GB. Optional upgrades now include a double-layered 8x Superdrive. All models now feature Airport Extreme wireless, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, and an ATI Radeon 9600 graphics chip with 128 MB of VRAM as standard. Also the 10/100 network interface has been upgraded to 10/100/1000. All models now ship with iLife '05 and Apple's new Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger".