Inside story of the first iMac

As an Apple Demo person for the iMac intro, I got to explore the iMac the night before its intro. Luckily, the Micro Center I was demoing at had two units set aside. So the Mac Department, tech people and I followed the instructions on one iMac as we dissected the other to see how to up the RAM. 23 screws, 21 minutes and several business cards later (to prevent the screws from falling through the ventilation grilles), we had an iMac with 256 MB that flew!

As to the hockey puck, there were two great things about it. One: Contour Design came out with a cover soon after that made it feel like a real mouse and two: so many USB mouse manufacturers came out with with Mac drivers it opened the flood gates for other 3rd party items.

Bill

I bought the Rev. A iMac back in Summer/Fall 1998. It's the machine that replaced the Performa 6116CD. Actually, the iMac was full of potential, especially the original model as it came with a 'secret' expansion slot.

I upgraded the hard drive, processor, added a TV tuner/FireWire card, RAM, and video RAM. Although, the GPU support was pretty nothing, it ran Mac OS X well enough.

Later, I bought 2 Rev. D 333Mhz models.

puck-mouse!!!! :-)
I loved my puck mouse...everyone else hated it...

Using the hockey-puck mouse is comparible to a dog dragging its ass

Apple = sexy design + Bragging marketing ;)


Jenny
http://www.spaml.com

"This thing screams!"

man, screaming then is a whisper now.

Tom; I remember that time. At the time, all the computer makers were putting USB ports into their computers, but there were very few devices that used it, I remember counting three devices announced though I never did see them in person. Apple may actually have been the last computer maker to install USB ports.

At around that time, I was interested in USB for Windows but there weren't any drivers and there weren't any devices that used it that I can find.

It wasn't until after the iMac was released that I was able to find any devices that used USB, and most of them were iMac-colored.

Anyway, I was surprised about the IRDA port, I had forgotten them. The only non-computer devices I've ever owned that had one was a Palm m100 and a laser printer.

I never owned that style of iMac, did that handle make carrying it any less awkward than carrying any other CRT?

I think it's funny that he commented that 10% of Silicon Valley homes had Cat-5 wiring, that's not necessarily a good start for the technology hub of the US, that probably meant that most other areas were less than 1% at the time.

I think it's surprising how much Jobs appears to have aged in the last ten years.

but... but... it doesn't have a floppy drive!!

waaaah!! I want my floppy drive!!

oops, sorry, I thought it was 1998 again

"Lastly, this is the device that really launched USB."

Another one of those moment when I just can't help but say something. "Really launched?" How many people bought/used the original iMac? How many of the people reading this blog (I would imagine they are a fairly in tune to new innovations bunch) first encountered USB on said device?

I think I'm right in saying iMac mk1 was 1998? Our then home computer was replaced that year with another Viglen*, running Win 98. I remember from the shopping around process that USB was becoming standard,.

In short, it wasn't the iMac that made USB the choice of connector for most peripherals, all major manufacturers were adopting it seeing that "most PC peripherals would be released for USB in the future" [from macobservor article that triggered this piece]

*not sure if Viglen are known outside of the UK, were then one of the larger operations in this part of the world, don't seem to be as much so now

Hey! I loved the puck mouse!

It was only derided because people refused to reposition their hands to use it. If you set the sensitivity high enough and just used your fingers to move it, it was actually quite comfortable.

But between not having two buttons and having to keep the sucker clean, I upgraded to an optical pretty quick on my lime one.