10 years ago today Apple released the first iMac, the above Bondi Blue model.
An Apple fanboi mate of mine (Yardo) and pretty well the only person I knew that knew about computers at the time, managed to convince me that in my quest for a computer at the time, it was by far the way to go.
Its reasonable-for-the-time specs were - 233MHz processer, 32Mb RAM, 4Gb hard drive and it came with 2 USB slots. I don't remember exactly what I paid for it but it was just after I'd received a whopping tax return and I'm pretty sure it was at least $2700. (This is more than the sum total of the 3 PCs I have bought since then).
As an entry to "new" computing it was a pretty nifty machine - the only other computer I'd had to that point was a third or forth-hand PC that still used those massive 5.25" floppies. It looked nice and was easy to set up and use. Problems were rare - though a blown power supply put it out of commission for a fair while.
Looking back of course, the specs and the cost seem ridiculous and are prime illustrations of how quickly things change in computer hardware. By comparison, the (work) machine that I'm using at the moment has a 2.4GHz processer, 3.25GB of RAM and 930GB of hard drive space. (And 7 USB ports) Not exactly sure what price - it's leased - but easily half at an educated guess.
It amused me (and possibly pained slightly) when I bought a 16GB USB drive online a few months back for $60 to think back to the old iMac and note that on my key-ring I had four times the storage of that expensive old beast.
