I remember very well when the iMac was released. I was a fledgling IT Manager in SoCal and went to the local Fry’s Electronics to check out an iMac. It was the

I remember very well when the iMac was released. I was a fledgling IT Manager in SoCal and went to the local Fry’s Electronics to check out an iMac. It was the first time I had ever seen a line of people out the door with computers in their shopping carts. What made all of this more remarkable is that most tech-savvy people knew that both the hardware and software (OS) were sub-par as Apple had gone through a long period without great direction. But this is the genius of Jobs. He regains control of Apple and with minimal resources figures out how to sell a very mediocre computer computer by the truckload. The packaging (not just the box or case) was brilliant. Old hardware, mediocre software, wrapped in a beautiful, unique package with enough nice features and a low price to make it sell very well. Up to that point I’d never owned an Apple product, and the iMac was not enough to sway me. It took OS X, adding BSD to the core of the OS, along much more beautiful and much improved hardware in the form of the 2002- era MacBook Pro. Still all in all a stroke of genius. My main personal computing devices (outside gaming and server rigs) have been Apple ever since.