Twenty-five years ago, Apple released the computer that would save it from bankruptcy and pave the way for Apple to become the most important technology company ever.
My first Apple computer was a turquoise iMac that I bought in 2000. 23 years later and I’m still a Mac user. Here’s 25 years to the computer that saved Apple.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to an Apple that was at death’s door, and in true Princess Bride style, he rapidly ran down a list of the company’s assets and liabilities.
With Jobs’ brains, Jony Ive’s designs, and the new PowerPC G3 chip supplied by Motorola, the company began to form a plan.
Though LCD screens certainly existed outside of a laptop in 1998 — Apple shipped the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh the previous year — they were considered too small and expensive to be used in a desktop context.
Ive’s design embraced the big, bulbous shape of the electron gun housing that tapered out behind the display and covered it all in a two-tone aqua and white plastic shell.
It wasn’t just computer accessories — just about any consumer product that had a plastic piece that could easily be swapped out was rereleased in a colorful iMac-inspired version.
Apple’s first consumer-focused laptop, the iBook, was a bulbous and brightly colored cousin to the iMac, but after a few years, it was redesigned to be a white plastic rectangle instead.
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