The first iMac changed PC design 20 years ago forever
On May 6, 1998, Steve Jobs introduced the very first iMac. That was an important moment, because the course of Apple as a company would never be the same again. The iMac G3 was a revolution for that time: the first computer that could be installed on the internet, had a nice big screen and – not unimportantly – a beige tower with dozens of cables around it.
Design and functionality
The iMac was the first major design job of Jony Ive, who had just been promoted to Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple. After that, of course, he did much more that gave him his name, but the iMac was the beginning. After the original ‘bondi blue’ desig there were different colors, then very briefly a round shape and from 2004 the iMac started to look like the computer as we know it now: the big foot with a flat screen on it.
If you compare white G5 with what the iMac looks like today the material and the thickness have changed, but the basic design is not. It is logical that it would go this way, with the introduction of affordable flat screens, but that original iMac has something nostalgic. Of course, you can now use it the best as a planter for how far you get on the internet, but the form remains separate. And Jeff Goldblum was right: why everyone until then thought that beige was the only correct color for PC cases, that will always be a mystery.
The iMac not only made the internet accessible, but also Apple itself. From that moment on, the company was back with the PC makers that the company got, and the lessons Apple learned with the iMac came to the rest of the i-series that greatly influenced our digital life: the iPod and the iPhone . If that is not an impressive line, then I do not know it anymore.