Online Encyclopedia
IMac
- The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is iMac.
The iMac is a line of all-in-one Apple Macintosh computers produced by Apple Computer, aimed at the consumer and education market.
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History
The original iMac was unveiled on May 7, 1998 by Apple Computer and went on sale in August of that year. Some strong advocates called the iMac an innovation in computer design of its time: purportedly the first personal computer design which considered aesthetics as one of its primary goals. The machine was an all-in-one design, in which monitor and CPU were contained within one object — this carried on from Apple's history of all-in-one computers. It was powered by a 233 MHz PowerPC G3 processor, and came in a translucent white and Bondi Blue color scheme. This design was attributed to Jonathan Ive, now VP of Industrial Design at Apple.
The iMac was the first move in a general turnaround in public perception and financial success for Apple. It was the first of many future innovations introduced by the then interim CEO Steve Jobs. Despite Apple's small relative market share, the iMac left a large imprint in the public consciousness, and inspired several imitators.
The iMac was the first New World ROM Macintosh. The Macintosh Toolbox ROM was loaded into RAM from a file on the hard drive, unlike previous (Old World ROM) machines, in which the toolbox ROM existed as a physical ROM chip. New World ROM Macs have a small boot ROM loaded with Open Firmware. The iMac was also the first Macintosh to feature USB ports instead of the legacy Apple Desktop Bus and Geoport serial ports. Apple also took the bold move of omitting a floppy disk drive: while the floppy disk was already falling into disuse, PC manufacturers still included them as a legacy component. The SCSI port was also dropped in the iMac.
In a move that was reminiscent to the original Macintosh, the iMac included a handle to ease carrying the computer around. The iMac also adopted the original Macintosh's lack of any official means for internal expansion. But curious owners and developers quickly found a workaround.
The revision A and B iMacs offered a unique expansion port. Called a mezzanine slot, or 'mez' slot, the connector was from Molex (Part number 52760-1609). The mezzanine slot was basically a unique 32-bit Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI, connector. Its original purpose was for production line quality assurance and so after-sale service technicians could connect a logic analyzer and quickly diagnose motherboard issues.
Several upgrades were made available to iMac owners. There was a 3D graphics accelerator, the Game Wizard for iMac from Micro Conversions, which offered a 3Dfx Voodoo2 chipset with 8MB of RAM. And Formac offered a SCSI card which featured an UltraWide SCSI (SCSI-3) connector, and could support RAID levels 0 and 1. Formac also offered the iProRaid TV. This unique card offered a SCSI 3 connector as well as a TV tuner and an S-Video In port.
The iMac was not designed with the idea that the mezzanine slot would be used in normal operations though. Installed cards would sometimes become unstable as they overheated, since the area around the mezzanine slot had very little airflow to cool the cards.
On the software front, the iMac was essentially just a normal Macintosh. Opinions were polarised over the removal of the floppy disk drive, and the replacement of legacy ports with USB. Countless discussions over such issues definitely did increase awareness of the iMac. The willingness to completely sever the use of legacy devices was what made the iMac truly revolutionary. Apple has never looked back with regards to their selection of these next generation interfaces. Floppy disks' use throughout the industry is dwindling, and Apple has to be credited with the proliferation of USB devices in the years following the iMac's release. For a long time, USB devices such as USB hubs, drives, scanners and cables were made of translucent plastic to match the iMac. For the first time in years, third party peripheral makers had a chance to market their products as "cross platform", although the writing of drivers stymied some. Current Macintosh users benefit from cheap made-for-PC devices such as mice, keyboards, storage devices, scanners, and printers.
The replacement for the floppy drive was a long time coming, and Apple made little effort to solve the problem of performing the previously trivial task of copying a file to and from machines. Purists felt that the iMac was a network machine, and file transfer should be via the network. Later, Apple added CD writable optical drives and Firewire ports to the iMac solving issues such as the transfers of large files. The later proliferation of cheap, high capacity USB-based memory cards seems to have solved this problem.
The first-generation design was adapted from the MacNC project. Parts were taken from PowerBook models, including the CD-ROM drive which featured the optical mechanism in the tray, and the front-mounted IrDA port. Much of the system architecture was also based on CHRP, a PowerPC hardware platform intended to create a standardized architecture for Macintosh products, the ill-fated Macintosh clones, and other operating systems, such as Windows NT, that would run on PowerPC. While the iMac and its successors are not CHRP compliant, the work that Apple had done on CHRP significantly helped in the design of the iMac.
Later variations of the first generation iMac eschewed Bondi Blue in favor of five "flavors": blueberry, strawberry, tangerine, grape, and lime.
The second generation iMac featured a slot-loading CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or CD-RW drive, FireWire in most models, silent, fanless operation, and the option of AirPort networking. The colors and patterns available in this generation were initially the same "five flavors" as the last versions; later indigo, ruby, sage, graphite, snow, "Blue Dalmatian," and "Flower Power" became available. This generation of the iMac were the pinnacle of design and function. The flimsy tray loading optical drive was replaced, and every important interface used in current Macintoshes were slowly added: USB, Firewire, modem, ethernet, wireless networking, CDRW, and VGA output. The only holdbacks were the size of the non-replaceable screen, and the relatively slow processor.
iMacs feature an integrated modem which, unlike the PCI modems used on most PCs, but like most Macs with internal modems, uses the iMac's speakers to output modem sounds.
In January 2002, after much speculation over its look and specification, a flat panel iMac was launched with a completely new design. A 15" LCD display is mounted on an adjustable arm above a dome containing a full-size tray-loading optical drive and CPU. The processor in the new iMac is a PowerPC G4. Apple kept the CRT model in production, primarily for educational markets.
In July 2002, Apple announced the 17" widescreen iMac, with a screen that would go on to be used in the new 17" PowerBook.
In April 2002, the eMac was introduced. It was initially sold only to the educational market ("e" originally stood for "education"), but Apple started selling it to the general public a month later. Following the traditional iMac form factor, the eMac has a 17" CRT display but also includes the PowerPC G4 processor. It was essentially the 17" iMac that many users had been requesting for years.
The CRT iMac was discontinued in March 2003, and in November 2003 Apple introduced the 20" widescreen iMac.
At the end of August 2004, Apple introduced a new range of G5 based iMacs. These used the same 17" and 20" widescreen LCDs as previous iMacs. Unlike previous LCD iMacs, all of the components were mounted directly behind the LCD panel, giving the entire computer the look of a thickened desktop LCD monitor.
Domain dispute
In July 1998, two months after Apple announced the iMac, Abdul Traya and Stan Berg registered the domain name appleimac.com in an attempt to draw attention to their webhosting business, run out of their parents' basement. A note on their site stated that their plan was to "generate traffic to our servers and try to put the domain to sale." [1] http://news.com.com/2100-1023-221921.html After a legal dispute that lasted until April 1999, Traya and Apple settled out of court with Apple paying legal fees and giving Traya a "token payment" in exchange for the domain name. [2] http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/april/990427/applevsteen.html
Models
First generation iMac G3 ("Tray-loading iMac")
- August 15, 1998 – iMac 233MHz (Revision A). 233 MHz processor. ATI Rage IIc graphics with 2MB SGRAM . Available in Bondi Blue only.
- October 17, 1998 – iMac 233MHz (Revision B). Minor update featuring new Mac OS 8.5, ATI Rage Pro Graphics with 6 megabytes of SGRAM.
- January 5, 1999 – iMac 266MHz (Revision C, "Five Flavors"). 266 MHz processor. IrDA port and mezzanine slot removed. ATI Rage Pro Turbo graphics with 6MB SGRAM. Available in Strawberry (red), Blueberry (blue), Lime (green), Grape (purple), and Tangerine (orange). Price reduced by $100.
- April 14, 1999 – iMac 333MHz (Revision D). 333 MHz processor. Updated mouse with indentation on the button.
Second generation iMac G3 ("Slot-loading iMac")
- October 5, 1999 – iMac/iMac DV/iMac DV SE. First revision with FireWire support. 350 or 400 MHz processor, slot-loading optical drive, same colors as rev C/D iMac, plus Special Edition in Graphite color.
- July 19, 2000 – iMac/iMac DV/iMac DV+/iMac DV SE. 350 or 400 or 450 or 500 MHz processor, colors Indigo (blue), Ruby (red), Sage (green), Snow (white) and Graphite (grey).
- February 22, 2001 – (patterns). 400, 500 (PPC750CXe), or 600 (PPC750CXe) MHz processor. Available in Indigo, Graphite, and "Blue Dalmatian" or "Flower Power" patterns.
- July 18, 2001 – (Summer 2001). 500, 600, or 700 MHz (PPC750CXe) processor. Available in Indigo, Graphite, and Snow.
iMac G4 ("Flat panel iMac")
- January 7, 2002 – The entire iMac line is revamped. Contains 700 or 800 MHz G4 processors and only available in white. The display is now a 15" LCD easily positioned by the "swing arm" attaching it to the base.
- July 17, 2002 – New models are available with a 17" LCD and either 800 MHz or 1 GHz processors, larger hard disk (up to 80GB) and an updated GPU.
- February 4, 2003 – The line is slimmed down to two models, one with a 15" LCD and one with a 17" LCD. AirPort Extreme as well as Bluetooth are available on the 17" models. There are no notable aesthetic changes.
- November 18, 2003 – 20" screen model is released capable of a 1650x1080 pixel screen resolution and featuring a 1.25 GHz G4 processor.
iMac G5
- August 31, 2004 – Apple releases an all-new iMac line with both the LCD screen (17" or 20" widescreen) and computer (including power supply) contained in a 2" flat panel housing, powered by a PowerPC G5 64-bit processor at 1.6 or 1.8 GHz and featuring a Serial ATA hard drive and an Nvidia GeForce 5200 Ultra graphics chip. USB 2, FireWire 400, and 10/100Base-T Ethernet ports, a V.92 modem, a video-out port, an analog audio-in jack and a combination analog/mini-TOSLINK audio-out jack (like the one in AirPort Express units) and the power button are arranged along the rear of the unit. The enclosure is suspended above the desk by an aluminum arm which can be replaced by a VESA mounting plate, allowing the unit to be mounted using any VESA-standard mount. The computer runs Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Apple boasts that it is the slimmest desktop computer on the market. The iMac G5 is available in three retail models plus one education-only model which has no optical drive, no modem, and a more modest graphics chip.
External links
- Apple Computer | iMac http://www.apple.com/imac/
- Apple Computer | AppleSpec consumer specifications listing http://www.info.apple.com/support/applespec.html
- Apple Developer Connection | Comprehensive technical details http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/hardware2.html
- The Apple Museum | iMac http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=tam&page=personal&subpage=imac/
- Everymac.com | iMac http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/index.html
- Apple-History.com http://www.apple-history.com