5 ms·

The 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

The 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 ago
It 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 ago
  Is 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 ago
    In the iMac form factor? Probably not.
  - bluedino 3y ago
    Of 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
    - mattl 3y ago
      the iMac did have wifi and Firewire a year later, not at launch.
    - epc 3y ago
      Wifi was kind of useless until 802.11b was agreed. I used one of the early Cisco(?) wireless adaptors circa 1997 and 1998 and…it was mostly unpleasant except for the fact that it was wireless (I don't know if it was 802.11 or a predecessor protocol).
  - prepend 3y ago
    I would like a Unix-based laptop. So I won’t consider a windows or chromeos laptop, but would a Linux. It’s not so much how bad the windows os (I have to admin my kids gaming pc) but it’s inability to run many dev packages that are first or only on Unix. It’s possible to run WSL or Cygwin or other Unix interfaces and get stuff working. But it’s extra steps and I want to simplify.
    - mattl 3y ago
      Wrong thread? This is about the 1998 iMac.
  - karmelapple 3y ago
    As mentioned elsewhere, you couldn't get WiFi on basically anything, since 802.11b wasn't really available yet. I would strongly argue Apple was the leading force in popularizing wireless internet on laptops and desktops, and they didn't have it on the iMac because their AirPort 802.11b product wouldn't be available to anyone for another year. Instead, it came out the following year with the introduction of the iBook. [1] FireWire did not exist on the iMac right away though... but it also was not at all common on Wintel machines at the time. 10/100 Base-T Ethernet, something standard on even the original iMac [2], was also not commonplace on Wintel machines. Packing a 56k modem in from the start was also a nice move on Apple's part to ensure you had the chance to get the fastest internet possible over a standard landline, which is how the majority of internet users accessed the internet at the time. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3
    - mattl 3y ago
      The only time I saw Firewire on a PC it was on a Sony VAIO, which makes sense as their cameras had it. Even then I think the same machine had ethernet from a PCMCIA card with a dongle... later we had some Xircom (spelling?) PCMCIA cards that could take up two slots and deliver a full size ethernet jack without a dongle.
- gumby 3y ago
  > although sticking with 8gb in the air seems like they are just sticking to the principle that you don’t need lots of ram I think it's part of the product line differentiation. I do all my development on a macbook air (well, some of the compilation is done on a remote machine, fr code that will run there). It's great: conveniently very light and with plenty of power. Sure, some people need a ton of VMs, but I don't. But Apple points out that if you're a "professional" you ought to be using a "Pro" machine and the RAM is one way they do it.
- goosedragons 3y ago
  They aren't really. There are faster Intel and Ryzen CPUs for far less than what Apple asks for an M2 Max. You can get an Asus Vivobook S with an Intel i9 13900H, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM, HiDPI 15" OLED screen for $1100, the same price as a 13" M2 MBA with 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM. The i9 13900H will outperform the M2 Max too. Really the only place the Mac wins is efficiency and against Intel rivals GPU performance. And if you don't care as much about having as nice a screen you can usually find something with a better discrete GPU at the same price.
  - p_j_w 3y ago
    > You can get an Asus Vivobook S with an Intel i9 13900H, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM, HiDPI 15" OLED screen for $1100 Yes, but then you’re stuck with an Asus. Having been there before, that’s a hard pass. The real comparison for Macbooks are higher end models like Thinkpads.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      And there are very few laptops that can compete on metrics like fan noise and ability to run at full performance unplugged without nuking the battery. It might sound silly but this a big thing for me. It’s disconcerting for a laptop to sound like an angry banshee when I’m pushing it, and my 16” M1 Max MBP doesn’t. It’s also why I sold the gaming laptop and replaced it with a desktop, because quiet high performance x86 laptops are apparently hard to come by.
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        It really depends on the workload. I was working Sysops for a Mac-based shop during the Apple Silicon announcement, and we had a lot of broken Docker containers on ARM. When I left, your options as a Mac dev was: - Use Apple Silicon, run Docker in QEMU and enjoy idle temps of 70-80c when building for production OR - Use an old Intel Mac, use "native" Docker and get slightly shorter build times and a marginally cooler system Looking back on it, the only engineers there with quiet laptops were the ones using Linux on x86 hardware. It was simply what we deployed to, as an SaaS business.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
purpleflame1257 3y ago
I was still using the keyboard from an iMac G3 up until 2019. It felt fun to type on, and had a passthrough USB which was very convenient for low-power devices.
- jwells89 3y ago
  The built-in hub was one of the best features of Apple boards for a long, long time. It started with ADB ports on on late 80s/early 90s boards and extends all the way into the 2010s when the wired aluminum board finally dropped the USB ports its predecessors carried. It’s such an obvious little quality of life improvement, and yet the only other board I’ve come across with the feature is the HHKB Pro 2 (Pro 3 drops the hub) and some variants of Das Keyboards.
  - finitestateuni 3y ago
    I started with an apple keyboard. I bought a Das in the early 2010s. When the das quickly ran into issues, I got an HHKB pro 2, which I’ve taken in my bag every day to every job I’ve had and I use at home[0]. Your comment just made me realize that USB hubs aren’t on every keyboard! [0] the swappable USB cable is so handy! Just leave one plugged into each machine.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      Strong agree on removal cable, to the point that I wonder why any desk peripherals nicer than a $10 K120 have permanently attached cables.
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    The late 90s Sun Sparcstation machines at my uni lab also had keyboards with mouse passthru connectors.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    The original iMac came a perch slot that could beused for internal expansion. I installed a SCSI card and hung all my SCSI devices off it.
bluedino 3y ago
It did run Quake III rather slowly ( < 20 fps in a timedemo) compared to PC based competition. https://books.google.com/books?id=2Zt0sZTS_0IC&lpg=PP1&dq=october%2020%201998%20PC%20Magazine&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=2Zt0sZTS_0IC&lpg=PP1&dq=oc...
- giantrobot 3y ago
  This was a problem on most Macs of the era. The ATi Rage chips used in most Macs of the time was not powerful enough for Quake III. They were ok for less intense games but Q3 was pushing the envelope.
- bigtex 3y ago
  I ran Quake III Arena on my Bondi Blue iMac B but had to run it at a very low resolution to get it to be playable. Unreal Tournament wasn't bad.
zumu 3y ago
> ignoring the hockey puck mouse! The mouse was the first laser mouse I ever used and I believe it connected with USB, which was novel at the time. It was probably the most impressive thing about the iMac for me personally.
- rconti 3y ago
  The original hockey puck mouse had a ball (I had to Google it to confirm my memory, since otherwise it's just your memory against mine!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_puck_mouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_puck_mouse I remember the later G3 education models my school had having a "laser" (I assume LED?) mouse. Likely the iMac went the same way.
  - zumu 3y ago
    Ok, so my memory is a little foggy. Looks like the laser one didn't come out until 2000, but the hockey puck was USB at least!
  - karmelapple 3y ago
    I remember the hockey puck mouse had a ball because it was a pretty fantastic ball: it was dual toned, one hemisphere white, the other Bondi blue. As you rolled the mouse, you'd see the ball turn and have a neat color display through the translucent plastic of the hockey puck mouse. That was my favorite part of the hockey puck mouse - it was one of those little moments of "surprise and delight" from Apple. And alas, I can't find a good video of it online.
saltcured 3y ago
> 1024x768 which wasn’t typical for a 15” screen at the time. I double-take at statements like this. I forget how much variation in experience there was. But, being in the SF Bay Area, we were able to read Computer Shopper etc. and carpool to the South Bay to get whatever we wanted. I recall trips to will-call doors at warehouses, as well as private sellers in small apartments. I guess I was spoiled for choice. I distinctly remember having a 15" monitor that did 1024x768 around 1992, and working out the X modelines to use it with Slackware by 1994. I went higher from there as I got my hands on bigger 17" or 21" monitors. I'm pretty sure my 21" Nanao was usually running at 1600x1200 a couple years later. I always felt that image quality and keyboards were worth investing in, since I would spend so much time exposed to them. As far as I recall, we often had to trade off lower color depth for higher resolutions, since framebuffer VRAM was usually limited. A lot of time was spent in 8-bit psuedo color palette modes with XFree86 before eventually using 15/16 bit "true color" modes. I don't think 24-bit made much sense until later with 3D accelerators that had more VRAM.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- karmelapple 3y ago
  Oh it was definitely possible to find monitors like that, but my experience of using Macs in my school's computer lab and having a Performa at home, 800x600 was a big deal, and 640x480 was still the standard well into the 90s. And wow, "true color" modes - now I remember having to make that choice, too! 8-bit with higher res, or 16-bit (I think it was described as "thousands of colors" at the time... and it looks like there was some scandal around the phrase "millions of colors" that Apple used: https://lowendmac.com/2018/millions-of-colors-vs-thousands-whats-the-difference/ https://lowendmac.com/2018/millions-of-colors-vs-thousands-w...
Clamchop 3y ago
The screen was OK but a premium monitor at the time would have been an aperture grille Trinitron (or similar implementation). The iMac had a fairly dim shadow mask display that shipped with most budget computers of the era. They were also one of the more common components to prematurely fail in iMacs.

prepend 3y ago

It 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 ago
Is 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 ago
  In the iMac form factor? Probably not.
- bluedino 3y ago
  Of 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
  - mattl 3y ago
    the iMac did have wifi and Firewire a year later, not at launch.
  - epc 3y ago
    Wifi was kind of useless until 802.11b was agreed. I used one of the early Cisco(?) wireless adaptors circa 1997 and 1998 and…it was mostly unpleasant except for the fact that it was wireless (I don't know if it was 802.11 or a predecessor protocol).
- prepend 3y ago
  I would like a Unix-based laptop. So I won’t consider a windows or chromeos laptop, but would a Linux. It’s not so much how bad the windows os (I have to admin my kids gaming pc) but it’s inability to run many dev packages that are first or only on Unix. It’s possible to run WSL or Cygwin or other Unix interfaces and get stuff working. But it’s extra steps and I want to simplify.
  - mattl 3y ago
    Wrong thread? This is about the 1998 iMac.
- karmelapple 3y ago
  As mentioned elsewhere, you couldn't get WiFi on basically anything, since 802.11b wasn't really available yet. I would strongly argue Apple was the leading force in popularizing wireless internet on laptops and desktops, and they didn't have it on the iMac because their AirPort 802.11b product wouldn't be available to anyone for another year. Instead, it came out the following year with the introduction of the iBook. [1] FireWire did not exist on the iMac right away though... but it also was not at all common on Wintel machines at the time. 10/100 Base-T Ethernet, something standard on even the original iMac [2], was also not commonplace on Wintel machines. Packing a 56k modem in from the start was also a nice move on Apple's part to ensure you had the chance to get the fastest internet possible over a standard landline, which is how the majority of internet users accessed the internet at the time. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3
  - mattl 3y ago
    The only time I saw Firewire on a PC it was on a Sony VAIO, which makes sense as their cameras had it. Even then I think the same machine had ethernet from a PCMCIA card with a dongle... later we had some Xircom (spelling?) PCMCIA cards that could take up two slots and deliver a full size ethernet jack without a dongle.
gumby 3y ago
> although sticking with 8gb in the air seems like they are just sticking to the principle that you don’t need lots of ram I think it's part of the product line differentiation. I do all my development on a macbook air (well, some of the compilation is done on a remote machine, fr code that will run there). It's great: conveniently very light and with plenty of power. Sure, some people need a ton of VMs, but I don't. But Apple points out that if you're a "professional" you ought to be using a "Pro" machine and the RAM is one way they do it.
goosedragons 3y ago
They aren't really. There are faster Intel and Ryzen CPUs for far less than what Apple asks for an M2 Max. You can get an Asus Vivobook S with an Intel i9 13900H, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM, HiDPI 15" OLED screen for $1100, the same price as a 13" M2 MBA with 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM. The i9 13900H will outperform the M2 Max too. Really the only place the Mac wins is efficiency and against Intel rivals GPU performance. And if you don't care as much about having as nice a screen you can usually find something with a better discrete GPU at the same price.
- p_j_w 3y ago
  > You can get an Asus Vivobook S with an Intel i9 13900H, 1TB SSD, 16GB RAM, HiDPI 15" OLED screen for $1100 Yes, but then you’re stuck with an Asus. Having been there before, that’s a hard pass. The real comparison for Macbooks are higher end models like Thinkpads.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    And there are very few laptops that can compete on metrics like fan noise and ability to run at full performance unplugged without nuking the battery. It might sound silly but this a big thing for me. It’s disconcerting for a laptop to sound like an angry banshee when I’m pushing it, and my 16” M1 Max MBP doesn’t. It’s also why I sold the gaming laptop and replaced it with a desktop, because quiet high performance x86 laptops are apparently hard to come by.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      It really depends on the workload. I was working Sysops for a Mac-based shop during the Apple Silicon announcement, and we had a lot of broken Docker containers on ARM. When I left, your options as a Mac dev was: - Use Apple Silicon, run Docker in QEMU and enjoy idle temps of 70-80c when building for production OR - Use an old Intel Mac, use "native" Docker and get slightly shorter build times and a marginally cooler system Looking back on it, the only engineers there with quiet laptops were the ones using Linux on x86 hardware. It was simply what we deployed to, as an SaaS business.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

purpleflame1257 3y ago

I was still using the keyboard from an iMac G3 up until 2019. It felt fun to type on, and had a passthrough USB which was very convenient for low-power devices.

jwells89 3y ago
The built-in hub was one of the best features of Apple boards for a long, long time. It started with ADB ports on on late 80s/early 90s boards and extends all the way into the 2010s when the wired aluminum board finally dropped the USB ports its predecessors carried. It’s such an obvious little quality of life improvement, and yet the only other board I’ve come across with the feature is the HHKB Pro 2 (Pro 3 drops the hub) and some variants of Das Keyboards.
- finitestateuni 3y ago
  I started with an apple keyboard. I bought a Das in the early 2010s. When the das quickly ran into issues, I got an HHKB pro 2, which I’ve taken in my bag every day to every job I’ve had and I use at home[0]. Your comment just made me realize that USB hubs aren’t on every keyboard! [0] the swappable USB cable is so handy! Just leave one plugged into each machine.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Strong agree on removal cable, to the point that I wonder why any desk peripherals nicer than a $10 K120 have permanently attached cables.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  The late 90s Sun Sparcstation machines at my uni lab also had keyboards with mouse passthru connectors.
- detourdog 3y ago
  The original iMac came a perch slot that could beused for internal expansion. I installed a SCSI card and hung all my SCSI devices off it.

bluedino 3y ago

It did run Quake III rather slowly ( < 20 fps in a timedemo) compared to PC based competition. https://books.google.com/books?id=2Zt0sZTS_0IC&lpg=PP1&dq=october%2020%201998%20PC%20Magazine&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=2Zt0sZTS_0IC&lpg=PP1&dq=oc...

giantrobot 3y ago
This was a problem on most Macs of the era. The ATi Rage chips used in most Macs of the time was not powerful enough for Quake III. They were ok for less intense games but Q3 was pushing the envelope.
bigtex 3y ago
I ran Quake III Arena on my Bondi Blue iMac B but had to run it at a very low resolution to get it to be playable. Unreal Tournament wasn't bad.

zumu 3y ago

> ignoring the hockey puck mouse! The mouse was the first laser mouse I ever used and I believe it connected with USB, which was novel at the time. It was probably the most impressive thing about the iMac for me personally.

rconti 3y ago
The original hockey puck mouse had a ball (I had to Google it to confirm my memory, since otherwise it's just your memory against mine!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_puck_mouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_puck_mouse I remember the later G3 education models my school had having a "laser" (I assume LED?) mouse. Likely the iMac went the same way.
- zumu 3y ago
  Ok, so my memory is a little foggy. Looks like the laser one didn't come out until 2000, but the hockey puck was USB at least!
- karmelapple 3y ago
  I remember the hockey puck mouse had a ball because it was a pretty fantastic ball: it was dual toned, one hemisphere white, the other Bondi blue. As you rolled the mouse, you'd see the ball turn and have a neat color display through the translucent plastic of the hockey puck mouse. That was my favorite part of the hockey puck mouse - it was one of those little moments of "surprise and delight" from Apple. And alas, I can't find a good video of it online.

saltcured 3y ago

> 1024x768 which wasn’t typical for a 15” screen at the time. I double-take at statements like this. I forget how much variation in experience there was. But, being in the SF Bay Area, we were able to read Computer Shopper etc. and carpool to the South Bay to get whatever we wanted. I recall trips to will-call doors at warehouses, as well as private sellers in small apartments. I guess I was spoiled for choice. I distinctly remember having a 15" monitor that did 1024x768 around 1992, and working out the X modelines to use it with Slackware by 1994. I went higher from there as I got my hands on bigger 17" or 21" monitors. I'm pretty sure my 21" Nanao was usually running at 1600x1200 a couple years later. I always felt that image quality and keyboards were worth investing in, since I would spend so much time exposed to them. As far as I recall, we often had to trade off lower color depth for higher resolutions, since framebuffer VRAM was usually limited. A lot of time was spent in 8-bit psuedo color palette modes with XFree86 before eventually using 15/16 bit "true color" modes. I don't think 24-bit made much sense until later with 3D accelerators that had more VRAM.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
karmelapple 3y ago
Oh it was definitely possible to find monitors like that, but my experience of using Macs in my school's computer lab and having a Performa at home, 800x600 was a big deal, and 640x480 was still the standard well into the 90s. And wow, "true color" modes - now I remember having to make that choice, too! 8-bit with higher res, or 16-bit (I think it was described as "thousands of colors" at the time... and it looks like there was some scandal around the phrase "millions of colors" that Apple used: https://lowendmac.com/2018/millions-of-colors-vs-thousands-whats-the-difference/ https://lowendmac.com/2018/millions-of-colors-vs-thousands-w...

Clamchop 3y ago

The screen was OK but a premium monitor at the time would have been an aperture grille Trinitron (or similar implementation). The iMac had a fairly dim shadow mask display that shipped with most budget computers of the era. They were also one of the more common components to prematurely fail in iMacs.