Amaya Toman The year is 1998. A news portal is starting up iDnes.cz, Czech hockey players win the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. John Paul II visits Cuba, Bill Clinton becomes embroiled in an affair with Monica Lewinsky, and Apple releases a computer the likes of which the world has never seen - the iMac G3.
A computer from a better planet
In 1998, personal computers slowly began to become an integral part of the equipment of ordinary households. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the home PC set consisted of a heavy, beige or grayish chassis and a cumbersome monitor of the same color. In May 1998, Apple all-in-one computers in several colors and with a transparent plastic construction burst into this beige monotony. At that time, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who would not, at least in the corner of their soul, yearn for the revolutionary iMac G3. The iMac G3 has become one of the most prominent symbols of Steve Jobs' spectacular return to the Cupertino company, and proof that Apple is once again looking forward to better times.
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If the iMacs of the time had to be described in one single word, it would be "other". The iMac hardly resembled a classic computer typical of the second half of the nineties. "They look like they're from another planet," Steve Jobs said at the time. “From the good planet. From a planet with better designers,” he added confidently, and the world had to agree with him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwmF0OJ0vg
None other than the legendary Jony Ive, who was only 3 years old at the time, was responsible for the design of the iMac G31. Ive had been at Apple for several years before Jobs' return and was considering leaving. But in the end, he found that he had so much in common with Jobs that his plans to resign eventually fell through.
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Colors and the Internet
At the time the iMac G3 was released, the most affordable Apple computer cost $2000, almost twice what users would pay for a typical Windows computer. Steve Jobs wanted to provide people with something simple and inexpensive, which would make it as easy as possible for them to access the Internet, which was spreading massively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uXJlX50Lj8
But the final result was not too cheap. The transparent and colorful design of the iMac G3 took everyone's breath away. As perfect as it seemed, it did not garner XNUMX% enthusiasm - the round mouse in the shape of a hockey puck received criticism in particular, but it did not warm up on store shelves for too long.
The original iMac G3 contained a 233 MHz PowerPC 750 processor, 32 GB of RAM, a 4G EIDE hard drive and ATI Rage IIc graphics with 2 MB of VRAM, or ATI Rage Pro Turbo with 6 MB of VRAM. Part of the "Internet" computer also included a built-in modem, on the other hand, it lacked a drive for diskettes, which were still relatively widespread at the time, which caused quite a stir.
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Jakub Dlouhy Apple later repeated the design of the iMac G3 with unconventionally shaped portable iBooks and even managed to change the color range of the offered computers.
Although its performance is understandably no longer sufficient for the demands of today's world, the iMac G3 is still considered a superbly designed computer that its owner certainly does not need to be ashamed of.
It was a powerful computer, but even as mentioned in the article, the round mouse was absolutely terrible...
That RAM was of course 32 MB! and not 32 GB?.
That would be too big a leap into the future...