It kind of was, I think. The case design is what made the iMac so striking, it didn't really contain anything much new. On a technical level, what set it apart

It kind of was, I think. The case design is what made the iMac so striking, it didn't really contain anything much new. On a technical level, what set it apart was a newer processor, the G3, (which debuted in the Power Macintosh line in '97) and USB on the motherboard. They had an existing line of beige all-in-ones (e.g. Performa 5200) that the iMac was very much an iterative improvement on. The most talked about feature at the time was probably the colorful plastics and lack of a floppy drive, and neither of which I'd say are year-long engineering efforts. Except for the fact that Apple was allegedly six months away from going out of business before Jobs returned and slashed operating costs, it's not entirely unlikely that a consumer Mac with comparable internals would have come out as the Performa G3 or whatever in much the same timeframe.