This week, after consulting an expert in the field, my friend Helen bought an iMac. Coincidentally, the same week saw the 10th Anniversary of the little blue-and-white box that changed the face of computing, so I thought it time to look back on how things have changed...

It got me thinking about the progress of computing and just how incredible the iMac's launch was. It was one of the first moves made by Apple's returning CEO Steve Jobs, and a tipping point in what was to be one of the most amazing business recovery stories of the modern world. The iMac became one of the only computers in the world recognisable instantly, both from its name and its design. The best selling computer of all time. And a revolution in home computing. So what was all the fuss about?

Well there certainly was a lot of fuss, and not all of it good. While His Steveness proudly proclaimed its fantastically zippy specs of a 233Mhz PowerPC G3 processor, 32MB of RAM, 15" 1024x768 CRT display and 24x CD-ROM drive, others had concerns. Why build Ethernet into a consumer computer, asked many. I suspect those people didn't imagine the huge proliferation of wireless (and wired) home networks we see today. And how can you possibly make a computer without a floppy drive?! Well, 10 years on we're only just starting to see PC manufacturers follow suit, despite the fact that I can't remember the last time I used a floppy disk, or even had many files which would fit onto 1.44MB each! In the words of the Sydney Morning Herald:

Apple has robbed users of any way to... swap documents with friends, unless all your mates are on e-mail.

Can you imagine all your mates not being on email these days? 

But let's examine those specs for a second. A 233 Mhz processor! That was genuinely not bad in those days, yet by comparison the cheapest iMac today has two processor cores, each running at over 10 times that speed! 32MB of RAM is less that I now have in my graphics card, and its 4GB hard disk is now bettered by the RAM of many mid- to top-end machines. We've come a long way. One little faux-pas which Steve made in his announcement speech made me chuckle; when deciding what display to include, the team apparently asked themselves, "what is the largest display you'd ever want in a consumer computer", and came up with... 15". Err... right. I'll stick with the nice 20" and 24" widescreens on the modern iMacs thanks!

Competing with the absent floppy drive for the title of most controversial feature was the wholesale switch to USB, leaving behind old Apple proprietary connectors and equivalents of the PC's parallel and serial ports. Once again, the PC market followed years later (though those old connectors still linger on in some quarters), but my mind now boggles at how brave a move this was. Quoting again from SMH:

To print from your iMac you'll need to find a USB printer (don't bother looking, right now there are none), buy a printer with infra-red capabilities (limiting your choice to a handful of models), be connected to a network (at home? yeah, right) or e-mail your work to someone who's got a printer.

I love the networking quote! Hands up who doesn't have a home network in 2008? However I can't imagine the fact that no USB printers were available. A pint to the first person who can find me a printer without USB on sale now. But we have to remember that the iMac pre-dates Windows 98 and its support for USB, so poor PC users (like me at the time) were stuck without any support for the protocol, meaning printer manufacturers (and those of other peripherals) didn't really invest in the new standard until after Windows 98.

So there we go, a little translucent box which changed the computing world. I'm writing this on my iMac G5 of course, and I'll probably soon go back to lusting after a brand new iMac. For the nostalgic, below is video of the launch of the iMac back in '98, notable particularly for the fact that Steve Jobs is not wearing a black turtle-neck! You might also like the screenshots from Apple's website after the launch available at TUAW.