4 ms·

My retail days....we sold Macs at Sears (low end crap like Performas), and we sold them at Best Buy back in 1998 or whenever it was the original iMac came out.

My retail days....we sold Macs at Sears (low end crap like Performas), and we sold them at Best Buy back in 1998 or whenever it was the original iMac came out. But nobody wanted them. We got 25 at our store and almost every one of them came back. People wanted PC's....

chrisseaton 7y ago
> nobody wanted them. We got 25 at our store and almost every one of them came back. People wanted PC's.... I thought the iMac was a massive success? Didn't it save Apple from ruin almost single handedly?
- bluedino 7y ago
  It did...but this was the first one, and we were just Best Buy. Not sure if it was just or store or what. The iMac did get a lot of bad reviews and was $1299, in the days of $399 eMachines
  - duxup 7y ago
    OOOf. Those eMachines chugged badly out of the box even.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    eMachines, not to be confused with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMac ...the overweight, less colorful cousin of the iMac.
- arrty88 7y ago
  I remember my school had hundreds of them in the library and across different labs. Maybe it was education rather than home user / consumers who bought the bulk?
plerpin 7y ago
Not surprised. Apple spent most of the 90's cranking out one turd after another. There were a few hits for well-heeled professionals, but their consumer offerings were generally a bunch of fatally compromised Road Apples. https://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-macs/ https://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-macs/ MacOS was behind the times vs. Windows. Still sticking with cooperative multitasking until 2000. Crazy! iMac was the start of something different, but Apple had a decade of second-class product to atone for, first.
- taneq 7y ago
  Even the first iMacs were pretty terrible. It took them a while longer to get OSX stable and ditch the Fischer-Price aesthetic. The G4s (iirc and IMO) were the first ones since the Macintosh that were what you'd call 'professional'.
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  > Still sticking with cooperative multitasking until 2000. Crazy! To be fair, sticking with it until 2000 wasn't Apple's intention; they'd expected to bring the new "Copland" Mac OS to market by the end of 1996. I don't know how well the iMac may have sold at the OP's Best Buy, but my recollection -- and a web search just now seems to back this up -- is that the iMac sold very well pretty quickly after its 1998 introduction. For instance, a NYT article from January 1999 which begins: "Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iMac desktop computer was the No. 1 selling machine through retail and mail-order channels in the 1998 holiday season, according to the research company PC Data. "In overall sales, the iMac fell from the top spot in November to No. 3 in December. It is still the top-selling computer since its mid-August introduction and led overall sales in the fourth quarter, PC Data, of Reston, Va., reported." https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/22/business/apple-s-imac-led-quarter-computer-sales.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/22/business/apple-s-imac-led...

chrisseaton 7y ago

> nobody wanted them. We got 25 at our store and almost every one of them came back. People wanted PC's.... I thought the iMac was a massive success? Didn't it save Apple from ruin almost single handedly?

bluedino 7y ago
It did...but this was the first one, and we were just Best Buy. Not sure if it was just or store or what. The iMac did get a lot of bad reviews and was $1299, in the days of $399 eMachines
- duxup 7y ago
  OOOf. Those eMachines chugged badly out of the box even.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  eMachines, not to be confused with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMac ...the overweight, less colorful cousin of the iMac.
arrty88 7y ago
I remember my school had hundreds of them in the library and across different labs. Maybe it was education rather than home user / consumers who bought the bulk?

plerpin 7y ago

Not surprised. Apple spent most of the 90's cranking out one turd after another. There were a few hits for well-heeled professionals, but their consumer offerings were generally a bunch of fatally compromised Road Apples. https://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-macs/ https://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-macs/ MacOS was behind the times vs. Windows. Still sticking with cooperative multitasking until 2000. Crazy! iMac was the start of something different, but Apple had a decade of second-class product to atone for, first.

taneq 7y ago
Even the first iMacs were pretty terrible. It took them a while longer to get OSX stable and ditch the Fischer-Price aesthetic. The G4s (iirc and IMO) were the first ones since the Macintosh that were what you'd call 'professional'.
chipotle_coyote 7y ago
> Still sticking with cooperative multitasking until 2000. Crazy! To be fair, sticking with it until 2000 wasn't Apple's intention; they'd expected to bring the new "Copland" Mac OS to market by the end of 1996. I don't know how well the iMac may have sold at the OP's Best Buy, but my recollection -- and a web search just now seems to back this up -- is that the iMac sold very well pretty quickly after its 1998 introduction. For instance, a NYT article from January 1999 which begins: "Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iMac desktop computer was the No. 1 selling machine through retail and mail-order channels in the 1998 holiday season, according to the research company PC Data. "In overall sales, the iMac fell from the top spot in November to No. 3 in December. It is still the top-selling computer since its mid-August introduction and led overall sales in the fourth quarter, PC Data, of Reston, Va., reported." https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/22/business/apple-s-imac-led-quarter-computer-sales.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/22/business/apple-s-imac-led...