>> Yeah, and how long did that "trend" last? That trend lasted for a while, until case manufacturers started copying the G-whatever tower, and then eventually

>> Yeah, and how long did that "trend" last? That trend lasted for a while, until case manufacturers started copying the G-whatever tower, and then eventually the Mac pro tower. The Shuttle small-form-factor PC I bought in the early 2000's had a Mac-like "candy" design. >> USB was fairly mainstream before the iMac. I was Windows 9x user (I left Macs right before Jobs came back) when the iMac came out, and most of the peripherals I was buying were still parallel devices. It wasn't until a lot of peripheral makers realized that one hardware version could sell to multiple platforms that USB really took off. >> I don't think I ever saw an iMac in the wild that didn't have an external floppy drive That's not the point. I didn't say that the need for a floppy was obviated by the iMac design, because you always have legacy users. Apple has a history of dropping legacy features in their hardware (VGA, mini-DVI, optical drives, the soon-to-be EOL'ed dock connector) before PC vendors do.