It was on May 6, 1998, when Apple announced its all-in-one computer named iMac. It featured a translucent Bondi Blue casing and in terms of design, it was on a different trajectory than Apple's past machines. iMac's iconic teardrop design was the work of the popular British product designer Jony Ive and his team at Apple.
iMac was the first Apple product to have the "i" prefix in its name which was eventually used for an entire lineup of Apple products, including iTunes, iPod, iBook, iPhone, iPad, iCloud, and more. The meaning of "i" is widely considered as the 'internet' for which the machine was primarily built. But Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said during the announcement keynote that the prefix has other meanings such as individual, instruct, inform, and inspire.
It was later known that the name iMac
was suggested to Jobs by Ken Segall who worked for the LA-based ad agency TBWA Chiat/Day. Initially, Jobs didn't like the name and wanted to go with MacMan instead. But it was later accepted after Segall pitched it to him twice.
The original iMac was also referred to as iMac G3 because the device packed a 233MHz
PowerPC G3 processor inside along with an ATI Rage IIc graphics card. It came with a 4GB IDE hard drive, 32MB SDRAM, and a built-in 15-inch 1024 x 768 pixels CRT display. For connectivity, the iMac was loaded with two USB ports, an infrared port, a 24x CD-ROM drive, a built-in 33 Kbps modem, dual stereo headphone jacks, a 100Mbps Ethernet port, etc.
It also had built-in stereo speakers with Sound Retrieval System (SRS) sound and shipped with Mac OS 8.1 out-of-the-box. The original iMac was priced at $1,299 at the time and was launched a few months later in August 1998. Apple added more color options when it refreshed the iMac in 1999, including Grape, Lime, Tangerine, and Strawberry.
The original iMac was discontinued a few years later in 2003 when it was replaced by the redesigned iMac G4. Fast forward to now, the
iMac is powered by Apple's in-house M-series chips and it has gotten a lot slimmer. However, the machine continues to flaunt a colorful lineup just like its forefathers.
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