Remember those 1998 iMacs in different colors? The ones with the monitor/computer, keyboard, and mouse?
Anyone have one back then? Do you think they were better than the equivalent Windows 98 machine? Was the lack of a floppy drive a drawback?
Didn’t have a mac back then, but used them occasionally - and absolutely, the lack of a floppy drive was a serious problem. 1998 predated the rise of usb thumbdrives as a ubiquitous and cheap sneakernet system, and dial-up speeds made even emailing smallish files to one’s friends problematic. An iMac could access files on a shared network drive, of course, which made it perfectly acceptable for some applications. Schools, for example, would often have sophisticated (though kludgy) networks for the day, and no need to worry about student/teacher machines being able to run a wide variety of Windows software. iMacs could be acceptable solutions in this context, and absolutely identical - which simplified administration.
(One could simply place orders for identical PCs, of course, but in reality I rarely saw this done at my school - Apples were purchased, but PCs were scavenged from local businesses).
In short - was the iMac a good computer in 1998? Not really - the lack of floppy drive was a serious drawback, the machines were slightly underpowered for the day, and there was a lot less mac software available back then. (Sure, people used Macs - but we tend to forget now just how dramatic the ipod’s effect on the market was.)
I have a 2001 iMac Indigo in the back bedroom. I bought it after I got my PowerBook.
It’s a 450 MHz PowerPC, so it’s not exactly fast. OTOH my PC, which I retired a few years ago, was 500 MHz. I updated to OS X, and I installed an AirPort card. I replaced the keyboard and the mouse, and both are Macally. With my high-speed wireless cable connection, it’s a perfect machine for my telecommuting. (I have to admit though, that I’ve been using the PowerBook simply because I want to watch CNN while I work; even though it easier to work on the iMac with the keyboard.)
Having a 450 MHz processor, it loads more slowly than my laptop. But it’s a great back-up computer, and any overnight guests can get online.
I worked in the journalism office at my college in 1998, and it was outfitted with all Macs - a bunch of pre-iMacs (no idea what) and a row of shiny new iMacs. We also had them in some of our labs.
Those machines were my first exposure to Macs, and they really soured my opinion of Mac as a brand. They crashed all. the. time. We had to unplug them to get them unfrozen most of the time. And of course we had to carry around $12 Zip disks if we wanted to save any work. The stupid Zip drives crashed a lot too (not a Mac product).
I did the newspaper’s Web site and I happily worked on the department’s sole NT workstation, buried in the back of the ad department.
That probably was more due to the OS than the machines themselves. OS-X was big step forward from OS-9 (I think later iMacs came with OSX, but at first they didn’t).
On the other hand my 2008 macbook still seems to be less stable than my main linux machine, but I have to run my Adobe software on something.
One problem was that the monitor and CPU was one piece. You couldn’t upgrade to a bigger monitor. If your monitor broke, you pretty much had to buy a new computer.
This was a problem with other Macs as well. I think it’s one of the things that made businesses stop using them. I know it became a huge issue where I worked.
I had a 1999 Graphite iMac SE (I think the SE designation is right, the top-of-the-line one), as well as a “bronze” PowerBook (also the most loaded-out that I could buy). For the PowerBook, I did purchase an expansion bay “superdrive” (not what we call superdrive now, or back in 1990), because I used it for work, and file exchanges were still on floppy. If it weren’t for work, I’d never have missed it (and work was all Windows). I had 250 MB Zip disks which were all the rage, and at the time, very superior. So, never missed the floppy in my iMac.
Is this the problem with the Mac’s now? I have one at work that is a monitor in one machine.
All I remember about that iMac was…
- It was sllooooow.
- It crashed a lot.
- It had a terrible mouse.
I was in college at the time and had the grapite iMac SE.
It’s hard for me to draw comparisons between it and Windows 98 machines, because many of my campus’s computer labs didn’t upgrade until years later. My school had mostly Windows 3.1 and 95 machines while I was there.
The machine served my needs just fine, though. I only needed a computer to go online and write papers. I replaced the mouse with a programmable multi-button one. The lack of a floppy drive was never a problem because I never needed to transfer files that way-- I either uploaded files I was working on to my school account’s server space, or emailed them to myself. I did have an external floppy drive, but I rarely used it. It wasn’t the speediest thing in the world, but it was stable and better than the alternatives.
Oooh yes. That was easily the worst mouse I’d used since the sparcstation’s square thing which was a laser mouse but that was the only good thing about it. In fact, apple’s hockey puck was probably worse.
I had one. It was my first “serious” computer. Finally, I could surf the web at home!
The mouse was rubbish; I didn’t miss having a floppy drive though.
In 2002 I lent it to my mum so she could email me while I was away travelling. When I got back the following year I bought a Dell PC which I still use to this day. It works fine, but no doubt this is horrifically antique to many of you.
Until last year, my mum was still using the old iMac. Now she had a PC laptop that my sister donated.
I had to use them for some labwork in college. Hated them. With a passion. They were clunky, slow, froze up all the time, and frankly I thought they looked like suped-up Fischer-Price toys. Like ZipperJJ, they soured me on Apple for a long time. I refused to even go near them until years later when my sister got an iMac.
Oh, the mouse was never a concern for me, because I never used it. The iMac was an upgrade from a Quadra, and so I used the same two-button mouse I’d used with it. Never did try the “puck” mouse.
The 400MHz SE wasn’t a slouch under Mac OS 9, although it got really slow with 10.0 and 10.1.
This was entirely the point of the iMac (i. Mac. Internet. Mac) if you had regular data transfer needs that could not be accomplished online, it would have been rather silly to buy one and bitch about it. The original “gumdrop” iMac was intended to be used by – and mostly was used by – people who used it for basic word processing and the internet.
I had the (slightly newer) PowerPC version of that computer–a 400 MHz G4 that I bought in 2000. We also bought my stepson a same-generation iMac, and I maintained it for him, so I’m familiar with that, too.
Anyway, I considered the lack of a floppy disk drive a serious enough detriment that I went out and bought a external floppy disk drive. However, I also bought an external Zip disk drive, and ended up using it exclusively, so I really never used the floppy disk drive.
I also hated the hockey puck mouse, and promptly replaced it.
Other than this, I loved the computers. If they hadn’t come out when they did, I would have switched to a PC at that point in time. Instead, I’ve been a continuous Mac user since 1986. I now have a 2008 Mac Pro.
My home computer is still a 2002 iMac G3. Works fine for what I use it for - internet and word processing, mostly. I bought it used for $300 back in 2005 and haven’t had a problem with it yet. Admittedly, I use a two button mouse, not the puck kind.
Exactly. Many people would pull the silliest criticisms out of their asses just to bash it. The stupidest one I heard was its Photoshop performance sucked. No, really? But I guess because it was a Mac and at the time graphic arts meant using Macs, it was a legitimate beef. :rolleyes:
Pretty much everything from 1998-2000 stank. In 1999, AMD introduced the Athlon series of chips, followed soon after by Intel. These chips took single core processing to the brink, bringing clock speeds of over 1ghz to home computers. After home computers broke the 1ghz barrier, all the applications were updated to reflect the new technology, with Windows 2000, Windows XP, etc. Today, it’s nearly impossible to find a computer that can run today’s programs with less than 1.4 ghz.
The computers that came out at the end of the 90’s were the last gasp of the x86 technology, and faded fast. I had a 1.8ghz AMD chip I used from 2000 to 2007.
The iMac had the bad luck of being on the end of a manufacturing cycle. However, it’s not the first time Apple missed the boat. The IIgs was another failed computer trying to push obsolete technology.
If you describe selling 800,000 units in the first 6 months “missing the boat” and “failing” I’d like to know what it takes to catch the boat in your book.
The iMac was not a computer for everyone. It appealed mainly to first time computer buyers (29-32 percent of purchasers never owned a computer before) and low end users, and it was great for those people.