4 ms·

> the real thing I feel it drove was using the Internet as a main file transport. I don't remember it that way. Remember, the iMac came out in 1998. It shipped

> the real thing I feel it drove was using the Internet as a main file transport. I don't remember it that way. Remember, the iMac came out in 1998. It shipped with a 56k modem (which was still new at the time!), and most users would use that to connect to the Internet -- higher-speed connections were essentially nonexistent at the time. While attaching files to email messages was technically possible, the combination of slow Internet connections and small mailbox size limits (often as small as a few megabytes) made this impractical for most users. No -- what the removal of the floppy disk drive from the iMac primarily drove was the use of other removable storage, like Zip media and USB flash drives. It wouldn't be until considerably later that casually transferring files over the Internet would become feasible.

Cyberdog 4y ago
That's my recollection as well. I was in college around that time and my primary way of saving data to move between computers was a Zip drive disk (since all the computers in the labs had one), then a USB flash drive with maybe 32MB of space (worked fine when moving files between Macs - I don't think the PCs had USB ports at the time). "Cloud storage" was definitely not a common thing at the time.
- tssva 4y ago
  The PC I purchased in late 1996 had USB 1.0 ports. USB 1.1 came out in 1998 around the same time as the iMac. The new PC I bought in fall 1998 had USB 1.1 ports. Most new PCs at that time were coming with USB ports. Maybe your school just had older PCs.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    Schools have never been known for keeping up with the latest in computing hardware. The 90s were no exception. Besides -- early on, a lot of PC makers put USB ports on the back of the computer, since that's where all the other ports were. It took some time for PC makers to realize that USB ports weren't just for permanently installed equipment like printers or modems, and to start redesigning cases or using drive bay breakouts to make the ports more accessible.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The 90s was a really weird time. One school that was ”richer” would have bought early Macs and still be using them, whereas a poorer school wouldn’t have been able to buy until the time of the iMac and handily defeat the older machines.
      - grapescheesee 4y ago
        I remember when my school had its first full sized 'Computer Lab'. As a fifth grade, our class was given a scavenger hunt.. One of the questions was. What is the presidents dog name? As a power user I typed in whitehouse dot com.. This resulted in me showing all the people around me the landing page for well a pornish site, and then questioning the teacher about it when they finally came by.
derefr 4y ago
Depends on the use-case. You're probably thinking of home use (where, if you're buying a Mac, you're probably also thinking ahead and investing into something to move its files around); or maybe university lab use. I bet the GP, meanwhile, is thinking about (pre-university) educational use-cases. Public-school computer labs were a big part of Apple's market share from the late '80s until the early '00s. When I was small (late '80s), we had a single Apple II per classroom. Those machines has no networking or storage, other than the 5.25" drive. Usually we weren't saving anything, just using stateless educational software/games; but every once in a while, we'd all be run through some program, which would save our work to a single shared classroom "state" floppy. Later, we had computer labs full of Macs (Color Classic IIs, if I recall), but still no computer network — nor assigned seating in the lab — so saving data on the lab computers themselves was pointless/untenable. Instead, we were expected to bring a 3.5" floppy disk to school with us to save our work on. It was a school supply! And that's basically how computing in schools continued to work, riiiiight up until the iMac era. Which is both when there began to be no economical data storage medium you could expect every five-year-old's parents to easily purchase as a school supply (flash drives were "pay a premium for portability" products in 1998, not the commodities they are now); and also when computer local-networking stacks began to really be standardized (no more AppleTalk, only Ethernet), lowering the barriers to schools building IT competence, and so enabling even elementary schools to start setting up computer networks, with user directories, roaming user accounts, and central file storage. But despite now having a place to save things at school that didn't require any disks, you were suddenly put in a tough spot if you wanted to bring work home with you. If you weren't one of the rich kids with a USB stick, then email was pretty much the only solution! (Not necessarily actually sending email; I recall people opening webmail, attaching documents, and then saving the message as a Draft.)
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yeah, the disposable nature of floppies was key; sure they were small, but if you lost one you didn't cry all night (unless it had your only copy of your thesis on it). That wasn't really solved until the era of the "affordable" CD burner, so there was a moderately painful 1998-2001 or so era where you had to do some tricks often or trust someone with a relatively expensive piece of equipment. Even in 2000 a burner was around $250 or more, but spending $15 or whatever on a ZIP disk was painful even then, if you weren't sure you'd get it back.
jbay808 4y ago
I remember, in 1999, my friends using a website called imacfloppy.com to transfer files to themselves via the internet. I suppose it was the dropbox of the day.
bombcar 4y ago
From my group I was one of two people who had a Zip drive (the other guy had a Jazz™ drive too) and we usually dragged the parallel port drive along with the discs. But that was just when things like IRC fileservs and Napster (1999) started to take off which was the main medium of "file sharing" at that point (for local transfers networking gear had dropped significantly, the iMac had ethernet built in, everyone had some sort of yumcha network setup - often sharing that 56k connection. 56kbps is 18 gigabytes a month, and the proliferation of "unlimited" internet was right around that time. The final nail in the coffin was affordable CD-Rs. Once those started to proliferate (rip mix burn) you finally had disposable removable storage you could give people. Floppies were that, but zip and USB were not.
- jiveturkey 4y ago
  Pretty sure it was Jaz? Not Jazz
RF_Savage 4y ago
Yeah. My computer in 1998 had a 28.8k modem and my dad's machine had the fast 56k one. Used floppies to transfer data to and from the fast computer until 2002 or 2003.

Cyberdog 4y ago

That's my recollection as well. I was in college around that time and my primary way of saving data to move between computers was a Zip drive disk (since all the computers in the labs had one), then a USB flash drive with maybe 32MB of space (worked fine when moving files between Macs - I don't think the PCs had USB ports at the time). "Cloud storage" was definitely not a common thing at the time.

tssva 4y ago
The PC I purchased in late 1996 had USB 1.0 ports. USB 1.1 came out in 1998 around the same time as the iMac. The new PC I bought in fall 1998 had USB 1.1 ports. Most new PCs at that time were coming with USB ports. Maybe your school just had older PCs.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  Schools have never been known for keeping up with the latest in computing hardware. The 90s were no exception. Besides -- early on, a lot of PC makers put USB ports on the back of the computer, since that's where all the other ports were. It took some time for PC makers to realize that USB ports weren't just for permanently installed equipment like printers or modems, and to start redesigning cases or using drive bay breakouts to make the ports more accessible.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The 90s was a really weird time. One school that was ”richer” would have bought early Macs and still be using them, whereas a poorer school wouldn’t have been able to buy until the time of the iMac and handily defeat the older machines.
    - grapescheesee 4y ago
      I remember when my school had its first full sized 'Computer Lab'. As a fifth grade, our class was given a scavenger hunt.. One of the questions was. What is the presidents dog name? As a power user I typed in whitehouse dot com.. This resulted in me showing all the people around me the landing page for well a pornish site, and then questioning the teacher about it when they finally came by.

derefr 4y ago

Depends on the use-case. You're probably thinking of home use (where, if you're buying a Mac, you're probably also thinking ahead and investing into something to move its files around); or maybe university lab use. I bet the GP, meanwhile, is thinking about (pre-university) educational use-cases. Public-school computer labs were a big part of Apple's market share from the late '80s until the early '00s. When I was small (late '80s), we had a single Apple II per classroom. Those machines has no networking or storage, other than the 5.25" drive. Usually we weren't saving anything, just using stateless educational software/games; but every once in a while, we'd all be run through some program, which would save our work to a single shared classroom "state" floppy. Later, we had computer labs full of Macs (Color Classic IIs, if I recall), but still no computer network — nor assigned seating in the lab — so saving data on the lab computers themselves was pointless/untenable. Instead, we were expected to bring a 3.5" floppy disk to school with us to save our work on. It was a school supply! And that's basically how computing in schools continued to work, riiiiight up until the iMac era. Which is both when there began to be no economical data storage medium you could expect every five-year-old's parents to easily purchase as a school supply (flash drives were "pay a premium for portability" products in 1998, not the commodities they are now); and also when computer local-networking stacks began to really be standardized (no more AppleTalk, only Ethernet), lowering the barriers to schools building IT competence, and so enabling even elementary schools to start setting up computer networks, with user directories, roaming user accounts, and central file storage. But despite now having a place to save things at school that didn't require any disks, you were suddenly put in a tough spot if you wanted to bring work home with you. If you weren't one of the rich kids with a USB stick, then email was pretty much the only solution! (Not necessarily actually sending email; I recall people opening webmail, attaching documents, and then saving the message as a Draft.)

bombcar 4y ago
Yeah, the disposable nature of floppies was key; sure they were small, but if you lost one you didn't cry all night (unless it had your only copy of your thesis on it). That wasn't really solved until the era of the "affordable" CD burner, so there was a moderately painful 1998-2001 or so era where you had to do some tricks often or trust someone with a relatively expensive piece of equipment. Even in 2000 a burner was around $250 or more, but spending $15 or whatever on a ZIP disk was painful even then, if you weren't sure you'd get it back.

jbay808 4y ago

I remember, in 1999, my friends using a website called imacfloppy.com to transfer files to themselves via the internet. I suppose it was the dropbox of the day.

bombcar 4y ago

From my group I was one of two people who had a Zip drive (the other guy had a Jazz™ drive too) and we usually dragged the parallel port drive along with the discs. But that was just when things like IRC fileservs and Napster (1999) started to take off which was the main medium of "file sharing" at that point (for local transfers networking gear had dropped significantly, the iMac had ethernet built in, everyone had some sort of yumcha network setup - often sharing that 56k connection. 56kbps is 18 gigabytes a month, and the proliferation of "unlimited" internet was right around that time. The final nail in the coffin was affordable CD-Rs. Once those started to proliferate (rip mix burn) you finally had disposable removable storage you could give people. Floppies were that, but zip and USB were not.

jiveturkey 4y ago
Pretty sure it was Jaz? Not Jazz

RF_Savage 4y ago

Yeah. My computer in 1998 had a 28.8k modem and my dad's machine had the fast 56k one. Used floppies to transfer data to and from the fast computer until 2002 or 2003.