Well, iMac, you’ve finally hit double-digits. It’s been a long time coming. Er, ten years, to be exact. Right. In that time, you’ve gone through a lot of changes, from Bondi blue gumdrop to white-and-chrome desk lamp, to the Jay Leno-chinned current model.
Ten years ago today, Steve Jobs (who had been back at the company for about a year) rolled out arguably the most influential product of Apple’s last decade, and the one that would bring Apple back as a player in the computer marketplace—not to mention the only computer important enough to get Steve Jobs to wear a suit. It inspired dozens of computer manufacturers to follow in its wake, even if they erroneously attributed its success to nothing more than its coloring—“What, people want blue computers? We can make blue computers!”
It’s funny: I have this bizarrely vivid memory of sitting in my high school library reading an issue of Macworld about the iMac’s introduction in my senior year. I’d grown up largely in the era of Spindler and Amelio, the countless Performas and Quadras with inscrutable numbers and letters after their name, so the iMac felt like—well, in the words of an Apple campaign that was to come later—something different. Even given that, I don’t think I could have predicted just how important it would end up being—I kind of wish I could have, since then I’d have bought a metric ton of AAPL. Ah, well.
