Manufactured and sold starting in 1998, this was the first consumer-facing Apple product released after Steve Jobs' return to the company. This model is often called "the computer that saved Apple" because it was largely responsible for Apple's economic turnaround after its dramatic decline in the early 1990s.
The highly innovative style positioned Apple as s design-oriented company, but this model was criticized for abandoning standards like the floppy-disk drive and using only USB ports instead of the Apple Desktop Bus connector.
This was the first computer to offer USB ports exclusively and to use USB ports as the connection for the system's keyboard and mouse. The original mouse was called "hockey-puck" for its circular design. The design was unique but came with many complaints from users with larger hands, which led to development of the familiar oval shaped design of the Apple Mouse. This model was offered in many "flavors," such as Strawberry, Blurberry, Lime, Grape, and Tangerine.
3 retroTECH Item(s)
English
3rd Gen iMac with PowerPC G3 CPU (all-in-one form factor, Mac OS 9.2.1, slot loading optical drive, built-in 15" CRT monitor, USB 1 and 0, Firewire 2.8.4, and ethernet) [circa 1998]
RN0179JUJBE
PowerPC G3
Mac OS 9.2.1
Ethernet, USB (1 and 0), Firewire (2.8.4)
Internal ATA 2: MacHD Volume format: Mac OS Extended (HFS+) Capacity: 12.67 GB Available: 12 GB Perfect full: 5 Write protected: No Is being file shared: No
Memory: Disk cache: 4096K Virtual memory: 129 MB Built-in memory: 128 MB Video memory: 8 MB Backside L2 cache: 512K
Optical Drive
Part of the Archives and Special Collections, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology Repository