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I never wanted or bought one, but the original iMac was pretty interesting in hindsight. - The colors screamed "I use a computer but am not a computer person".
by Kon-Peki 3y ago
I never wanted or bought one, but the original iMac was pretty interesting in hindsight.
- The colors screamed "I use a computer but am not a computer person". Back then, culturally, being a computer person was not as accepted as it is now.
- The slightly translucent plastic allowed you to see a little bit of the innards, but not so clearly. This gave the computer case some depth and complexity that you would never otherwise get in "cheap" molded plastic.
- The iMac was underpowered even at introduction. But it showed that computers had already reached the point at which they have more processing power than needed to accomplish almost anything you needed a computer for.
- The stacking of the internal components and the location of the vents allowed the computer to be fanless yet have sufficient cooling. Convection created by the heat of the CRT generated airflow to cool the CPU.
- LeoPanthera 3y ago> The iMac was underpowered even at introduction. But it showed that computers had already reached the point at which they have more processing power than needed to accomplish almost anything you needed a computer for. ...is that actually true? Because it launched with a 233MHz G3, and although my memory is hazy, I remember people specifically pointing out that on most available cross-platform benchmarks it beat whatever Pentium II was current then. That situation didn't last, but I have specific memories of "This is a cheap home computer that's faster than Dell's highest end tower".
- anthk 3y agoThe G3 was more powerful per cycle than a Pentium II. Ditto with G4's and similar cycled Pentium III's.
- ido 3y agoBut intel (and AMD) scaled up MHz/GHz a lot further. Motorola was stuck at 500MHz as the Athlon and PIII were already racing to 1GHz.
- anthk 3y agoThe G4 at 800 MHZ was still much more powerful than a Pentium III, or at least on par.
- beebeepka 3y ago"much more powerful" is not anything like "on par". So what if that beautiful and expensive chunk of metal and plastic was slower in games and such?
- NikkiA 3y agoI had a dual-866MHz G4 (MDD) and in most things my Tualatin P3-1200 at the time absolutely beat it. But the G4 was worth using until it literally caught fire just after the warranty ended.
- gattilorenz 3y agoMotorola?
- 90sguy 3y agoMotorola has a long history of making processors, such as the 68000-series. They powered Macs (and Amiga) From Wikipedia: > The PowerPC 7xx is a family of third generation 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by IBM and Motorola (spun off as Freescale Semiconductor bought by NXP Semiconductors)
- ido 3y agoSupplier of the CPUs we're talking about (alongside IBM).
- mrweasel 3y agoMotorola was one of the companies behind the PowerPC, but those found in the iMac was made by IBM.
- simondotau 3y agoNo one saying it competed with high-end machines of the day. But it was quite powerful compared to PCs targeting a home audience. The other thing to remember, is that computers were only barely powerful enough back then. Powerful models felt powerful precisely because we were desperate for every last CPU cycle we could get.
- anthk 3y agoBarely powerful in early mid-90's. From 1996 an the multimedia PC and a bit later witht the Pentium MMX, the power gap from a 286 based DOS PC from 1991 was something else.
- threeseed 3y agoIt's completely wrong that the hardware was underpowered. The bottle neck was always macOS 9 which was a pretty rudimentary OS by today's standards.
- astrange 3y agoIt didn't have a SIMD unit. Although x86 only had MMX at the time, which wasn't much better.
- acdha 3y agoAlso MMX was basically the first mainstream use of SIMD so adoption was glacially slow since you had not only limited compiler support but also no libraries and little programmer familiarity with the style. That took a long time for knowledge and tools to improve, especially in the nascent internet era where people couldn’t just look things up on a comprehensive reference site or get help on GitHub.
- astrange 3y agoI'd say there's still limited compiler support for MMX. Because of the strange way you have to use it (it trashes the floating point registers until the next `emms`) compilers won't use it even if it's beneficial, so no autovectorization.
- indymike 3y agoA lot of the performance complaints came from software that was built for the 68k and ran under emulation. As software built for PPC came out, that complaint went away.
- detourdog 3y agoWhat is funny is that macOS 9 was so snappy on the GUI side but you had to start employing RAM disks and given different names to the same application to run them simultaneously. It could really scoot but occasionally a dialog box might bring everything to a halt until hitting OK or Cancel.
- 3y ago
- bombcar 3y agohttps://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/04/28/silly-rabbit-q3test-is-for-macs https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/04/28/silly-rabbit-q... It was a bit of a sore spot For a while there.
- izacus 3y agoWas the performance true on Apple marketing benchmarks or in actual use? Apple has a looooong history of cherrpicking benchmarks, especially when their arch wasn't as fast as competing Intels.
- rsynnott 3y agoActual use. You’re probably thinking of the G5/PPC970, which was on introduction more of a case of “the fastest, provided absolutely the only thing you care about is vector operations”.
- izacus 3y agoI'm mostly asking because as much as I remember the G3s weren't really noticably faster than my (then) Windows machines... but memory can mislead.
- acdha 3y agoIt may also have changed while you owned one: the stuff which was optimized native code ran quite well but there were also plenty of rushed ports or things running under Rosetta. I don’t think it was Photoshop but I remember some of the designers I knew commenting that one app shipping a true optimized port was like getting a new computer.
- mortenjorck 3y agoTwo big things that affected the cross platform experience and perception of speed at the time were the twin pillars of the late 90s web, Internet Explorer and Flash, both of which had superior optimization for Windows and x86. The introduction of Safari is an underrated milestone in changing that, and I would suggest the Mac didn’t really match the Windows browsing experience inclusive of Flash until the introduction of Intel Macs.
- MrScruff 3y agoAs someone that bought a 603e based all in one around that time, I remember the introduction of the G3 being almost comparable to the intel->apple silicon transition.
- dumpsterdiver 3y agoThat was definitely my impression one generation later when they released the G4. To this day I still miss that chassis design.
- asdajksah2123 3y agoSometimes I wonder how different the world would look today if Apple had become large enough to justify the investment the G5 required and macs were running on those.
- tjakab 3y agoI suspect even if the Intel transition hadn't happened, assuming the Mac survived it probably still would have been destined for Apple Silicon once the ARM platform became powerful enough.
- giantrobot 3y agoThe G3 was a beast compared to the 603. IIRC it was about 30% faster clock for clock. By going with a G3 in the iMac seriously beefed up the capabilities of their consumer machines. The iMac was more than twice as fast as the similarly priced Performas sold the day before the iMac's introduction. It was even more powerful than even higher end Performas approaching twice the price of the iMac. One of the more tragic examples, from the perspective of laptop buyers, was the WallStreet PowerBooks. They started at $2300 and was easily 30% faster than the high end 3400s that were $4-5k. The original G3 PowerBook (Kanga) was over $5k. It was a huge boost in power for half the price and honestly much better industrial design. The 3400 was a chonky boi.
- detourdog 3y agoNo it is not true. Especially relative to Macs. The original iMac also discontinued serial and SCSI with the use USB.
- krger 3y ago>...is that actually true? It is not.
- smallstepforman 3y agoStock iMac had 64Mb RAM, 5400 RPM based hard disk, and a poor 2D ATI based video card. And Mac OS 8.1. I actually purchased it (I was young and naive), and the Mac version of Unreal (game) to network play against my homegrow PC (Pentium 200, with Voodoo Rush video card), and the game performance was night and day (in favour of Wintel). MacOS 8.1 was so bad, I ended up installing YellowDog Linux on it, collected dust, then eventually gave it away.
- empath-nirvana 3y agoI think mostly people think of "games" when they think of performance.
- sneak 3y ago> Back then, culturally, being a computer person was not as accepted as it is now. One cool thing about the appliance computing revolution (phones and vg consoles) is that now most people don't have computers again and "being a computer person" is a thing again.
- rob74 3y agoYeah, the "computers for non-computer persons" evolved from iMac to iPhone to iPad (plus the Android variants). But the risk is that being a "real computer person" with a real computer might become as outlandish as being a "real photographer" with a real camera has already become.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- closewith 3y agoIt never evolved to iPads or tablets. Phones are the only computing device for most people.
- dumpsterdiver 3y agoTrue, unless you consider watching... uh, ASMR videos... as "computing". "I was meditating!"
- grecy 3y agoApple make more money selling iPads than HP and Dell make on PCs combined [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2011/07/19/apple-didnt-just-sell-more-ipads-than-macs-ios-has-now-eclipsed-dell-and-hps-pc-business-too/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2011/07/19/apple...
- closewith 3y agoThat just shows that both tablets and desktops are a tiny market.
- makeitdouble 3y ago> The colors screamed "I use a computer but am not a computer person" A huge part of the mac user base at that time were writers/editorial staff and graphic designers. I don't know if we lump them in the "computer person" crowd as they basically spend their day in front of a computer, but yes, to them the colors were really well received, as a salvation from the beige world they had to deal with. The same way people covered their macbooks in stickers and skins to get away from the uniform metallic gray canvas.
- Y-bar 3y agoI look at all the rainbow RGB blinkenlight cases of your average PC gaming setup and conclude that they too tend to enjoy colourful computer. – "We're not so different you and I"
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoThe RGB features on PCs are glued on and honestly rather ridiculous. There's a difference between glued-on extras - which are more like car customisation - and stylish integrated design. A friend of mine used to joke about design-for-men being anything that was black and ribbed - which most PC cases are. If you add RGB to something black and ribbed, it's still black and ribbed - but now it has RGB stuck on it. The curves, colour wraparound, and white translucent plastic of the iMac were the opposite of that. Everything was integrated into a whole - which was actually a nice metaphor for where Apple were trying to go in general.
- makeitdouble 3y agoI think at no time did we have as much choice as now for case styles. Classic and stylish wooden cases, colorful cubes, lab like half transparent white boxes, trapezoidal snow themed open cases [0], basically everything under the sun in a tower format. Ironically, except for macs. Macs only come in solid metalic colors, at best. [0] https://ja.aliexpress.com/item/1005003555409345.html https://ja.aliexpress.com/item/1005003555409345.html
- rsynnott 3y ago
- steve1977 3y agoUnderpowered for what? As a personal computer for home use and as an Internet device? Not that I can remember.
- whiteboardr 3y ago> The colors screamed "I use a computer but am not a computer person". Back then, culturally, being a computer person was not as accepted as it is now. Chic. Not geek. The marketing claim during the introduction couldn’t have been more fitting and for everything that followed after coming out of apple.
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoI don't know, starting with OS X a lot of devs used Macs because 'it's a UNIX system', and for a while their hardware was relatively consumer-friendly (battery, RAM and disk were user-replacable/upgradable on my 2009 MacBook).
- lapcat 3y ago> I don't know, starting with OS X a lot of devs used Macs because 'it's a UNIX system' Yes to this! I was in academia when I switched from Windows to Mac, and UNIX was a big factor. Incidentally, my first Mac was an iMac G4.
- cm2187 3y agoParadoxically I did the opposite move at the time, I was a teenager who grew up with MacOS and knew it inside out. All my knowledge was basically voided with MacOS X, so if I had to start from scratch anyway, I might as well switch to Windows where I don't need to check the box to know if a game or hardware will be compatible.
- hospitalJail 3y agoI kind of wonder if this whole 'Macs and Unix' are some post-purchase rationalization. This makes more sense than it seems, Apple is best in class when it comes to hypnosis. Why does being unix based matter? I imagine if you are doing server stuff you are on Linux/Unix. If you are doing C stuff, you are doing it closer to the end device. If you are doing visual stuff you are doing it on Windows since they have us by the balls. Maybe if you are making iOS apps, but that wouldn't be until the end of the semi-replaceable era. Maybe doing web dev? Yeah probably not, you'd be doing windows with firefox, chrome, and IE for front end. Even in this modern era where Microsoft cannot be trusted and Linux Desktop still cannot handle NVIDIA, people are still choosing to do dev work on those system. The only time I see using Macs is for iOS dev only. (Maybe you might SSH into a server for backend stuff, but 25 year old computers can do that)
- karmelapple 3y agoThe iMac was not particularly underpowered. Could it have used more RAM or hard drive? Sure. But the CPU, as others here have said, was pretty solid. It could run top of the line games at the time like Quake 3. And one thing I don’t read much about for these original iMacs is how nice the screen was. It was a CRT, but it had a nice anti-glare coating and could have the resolution increased to 1024x768 which wasn’t typical for a 15” screen at the time. So the feature set was very nice… ignoring the hockey puck mouse!
- prepend 3y agoIt was underpowered for its price compared to windows machines. The fact that it could run Quake3 is kind of the point as it didn’t need “all that power.” The complaint I had was that for the price I could get a more powerful wintel box. Comically this is no longer true with mac laptops and it’s kind of weird to see it flipped where MacBooks have powerful processors and decent levels of ram (although sticking with 8gb in the air seems like they are just sticking to the principle that you don’t need lots of ram rather than saving the $9 for 16 or 32).
- mattl 3y agoIs that true though? Could you get a Wintel machine with better hardware including the little things like USB, FireWire and Ethernet and even WiFi? 15 inch screen capable of 1024x768?
- purpleflame1257 3y agoIn the iMac form factor? Probably not.
- bluedino 3y agoOf course. You had to wait a year for the eMachines clone. But remember the iMac didn't have FireWire or Wifi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMachines_eOne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMachines_eOne And Compaq had the all-in-one form factor back in 1995 https://twitter.com/InsaneWardy/status/841219290539970560 https://twitter.com/InsaneWardy/status/841219290539970560
- tambourine_man 3y agoI’ve always been a computer person and I loved mines, especially the graphite one. One of the best looking machines ever. The G3 was one heck of a CPU. The only thing these machines suffered from was USB 1.1. ZIP drives, CD burners and scanners were all much faster in their SCSI versions. You could see USB was clearly the future, but not an immediate one.
- toddmorey 3y agoI think the shock to the industry was that the outside, not the inside, is what made this computer successful. People forget how it launched a complete craze of transparent plastics. Vacuums, kitchen appliances, disk drives[1], printers... EVERYTHING became colorful and transparent. [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/256182420094 https://www.ebay.com/itm/256182420094
- callalex 3y agoThe iMac was most definitely not fanless. I wouldn’t even describe it as particularly quiet.