Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 91.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Today's special episode is brought to you by MailRoute and FreshBooks.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley. I have the pleasure of being joined on this beautiful holiday day

00:00:22 ◼   ► by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hi Myke, this is our holiday episode. So in the United States, we're releasing this on

00:00:28 ◼   ► Memorial Day, which is the last Monday in May, I believe it's defined that way. And that's,

00:00:37 ◼   ► apparently stems from the Civil War. I looked this up. It's a holiday to recognize the people

00:00:43 ◼   ► who died in wars. We also have a holiday to recognize people who served in the military.

00:00:49 ◼   ► That's Veterans Day, but this is Memorial Day. And in the UK, you crazy kids, you just put

00:00:57 ◼   ► holidays at the end of May and call them because of the banks? Is it to honor the banks, the

00:01:02 ◼   ► spring bank holiday?

00:01:04 ◼   ► Yep, that's what it's for. We all go to the bank and we deposit one pound each, and that's

00:01:11 ◼   ► how we honor our banks on our bank holidays.

00:01:13 ◼   ► I understand the bank holiday now, it's so sweet. What a great tradition that you have.

00:01:17 ◼   ► It really is very nice. It's very nice. It's how the banks stay afloat in the UK.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Oh, that's good. It's the bank holiday. It's like Black Friday. It's like the day that

00:01:24 ◼   ► the banks get the money.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So that's why we all need a day off!

00:01:28 ◼   ► So we can all go in.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Go to the bank!

00:01:30 ◼   ► But you may have heard we have a guest this week.

00:01:33 ◼   ► We have Mr. Steven Hackett joining us.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Hello, uh, Upgradient Masters.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Upgradient of the Lords.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Welcome, you are in the circle now.

00:01:44 ◼   ► We decided to do a pre-recorded special episode, and because we were gonna have Steven on,

00:01:49 ◼   ► there's only one thing we can talk about, which is the original iMac.

00:01:53 ◼   ► For people that are not familiar with the story, Mr. Hackett, can you explain to the

00:01:58 ◼   ► Upgradients why you are now synonymous with the original iMac?

00:02:03 ◼   ► So the beginning of April, I think it was, I put out a little blog post saying, "Hey,

00:02:09 ◼   ► I would like to have one of each color to do some video projects with."

00:02:15 ◼   ► And it took about four or five weeks, and now I have all 13.

00:02:22 ◼   ► sitting here in my office. It's like podcasting with an audience, but they're all facing away

00:02:26 ◼   ► from me, so I guess they don't like what I'm saying. But they're all here and I've done

00:02:30 ◼   ► some reporting and a video and got some more stuff coming. So yeah, I've been playing with

00:02:34 ◼   ► 41-pound computers all month.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's funny because for me, boy, nothing makes me feel older than having stuff

00:02:47 ◼   ► that I covered and not even at the beginning of my career being nostalgia, which is what

00:02:53 ◼   ► this is, but that's what this is. Like, I was working at Macworld when the iMac came

00:02:58 ◼   ► out. It was after they had merged Macworld and Macuser and I had gone to work in Macworld,

00:03:05 ◼   ► and so it's just kind of funny. I mean, it wasn't a long time ago. It's like, what, 18

00:03:09 ◼   ► years ago now? So it's a long time ago. But still, yeah, it's a little strange. That's

00:03:16 ◼   ► one of the reasons that this episode is putting me and Steven together. We're being put together

00:03:22 ◼   ► because Steven's got the IMAX and I was there for it. And so that's a fun combination. Steven

00:03:31 ◼   ► and I have been talking like in Slack and stuff like that about IMAX things and he's

00:03:35 ◼   ► been asking me questions about like, "What was this? Why did this happen? And what was

00:03:40 ◼   ► the reaction to this?" And I get to be like an eyewitness to that, an eyewitness to history,

00:03:44 ◼   ► which is kind of fun.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And we said, "We should talk about this somewhere.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Where would we do that?"

00:03:48 ◼   ► And the answer was,

00:03:49 ◼   ► "Why don't we do an iMac special for the holiday

00:03:54 ◼   ► and put that out

00:03:56 ◼   ► because we're all gonna be doing holiday stuff."

00:03:58 ◼   ► And so here we are.

00:04:01 ◼   ► We're talking about the iMac.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Not the one that I'm talking to you from right now,

00:04:05 ◼   ► the original bulbous Bondi colored and other colors, right?

00:04:10 ◼   ► Bondi, did Russell tell us it's pronounced Bondi?

00:04:14 ◼   ► - That's the word on the street.

00:04:15 ◼   ► - Yep. - Yeah.

00:04:16 ◼   ► - The nostalgia thing is interesting.

00:04:19 ◼   ► For me, I was coming to the Mac for the first time

00:04:22 ◼   ► in this era.

00:04:23 ◼   ► I was in high school and it was 2000, 2001,

00:04:27 ◼   ► and at that time we had some like 1999 iMacs in the school,

00:04:32 ◼   ► 'cause we didn't have necessarily new things

00:04:34 ◼   ► in the newspaper room.

00:04:35 ◼   ► But some of these machines are the machines

00:04:39 ◼   ► that I sort of cut my teeth on,

00:04:40 ◼   ► and running Mac OS 9,

00:04:43 ◼   ► and then transitioning to Mac OS X.

00:04:45 ◼   ► And so for me, they're right in that sweet spot

00:04:49 ◼   ► of not only coming to the Mac,

00:04:51 ◼   ► but also learning a lot about the Mac.

00:04:53 ◼   ► And I broke a lot of things in software,

00:04:55 ◼   ► running on computers like these.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And so for me, it's not so much that it was the computer

00:05:02 ◼   ► I had at home, 'cause we didn't have a Mac at home,

00:05:05 ◼   ► but it was one of the models that really

00:05:08 ◼   ► kinda brought me into this world.

00:05:10 ◼   ► - And that's the same for me too, by the way.

00:05:12 ◼   ► this computer was around when I was a kid.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And you know, like when I hear many people, you know,

00:05:19 ◼   ► mainly seems to happen on the talk show recently,

00:05:21 ◼   ► talk about like the first Mac that they ever used

00:05:24 ◼   ► and kind of how it brought them in.

00:05:26 ◼   ► And people talk about the Macintosh.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Like, and I really do think that for mine

00:05:29 ◼   ► and Steven's generation, it was this iMac.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Like it was the same thing.

00:05:34 ◼   ► It was like, this was the computer that was like,

00:05:36 ◼   ► nothing we'd ever seen.

00:05:37 ◼   ► It wasn't like the gateway computers that we'd used

00:05:40 ◼   ► in the cow boxes, right?

00:05:42 ◼   ► Like they were, these were like these beautiful,

00:05:45 ◼   ► crazy looking things that had really interesting mice

00:05:49 ◼   ► and keyboards and they had really weird,

00:05:52 ◼   ► cool software on them.

00:05:53 ◼   ► And they were at this point like starting to become Apple

00:05:57 ◼   ► was starting to become the cool company

00:05:59 ◼   ► that we know them at now.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And for our generation, this is our Apple.

00:06:04 ◼   ► It started with this iMac.

00:06:06 ◼   ► - I would actually say that it's not even just age wise

00:06:10 ◼   ► because I think a lot of people either came back to Apple

00:06:14 ◼   ► or bought an Apple product for the first time with the iMac.

00:06:18 ◼   ► And we'll get into like the way it was sold,

00:06:21 ◼   ► why would you buy an iMac?

00:06:24 ◼   ► What could you do with it?

00:06:25 ◼   ► But it was a lot of people,

00:06:28 ◼   ► this was the thing that made people consider buying a Mac

00:06:31 ◼   ► for the first time.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And so, would the iMac have saved Apple on its own?

00:06:37 ◼   ► I mean, Apple needed to keep doing new things

00:06:39 ◼   ► and they did, but this is the first sign that Apple was turning it around because people

00:06:47 ◼   ► saw this Mac and said, "I want to actually buy it." And so I think for a lot of people,

00:06:52 ◼   ► obviously for a lot of people the iPhone is their first Apple product, and for a lot of

00:06:54 ◼   ► people the iPod was their first Apple product, but I do think for a lot of people the iMac

00:06:58 ◼   ► was the first Apple product that they bought or used because how could you forget it? It's

00:07:05 ◼   ► a recognizable computer, a computer with a personality at a time when computers did not

00:07:09 ◼   ► have personalities. In a way that they don't have them today as well. Yeah, true. So can

00:07:16 ◼   ► you guys put into perspective for me, like at this point in Apple's history, what's going

00:07:22 ◼   ► on? So how long has Steve been back? What is Steve's position at this time? Like what

00:07:28 ◼   ► is Apple as a company in early 1998? Well I mean, so Jobs had only been back, like the

00:07:35 ◼   ► announcement that they were buying, that Apple was buying Next was in January of '97 at Macworld

00:07:43 ◼   ► Expo. And that was Gil Amelio and all of that and talking forever and then Steve Jobs appears.

00:07:51 ◼   ► And the idea there was they're buying Next and Steve's going to be an advisor. And that

00:07:54 ◼   ► was because they needed a new operating system and the Copeland wasn't working and they didn't

00:07:57 ◼   ► want to buy B, so they bought Next to get Next Step and use that as the basis for what

00:08:04 ◼   ► would become OS X. So Steve comes back and, you know, in the Steve Jobs movies, especially

00:08:10 ◼   ► the one with Ashton Kutcher, you actually get the scene of him engineering his revenge

00:08:17 ◼   ► and getting rid of the board that betrayed him and taking over as interim CEO. And, you

00:08:24 ◼   ► know, there are plenty of stories about him coming in and finding these people, including

00:08:27 ◼   ► Johnny Ive, who were working there and still had sort of pride in what they were doing,

00:08:32 ◼   ► and trying to set Apple on a path to figure it out. And among the things they did is in

00:08:41 ◼   ► August of that year, they made the deal with Microsoft to like drop the patent lawsuits

00:08:47 ◼   ► and Microsoft gave them some cash and Bill Gates appeared on a big screen behind Steve

00:08:51 ◼   ► Jobs at Mac World Expo like he was Big Brother and everybody was creeped out by that and

00:08:55 ◼   ► enjoyed the irony of it. And they killed the clones too is the other big thing that they

00:08:58 ◼   ► did around then is they it turns out that all of the Mac clones that were

00:09:02 ◼   ► there at the end of the Emilio era all had a license for System 7 but not for

00:09:08 ◼   ► iOS for Mac OS 8 and so they announced that Mac OS 8 would be the next version

00:09:15 ◼   ► of the operating system and that there would be no clone licenses effectively

00:09:19 ◼   ► killing the clone program and there were some lawsuits and Apple bought the assets

00:09:22 ◼   ► of power computing and you know presumably there was some other payoffs

00:09:25 ◼   ► behind the scenes to shut it down but Jobs wanted to shut it down so all that

00:09:28 ◼   ► was going on he's like getting his house in order but there was a real question

00:09:31 ◼   ► about like okay where are the products and you know Jobs put up I think I think

00:09:36 ◼   ► maybe at at some event I don't even know but we had gotten the product grid right

00:09:42 ◼   ► Steven I mean this is this is no this this is when he did it he unveiled the

00:09:46 ◼   ► product grid here yeah yeah so the the grid of four which what they kind of

00:09:52 ◼   ► came to call it you know one of Jobs big thing when they came back was just

00:09:57 ◼   ► clearinghouse of all these crazy models of Mac running around. Performas and G3s

00:10:03 ◼   ► and Unix servers and all sorts of stuff. It was a mess, right? It was a

00:10:08 ◼   ► disaster.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Let's get our house in order. And so some of what he did was he killed the

00:10:12 ◼   ► Newton, he killed OpenDoc, he killed all these projects that were not

00:10:17 ◼   ► anything. And he said, "Let's just go back to making products.

00:10:20 ◼   ► How simple can I make this?" And he would say internally, too,

00:10:24 ◼   ► Look, consumer, professional, desktop, laptop,

00:10:27 ◼   ► fill the four boxes, that's it, let's do that.

00:10:30 ◼   ► And people, you know, we got to see this at this event

00:10:35 ◼   ► that happened in April '98.

00:10:39 ◼   ► But at that point, Steve had been back running around

00:10:41 ◼   ► for more than a year, and so they had had enough time

00:10:44 ◼   ► to build a product that was kind of a fully,

00:10:48 ◼   ► it's not like they hadn't done some other products in there.

00:10:51 ◼   ► At that event, he kind of crows a little bit

00:10:53 ◼   ► about some of the other G3 stuff that they're doing,

00:10:55 ◼   ► but this is the full-on Steve Jobs.

00:10:57 ◼   ► And actually, as it turns out,

00:10:59 ◼   ► Steve Jobs and Jonathan I have a product

00:11:01 ◼   ► that's the first tangible example

00:11:03 ◼   ► of how Apple is not the old Apple since Jobs came back.

00:11:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, the grid of four really is,

00:11:09 ◼   ► I mean, even today, such a genius move.

00:11:11 ◼   ► It's like, get rid of all this stuff,

00:11:13 ◼   ► and you are either a consumer or a pro,

00:11:15 ◼   ► and you either want a desktop or a notebook.

00:11:18 ◼   ► And they spent really two years filling that box out.

00:11:21 ◼   ► So they had the beige Power Mac G3 that got replaced with the blue and white.

00:11:27 ◼   ► They had the PowerBook.

00:11:29 ◼   ► But the consumer side, the iMac was the first thing.

00:11:32 ◼   ► The iBook was months or maybe even close to a year later, I think.

00:11:37 ◼   ► It took them time to get all those ducks in a row, but it set forth a very clear vision.

00:11:42 ◼   ► So the iBook was in June 1999 at Mac World Expo in New York.

00:11:47 ◼   ► So over a year.

00:11:49 ◼   ► So this is, and this is what I was gonna say is not only was this genius in terms of simplifying

00:11:53 ◼   ► and sending the message that they were simplifying and genius in terms of communicating that

00:12:00 ◼   ► it was a new Apple and that they were gonna focus, but it was actually genius in terms

00:12:05 ◼   ► of promising a product that they weren't ready to deliver.

00:12:10 ◼   ► Because I will tell you for that year plus, everybody was talking about what the consumer

00:12:14 ◼   ► laptop was gonna be.

00:12:16 ◼   ► 'Cause the power books were expensive.

00:12:17 ◼   ► I mean they were they were expensive and the idea that Apple was had just put out there a slide that said yes

00:12:23 ◼   ► We're gonna do a consumer laptop

00:12:25 ◼   ► And it sat there for more than a year with an empty box like question mark

00:12:30 ◼   ► I think they may have even put literally a question mark in that box and

00:12:34 ◼   ► That was great marketing to to make us all wonder. What was their next trick gonna be in so many ways

00:12:40 ◼   ► 1998 feels like such a long time ago

00:12:43 ◼   ► You have all the Apple stuff, but you also have like this is deep in the throes of the like the megahertz war

00:12:49 ◼   ► So all throughout this keynote, it's like racing pinion computers because that's what they did in the day

00:12:56 ◼   ► We watched a video that is clips from it's not the whole thing, but it's a lot of clips from this event

00:13:01 ◼   ► Which was at the Flint Center like the original iMac and in fact, the Apple watch was also launched there

00:13:06 ◼   ► and

00:13:08 ◼   ► So much of that is Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller brought out to

00:13:14 ◼   ► talk about how the

00:13:16 ◼   ► Megahertz for Megahertz the the Pentium is not as efficient as the PowerPC at doing work and

00:13:23 ◼   ► and

00:13:24 ◼   ► Doing bake-offs which I had forgotten that they did but they absolutely did this all the time where it's like we'll press these buttons

00:13:31 ◼   ► And then everybody just sits there and watches as some

00:13:34 ◼   ► something renders on two screens to show how fast this Mac is compared to this PC that they've

00:13:40 ◼   ► ginned up. And of course, that's also amazing marketing, right, where they're picking exactly

00:13:45 ◼   ► what they want to do because they know they're going to win and all of that.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Ready, set, go.

00:13:49 ◼   ► There's so much of that, which is just defending the Mac against the perception that Macs were

00:13:55 ◼   ► slow and awful and that the PowerPC lagged behind what Intel was doing.

00:14:00 ◼   ► What was the situation though? Like, were they faster? Or like, is this just, you know, Steve Jobs spin?

00:14:06 ◼   ► My recollection is that they were faster depending on what the tests were.

00:14:12 ◼   ► That one of the things that I believe that the... it went back and forth. I think in this era,

00:14:18 ◼   ► they had added a whole bunch of instruction sets to the PowerPC chips, and if you had that were like

00:14:25 ◼   ► the vector instruction sets, I believe, that basically if your software took advantage of them,

00:14:33 ◼   ► it was faster than it was on the Intel chips. But of course, Intel was working on their special

00:14:38 ◼   ► command sets too. It would be, I think that's what MMX, the multimedia extensions stuff was. So it

00:14:44 ◼   ► was an arms race. I think there was generally a feeling that, you know, you got more for the same

00:14:51 ◼   ► megahertz between a Pentium and a G3. But the G3 is... this is also the earlier in the G3 life,

00:15:02 ◼   ► where G3 was a big deal, because previously you would have the PowerPC like the 604s and the 603s

00:15:08 ◼   ► and the 601s, which were these chips that were not... they were way more powerful than the

00:15:13 ◼   ► Motorola 68000 chips that they had run before. But the G3 was a rebranding and kind of a generational

00:15:20 ◼   ► leap that, hence the name, that gave them more ammunition against Intel. But they're

00:15:28 ◼   ► so Intel-focused, right? Because we forget about this now that the Mac is Intel, but

00:15:32 ◼   ► at this point they really need to justify their lack of compatibility and their lack

00:15:35 ◼   ► of understandability. Like, you know, it wasn't the same part, so you couldn't easily compare

00:15:40 ◼   ► them, and so they had to do lots of spin. So, Jason, I know that leading up to this,

00:15:45 ◼   ► know we talked about Apple kind of being like messy I know in here there's a lot

00:15:51 ◼   ► of like software only events like Apple used to have I don't even know like how

00:15:56 ◼   ► many expos and stuff they would attend and a lot of these videos you find on

00:15:59 ◼   ► YouTube from this era just like recycled content yeah so I mean that was kind of

00:16:05 ◼   ► the scene going on so like was there any indication going into this event that

00:16:08 ◼   ► there was something like really special coming down the pipe or did you guys

00:16:12 ◼   ► just write it off as another event? In fact, I would say that there was a real

00:16:18 ◼   ► "boy who cried wolf" kind of feeling about Apple at the time at Macworld, certainly. We felt like,

00:16:24 ◼   ► and I wish I could remember what it was, but the last event that Apple had told us,

00:16:29 ◼   ► you know, Apple PR contacts us and says, "Okay, we're going to do a thing. You should come."

00:16:34 ◼   ► We're like, "What's it about?" "Well, we can't say. You know, we're not going to say, but you

00:16:36 ◼   ► should come. Be there. Trust me. Be there." And I remember that we went to that, and I wish I knew

00:16:41 ◼   ► knew what it was. But I remember we all got out of it afterward and we're like, "What

00:16:44 ◼   ► the hell was that?" Like, it was just nothing. That it was a waste of our time. They didn't

00:16:50 ◼   ► respect our time. They had something inconsequential to announce or it was nothing new. And we're

00:16:56 ◼   ► all like, "Why did we do that?" And really, it's like, "Full me once, shame on you,

00:16:59 ◼   ► full me twice, shame on me," right? It's like, "Okay, okay, Apple, you got us. You

00:17:03 ◼   ► got us. We came to your thing not knowing what it was, and you didn't give us anything

00:17:09 ◼   ► new. So then they call up and say, "Okay, we're going to do a thing. It's going to be

00:17:11 ◼   ► at the Flint Center. You got to come. You got to come." And we're all like, "Yeah, pull

00:17:17 ◼   ► the other one." No. So what ended up happening is our editor-in-chief at the time, Andy Gore,

00:17:23 ◼   ► he lived in the South Bay around the peninsula, so it wasn't that far away. And somebody needed

00:17:29 ◼   ► to go, right? We were not going to blow them off entirely, but we're not going to send

00:17:32 ◼   ► like a bunch of people and have them. Most of our staff was in San Francisco. We're not

00:17:36 ◼   ► have them all drive down all the way down to Cupertino and go to this thing when we'd just gotten,

00:17:41 ◼   ► you know, kind of wasted our time with the last Apple events. More of the same, as far as we could

00:17:47 ◼   ► tell. So only Andy went to the event for Macworld. We could have sent as many people, we could have

00:17:52 ◼   ► sent the whole staff, we could have sent as many people as we wanted. Flint Center is huge,

00:17:55 ◼   ► and Apple at the time was not a big draw for anything like that. And so only Andy went. And

00:18:01 ◼   ► in fact, I wasn't even at work that day. I was working at home. I was working on some story from

00:18:06 ◼   ► from the apartment that I was living in at the time. And I just distinctly remember getting a

00:18:11 ◼   ► phone call from somebody back at the office saying, "You got to come into the office." Andy's called

00:18:18 ◼   ► an all-staff meeting for three o'clock or something like that, four o'clock. Everybody's got to come

00:18:24 ◼   ► in. I'm like, "So seriously, I'm going to go into San Francisco in the afternoon and then go to a

00:18:31 ◼   ► meeting and then turn back around and come home? That's ridiculous." And they're like, "It's a huge

00:18:35 ◼   ► announcement, you gotta come in. So we all came in. And it was the iMac, right? But we all, you know,

00:18:43 ◼   ► we all just weren't even paying attention. So Andy had the details and we started working on a story.

00:18:48 ◼   ► And if you look at the Macworld from that period, there's a story that we did as a drop-in,

00:18:54 ◼   ► essentially, because we were about to ship our issue. So there's a cover that says "Cool" with

00:18:59 ◼   ► with a period on it.

00:19:01 ◼   ► And inside there's like a two page article

00:19:03 ◼   ► that was written in less than a day

00:19:06 ◼   ► about the iMac that we dropped in.

00:19:08 ◼   ► And then we started work on the next issue still,

00:19:12 ◼   ► 'cause it didn't ship, still with no product,

00:19:16 ◼   ► but it's like that's not gonna stop us.

00:19:18 ◼   ► We're gonna put it on the cover again

00:19:20 ◼   ► and we wrote more about it.

00:19:21 ◼   ► But unfortunately, I would say this is the last major

00:19:24 ◼   ► Apple product announcement that I was not in attendance at.

00:19:29 ◼   ► The funny thing is, is here you explain it is so weird,

00:19:32 ◼   ► because it's like, oh, it was announced,

00:19:34 ◼   ► then we had a meeting at three o'clock later that day.

00:19:37 ◼   ► Nobody still knew what it was.

00:19:40 ◼   ► - No. - Right?

00:19:40 ◼   ► Like it was just, 'cause that's just not how it is now,

00:19:42 ◼   ► right? - There was no internet,

00:19:45 ◼   ► there was no streaming on the internet of Apple events,

00:19:47 ◼   ► there was no live blogging of Apple events.

00:19:50 ◼   ► - There was no point in anybody explaining it to you

00:19:53 ◼   ► over the phone, 'cause it's like, it's not just,

00:19:55 ◼   ► we've got a deadline which is like a week away,

00:19:56 ◼   ► like it's, you know, whatever.

00:19:58 ◼   ► - It'll be in the newspaper tomorrow morning.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Well, in our case, our deadline, I think, was the next day.

00:20:02 ◼   ► And we did figure out who was writing it and editing.

00:20:04 ◼   ► And I think I edited that story,

00:20:06 ◼   ► but it was written by our reviews editor, Anita,

00:20:08 ◼   ► and by Andy.

00:20:10 ◼   ► And we worked on the cover.

00:20:12 ◼   ► I was the features editor at that time.

00:20:14 ◼   ► So I worked on it, but I didn't write that story.

00:20:18 ◼   ► And we were also planning our attack for the next issue too,

00:20:21 ◼   ► and gearing up for that and all of these things.

00:20:23 ◼   ► And it was, but yeah, I mean, there was no reporting.

00:20:27 ◼   ► We heard it from the person who was there,

00:20:29 ◼   ► and we started to plan our attack

00:20:31 ◼   ► because, yeah, that was it.

00:20:34 ◼   ► That was the world back then.

00:20:35 ◼   ► It's kinda hard to believe now,

00:20:37 ◼   ► but that is definitely how the world was in 1998.

00:20:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, looking at Apple's press releases

00:20:43 ◼   ► for the spring of 1998, it's stuff like QuickTime and Java,

00:20:47 ◼   ► and there's one about unveiling a new commercial.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Like, it's really just kind of--

00:20:53 ◼   ► - I bet you it was a QuickTime or Java thing

00:20:57 ◼   ► that we went to, like something where it's like,

00:20:58 ◼   ► hey, we've got, 'cause, okay,

00:21:00 ◼   ► I know this is a little off topic,

00:21:02 ◼   ► but since we're deep in the history of Apple, I will say,

00:21:06 ◼   ► in the '90s, the biggest offenses that Apple did

00:21:09 ◼   ► in terms of spending money on and wasting people's time

00:21:14 ◼   ► on stuff that they were doing that wasn't that interesting,

00:21:18 ◼   ► QuickTime takes the cake.

00:21:19 ◼   ► QuickTime, the people who were in charge of QuickTime

00:21:23 ◼   ► and in charge of marketing QuickTime,

00:21:24 ◼   ► and this is before Jobs was back there,

00:21:26 ◼   ► but I think it kept going for a little while

00:21:28 ◼   ► after he got back.

00:21:29 ◼   ► They were so in love with themselves,

00:21:31 ◼   ► and they would do like,

00:21:32 ◼   ► they had like the QuickTime Live Conference,

00:21:34 ◼   ► and they'd talk about how,

00:21:35 ◼   ► where it was all about like how great QuickTime was,

00:21:37 ◼   ► and they had, they had a,

00:21:39 ◼   ► I wrote about this for the Apple 40th.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Macworld did a slideshow of like 40 things

00:21:44 ◼   ► we remember about Apple,

00:21:45 ◼   ► and one of mine was how much money old Apple used to waste.

00:21:50 ◼   ► We went to this, it was like a hotel on the peninsula,

00:21:53 ◼   ► and it was like a party slash event.

00:21:56 ◼   ► And I think I could, I could swear to you,

00:21:58 ◼   ► I think it was about QuickTime

00:22:00 ◼   ► and just like all the cool stuff

00:22:01 ◼   ► they were doing with QuickTime,

00:22:02 ◼   ► like QuickTime VR and QuickTime 3D and CD-ROMs

00:22:06 ◼   ► that you could click on and they use QuickTime.

00:22:08 ◼   ► And so I would bet you that that early 1998 event

00:22:12 ◼   ► that made us all roll our eyes

00:22:14 ◼   ► was something about QuickTime.

00:22:16 ◼   ► That it was like, oh, we've got this new thing

00:22:18 ◼   ► and isn't it great that people are gonna be able

00:22:20 ◼   ► to do more cool things that are impractical

00:22:23 ◼   ► and that will largely not be actually done with QuickTime.

00:22:27 ◼   ► It was very much like we see the future

00:22:29 ◼   ► and the future is QuickTime.

00:22:31 ◼   ► I guess we're brilliant scientists

00:22:32 ◼   ► who've invented QuickTime.

00:22:33 ◼   ► There was just so much of it back then.

00:22:36 ◼   ► I can't even properly describe just,

00:22:38 ◼   ► that was the biggest eye roll for me

00:22:41 ◼   ► of that period of Apple was that they were just so,

00:22:44 ◼   ► there was a strain in Apple at that time

00:22:46 ◼   ► that was so enamored of their genius

00:22:48 ◼   ► with the future of computers and media and how they were making it all happen.

00:22:52 ◼   ► And, you know, literally nobody else was using QuickTime.

00:22:55 ◼   ► So, yeah.

00:22:59 ◼   ► So that would be my guess, is that that press release about something related to QuickTime

00:23:02 ◼   ► is probably related to whatever event it was where the boy cried wolf.

00:23:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I just found a 20-page white paper that, you know, there's actually a whole QuickTime

00:23:14 ◼   ► PR page in the Wayback Machine.

00:23:16 ◼   ► is really, really painful. But I think all that's important to say, like the world the

00:23:22 ◼   ► iMac entered, right? That even you guys, like it was your job to cover Apple and even y'all

00:23:29 ◼   ► –

00:23:30 ◼   ► We didn't bother going.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Couldn't be bothered. Like, oh great, they're doing another event. Like, Myke's right,

00:23:35 ◼   ► that is so crazy to think about now. But that's the world that Steve Jobs has stepped into

00:23:42 ◼   ► when he came back.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And so instead, and this changed everything, right? You didn't miss an Apple

00:23:48 ◼   ► event after this. This was them delivering. This was them saying, "When we call an event,"

00:23:52 ◼   ► and right, and that was a lesson I think Apple had to learn too, is you can't call an event

00:23:57 ◼   ► for just anything. And to this day, we spend time, Myke and I do it every Monday, right?

00:24:02 ◼   ► We parse like what would be in that Apple event and was that enough in that Apple event

00:24:07 ◼   ► and would they, you know, what will be in the WWDC keynote in a few weeks and all of

00:24:11 ◼   ► that. But at the time, I think they learned their lesson because after this, every event

00:24:17 ◼   ► that they invited us to was basically relevant. They didn't cry wolf anymore. They realized

00:24:25 ◼   ► that they had trained us badly. They had trained us to ignore them because we couldn't trust

00:24:29 ◼   ► that what they were doing was newsworthy. And it all changed after this event. So yeah,

00:24:37 ◼   ► So we should talk about these bulbous blue beasts that they unleashed on the world. They

00:24:44 ◼   ► didn't unleash them in April, they announced them in April.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it shipped in early August. Yeah, see, so that's another thing that people

00:24:52 ◼   ► miss is that it was mid-August before they shipped, even though they were announced in

00:24:58 ◼   ► April. So imagine four months where everybody's really excited about this new thing that Apple's

00:25:03 ◼   ► finally doing and we'll talk about what happened in those intervening four months,

00:25:09 ◼   ► but it was a weird time.

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00:27:19 ◼   ► After they talked about Pentiums and megahertz and things like that, they finally got into

00:27:26 ◼   ► why they were all there, why Steve Jobs invited everyone there. Steve wearing a white shirt

00:27:33 ◼   ► and a suit jacket, by the way, not his soon-to-be traditional turtleneck and jeans.

00:27:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it's always funny to see what I like to call "Formal Steve" on stage at these early

00:27:47 ◼   ► But he really starts and what's maybe the most fascinating thing to me about watching this this keynote

00:27:53 ◼   ► Is that all the elements of later keynotes are here right that he starts with sort of yeah defining a problem

00:28:00 ◼   ► And the problem is that there's not a great way to get a Macintosh on the internet. Like there's not a Mac built

00:28:05 ◼   ► for internet use and

00:28:08 ◼   ► and then he talks a little bit about kind of what the product means and what it will how it will change the world and

00:28:15 ◼   ► And then he pulls, quite literally in this case, pulls the sheet off of it and shows

00:28:19 ◼   ► it to everybody.

00:28:21 ◼   ► There's a big unveil.

00:28:23 ◼   ► I was also shocked by and fascinated by it.

00:28:27 ◼   ► If you're an aficionado of Apple events, you really should watch this because you can see

00:28:32 ◼   ► that it's a proto event.

00:28:34 ◼   ► It would evolve into something else.

00:28:36 ◼   ► But also it is so bizarre to see the terrible fonts and the terrible charts that are on

00:28:43 ◼   ► the screen.

00:28:44 ◼   ► - It's like clearing throat stumbling Steve.

00:28:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not all there.

00:28:49 ◼   ► - It's like clearing his throat constantly,

00:28:50 ◼   ► like he stumbles his words in a few places,

00:28:54 ◼   ► which just shows like he has, I think at this point,

00:28:58 ◼   ► a real understanding of what makes a good event,

00:29:00 ◼   ► but what he hasn't nailed down at this point

00:29:03 ◼   ► is how much he needs to practice that.

00:29:05 ◼   ► - Right, nor has he exerted enough art direction

00:29:09 ◼   ► over the slides and stuff.

00:29:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:29:11 ◼   ► - Like the slides feel like, you know,

00:29:12 ◼   ► the marketing team slapped them together.

00:29:14 ◼   ► and he ignores them or uses them at will,

00:29:17 ◼   ► but it's not at the point yet where he's like going

00:29:18 ◼   ► to take complete control of the art direction

00:29:22 ◼   ► of those slides and say they need to be better.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Also, I think the slides are using like Garamond,

00:29:27 ◼   ► which was the Apple font at the time,

00:29:29 ◼   ► which they went away from,

00:29:30 ◼   ► but it's weird to see like these serifs on Apple slides.

00:29:35 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Like, no.

00:29:36 ◼   ► - Well, it's better than the chalkboard

00:29:38 ◼   ► they would use after this.

00:29:39 ◼   ► The slides got worse before they got better, I think.

00:29:41 ◼   ► That's true.

00:29:42 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:29:43 ◼   ► That's true.

00:29:44 ◼   ► So this is a time when the internet became relevant to people.

00:29:47 ◼   ► People were dialing in to AOL or other online services

00:29:51 ◼   ► or just directly into the internet.

00:29:53 ◼   ► And that became a thing that people wanted to do.

00:29:56 ◼   ► Like, why do you use a computer went from being,

00:29:58 ◼   ► well, maybe you'll keep your books or you'll type up reports

00:30:01 ◼   ► or you'll do things like that too.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I want to get on the internet.

00:30:03 ◼   ► I wanna use a web browser.

00:30:05 ◼   ► I wanna do email.

00:30:06 ◼   ► And that's how they conceived the iMac.

00:30:08 ◼   ► The i, which now lives on as the letter that was in the iPod

00:30:14 ◼   ► and then went to the iPhone and the iPad.

00:30:17 ◼   ► But initially it came from the iMac

00:30:18 ◼   ► and on the iMac it really meant internet.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Because the idea was this is a single device,

00:30:25 ◼   ► you pull it out of a box, the way the ad,

00:30:27 ◼   ► which I would say is maybe the best Apple product ad

00:30:30 ◼   ► it had done in years, if not a decade,

00:30:35 ◼   ► is famously the there's no step three from Jeff Goldblum.

00:30:39 ◼   ► The idea here is you take the iMac out of the box

00:30:42 ◼   ► and you plug it in and you plug in the phone line into the modem port and you're online.

00:30:48 ◼   ► That's it.

00:30:49 ◼   ► That's all you have to do.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Presenting three easy steps to the internet.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Step one, plug in.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Step two, get connected.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Step three, there's no step three.

00:31:09 ◼   ► no step three and that was the idea they used and they had to build around a huge

00:31:17 ◼   ► CRT and so they did and so it's all but bulbous and everything and they used it

00:31:23 ◼   ► to their advantage by putting it in you know covering it in translucent plastic

00:31:27 ◼   ► at a time when as Steve Jobs hilariously says in this video and these things are

00:31:32 ◼   ► U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U-U

00:32:02 ◼   ► did right I mean you could tell that that's actually what it stood for and

00:32:05 ◼   ► they said that's what it stood for but that slide was a super weird hedge of

00:32:08 ◼   ► like it means whatever thing starts with I but you like yeah exactly and you know

00:32:14 ◼   ► and like I said that I in today's world just means Apple product right like it

00:32:20 ◼   ► it's that that of course that meaning is gone he opens it up and he says look you

00:32:24 ◼   ► know the best consumer PC out there and he has a picture of a compact or

00:32:28 ◼   ► something that looks like junk. It could just as well be the Power Mac G3, which

00:32:33 ◼   ► is also just not cheap but just as ugly and looks awful. Right, a beige tower, beige CRT

00:32:40 ◼   ► wires everywhere. And he says, "Look, we're gonna beat this thing in speed, display

00:32:44 ◼   ► size, networking, I/O, and design." And that's very, very similar to how he

00:32:50 ◼   ► introduced the iPhone years later of like, "Hey, look, these phones have like crazy

00:32:54 ◼   ► crappy hardware buttons everywhere and the software is not very good and

00:32:57 ◼   ► and they're slow and we're gonna blow them all out of the water. Like,

00:33:01 ◼   ► that parallel jumped out at me big time in watching this video.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and I mean, the simplicity of the product is its greatest advantage. If you

00:33:09 ◼   ► think about PCs at that time,

00:33:11 ◼   ► you know, like his picture of them, it is a beige,

00:33:14 ◼   ► it is a beige box, it's probably a mini tower.

00:33:17 ◼   ► So it's a tall, ugly beige box sitting on or under your desk.

00:33:21 ◼   ► There's a big beige monitor, it's a CRT monitor, so it's gonna be huge and it's

00:33:26 ◼   ► in your face and it's beige.

00:33:27 ◼   ► And then there's wires everywhere, right?

00:33:30 ◼   ► You've got cables going to the keyboard and the mouse.

00:33:34 ◼   ► You've got cables going from the monitor to the computer.

00:33:36 ◼   ► You've got cables coming from the computer to the modem.

00:33:39 ◼   ► You've got cables going from the modem to the phone box.

00:33:43 ◼   ► It's messy, it's messy.

00:33:47 ◼   ► And you gotta set it all up.

00:33:48 ◼   ► I remember we had a, for my wife's job,

00:33:52 ◼   ► she had a Pentium, like a P100 PC at one point.

00:33:55 ◼   ► and we set it up and it was, I don't even know

00:33:58 ◼   ► if it's a Dell or a Gateway or whatever,

00:34:00 ◼   ► but it was, they had like all these color-coded wires,

00:34:04 ◼   ► all the cables were color-coded

00:34:05 ◼   ► 'cause they were trying really hard

00:34:07 ◼   ► to make it easy to figure out what to plug in where.

00:34:10 ◼   ► So I appreciate that they made the effort.

00:34:12 ◼   ► But when you look at the iMac, it's just like, there it is.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And it's so clean and clear.

00:34:17 ◼   ► And the number of wires is dramatically reduced

00:34:20 ◼   ► because it's all in one.

00:34:21 ◼   ► Which I guess we should mention the molar

00:34:25 ◼   ► 'cause people don't know about the Molar,

00:34:27 ◼   ► which is one of my favorite weird Macs of all time.

00:34:30 ◼   ► The Power Mac G3 all-in-one was sold only really

00:34:34 ◼   ► to education.

00:34:36 ◼   ► It looks like a, well, it kind of looks like a giant monitor

00:34:39 ◼   ► but we call it the Molar

00:34:40 ◼   ► 'cause it also looks kind of like a big tooth

00:34:42 ◼   ► and it's got like a translucent bit of plastic on it

00:34:45 ◼   ► and it totally was a Johnny Ive thing.

00:34:47 ◼   ► He was experimenting with this before they got to the iMac.

00:34:49 ◼   ► And it's almost like a proto iMac

00:34:51 ◼   ► where it is an all-in-one computer.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And the idea there is you plug it in and you got a computer.

00:34:57 ◼   ► And for schools, what they were saying is you put this

00:34:59 ◼   ► on a cart or you put this in a classroom,

00:35:00 ◼   ► you don't have like the monitor and the PC

00:35:04 ◼   ► and the peripherals all kind of mixed up

00:35:06 ◼   ► and getting tangled.

00:35:06 ◼   ► You just have this, it's a computer all in one.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Like the original Mac, right?

00:35:10 ◼   ► The inspiration was clearly the original Mac.

00:35:13 ◼   ► It is a monitor and a computer all together

00:35:15 ◼   ► and it goes with you and it is self-contained.

00:35:18 ◼   ► And so they went from something like the Molar,

00:35:21 ◼   ► which was like the Proto iMac, the iMac Zero,

00:35:23 ◼   ► to this iMac and it had all those same characteristics

00:35:27 ◼   ► of not having all the wires and stuff,

00:35:30 ◼   ► which let them do that Jeff Goldblum ad.

00:35:33 ◼   ► And I guess we should dive into what else is in this thing

00:35:36 ◼   ► 'cause it was not just that it looked good,

00:35:39 ◼   ► it has that transparent aqua,

00:35:42 ◼   ► it was blue with a tint of green plastic,

00:35:45 ◼   ► which everybody aped, everybody put panels,

00:35:50 ◼   ► translucent plastic colored panels

00:35:52 ◼   ► on their products after this. But in terms of, even if it looked like a regular PC, in

00:35:56 ◼   ► terms of specs it was unlike any Mac that was ever made.

00:36:00 ◼   ► It was such a big break, right? I mean, like you said, the G3 had been around, but this

00:36:07 ◼   ► is the machine where Apple basically wiped, or got hit the reset button on all of their

00:36:11 ◼   ► I/O, so... Yeah. It's called the I/O since the Mac, really since the Mac SE. Like, the

00:36:16 ◼   ► Mac SE brought on ADB and regular Mac serial, I think, or maybe that was the Plus had Mac

00:36:25 ◼   ► serial. I don't know if the Plus had ADB yet or not. So forgive me. I—turns out, I'm

00:36:33 ◼   ► unclear on the differences in the exact ports of the 128.512 Plus and SE, because there's

00:36:39 ◼   ► an error in an issue of Macworld from this period that is my fault that nobody has mentioned

00:36:44 ◼   ► to me until Steven noticed it last week. No way! Yeah, it's true. I made reference to

00:36:52 ◼   ► some like, you know, and it's not even, I don't think it's even my byline, but I know

00:36:56 ◼   ► that it's me who did that. And it's something like, you know, the iMac gets rid of all these

00:37:00 ◼   ► ports that, you know, you've loved since the, you know, Mac 128. And it's not accurate because

00:37:07 ◼   ► those ports weren't in the Mac. The 128 and the 512 didn't have ADB on them. I don't think

00:37:12 ◼   ► had Mac serial, they had a different kind of serial port on them. But by the time the

00:37:17 ◼   ► SE came out, which is the first Mac that I had, those were there, and they stayed there

00:37:21 ◼   ► from that period, which, you know, for me, I got my Mac SE in like 1990, early 1990.

00:37:28 ◼   ► You know, they had been on every Mac from that point forward, certainly. So, maybe not

00:37:33 ◼   ► quite a decade, but for years, you know, every single peripheral that was sold was ADB for

00:37:40 ◼   ► keyboards, serial for modems and things and printers and things like that those

00:37:45 ◼   ► were how you connected peripherals to your Mac and they got rid of all of them

00:37:50 ◼   ► at once they got rid of the floppy drive at once this thing had no writable

00:37:55 ◼   ► storage it had a CD-ROM drive and it had USB which was at the time esoteric

00:38:00 ◼   ► nobody made USB devices it wasn't on PCs really either. It really struck me that

00:38:06 ◼   ► that Steve kept calling it Universal Serial Bus.

00:38:09 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:38:11 ◼   ► - Like he didn't call it USB.

00:38:13 ◼   ► It was interesting to me to hear that.

00:38:14 ◼   ► It was like, oh, this must be,

00:38:16 ◼   ► 'cause again, I didn't have the context,

00:38:18 ◼   ► this must be really early on in this

00:38:19 ◼   ► because he keeps referring to it.

00:38:23 ◼   ► He never uses an acronym.

00:38:24 ◼   ► He just keeps calling it Universal Serial Bus.

00:38:26 ◼   ► - We are going to the new generation of I/O.

00:38:29 ◼   ► 12 megabit Universal Serial Bus, two ports.

00:38:32 ◼   ► We're leaving the old Apple I/O behind.

00:38:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, it wasn't a thing that anybody knew really

00:38:38 ◼   ► or had used.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't mention SCSI.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Steven mentioned SCSI.

00:38:41 ◼   ► SCSI, how you hook up hard drives, gone, gone.

00:38:44 ◼   ► - Gone. - Gone.

00:38:45 ◼   ► - Gone. - It's all gone.

00:38:46 ◼   ► It's amazing, but it had a modem built in, right?

00:38:50 ◼   ► So there's like just a phone jack on the side of this thing

00:38:52 ◼   ► and there's a little door that you could fold down

00:38:56 ◼   ► that had the ports inside

00:38:57 ◼   ► and it had a little hole in it, right?

00:38:58 ◼   ► Very Steve Jobs, Johnny I, right?

00:39:00 ◼   ► Little hole in it so you could like pass through the cables.

00:39:03 ◼   ► so you could close the door

00:39:05 ◼   ► and still have your cables come out.

00:39:07 ◼   ► Amazing.

00:39:09 ◼   ► So they had a modem and an ethernet port.

00:39:10 ◼   ► And in the video, in the event,

00:39:13 ◼   ► I think it's really funny that Steve Jobs has to justify

00:39:16 ◼   ► why he thinks having ethernet on the computer

00:39:18 ◼   ► might be a good idea.

00:39:19 ◼   ► - It's super awkward though.

00:39:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is weird.

00:39:22 ◼   ► But there was no wifi.

00:39:24 ◼   ► And he's like, "You know, more people are hooking up

00:39:27 ◼   ► ethernet networks at home,"

00:39:29 ◼   ► which I'm not sure if that's true or not.

00:39:31 ◼   ► - That felt weird.

00:39:31 ◼   ► I think that's still weird today, but.

00:39:33 ◼   ► But you know, Jobs was big into like the networked home folder thing and obviously they were

00:39:38 ◼   ► working on server-side stuff, so like I think maybe it was a bet against the future, but

00:39:43 ◼   ► also it made a big difference in education like computer labs and schools and stuff where

00:39:49 ◼   ► these things would be sold also.

00:39:50 ◼   ► So maybe it wasn't for like the home user, but for education and businesses it made tons

00:39:55 ◼   ► of sense.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And I think my understanding from people like James Thompson I think worked on stuff at

00:40:01 ◼   ► at this point, is that one of the concepts they had was for a diskless iMac, that the

00:40:06 ◼   ► idea that you could actually buy these and put these in schools and they would have no

00:40:11 ◼   ► disk at all, and they would boot over the network. And that was part of the strategy,

00:40:15 ◼   ► and it sort of never really happened with this product, but that was a part of it. Also,

00:40:22 ◼   ► I mean, I think Steve Jobs felt like networking was always a good idea, and that you never

00:40:27 ◼   ► really knew what you were going to do with it, but that it was good to have it on board,

00:40:30 ◼   ► that goes back to the original Mac, right? I mean, the original Mac had network capability

00:40:35 ◼   ► at a time when that was like, why would you even bother with that? But, you know, from

00:40:40 ◼   ► the original Mac on, networkability was in the box. It was part of the thing and people

00:40:45 ◼   ► used it. And over time, some people didn't use it, but a lot of people did use it. And

00:40:50 ◼   ► I think maybe philosophically that became part of Jobs's thing is like, well, why not

00:40:54 ◼   ► do that? That makes this device more, yes, it's a little more expensive this way, but

00:40:59 ◼   ► makes it much more flexible than--and also let's not forget this is a device that they

00:41:05 ◼   ► want people to be able to use it out of the box and you can't open it up, right? You can't

00:41:09 ◼   ► open it up and put an expansion card in it. So if it's going to go into offices and schools,

00:41:15 ◼   ► maybe we should just put Ethernet in it. So they did.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Yeah, it's such a big break from where they were, but it's also like a return to form,

00:41:22 ◼   ► like you said, with the original Mac where you couldn't open the box. It was like what

00:41:25 ◼   ► you bought is what you had and that's it that's it and you know from such a

00:41:32 ◼   ► change of pace from even that molar Mac you could slide like cards in they were

00:41:37 ◼   ► called profile cards so you could do like audio stuff or video stuff and like

00:41:41 ◼   ► take the back off and put this big thing in and put the back back on and suddenly

00:41:44 ◼   ► you had new capability where the iMac really the the vision was to offload all

00:41:50 ◼   ► of that on the USB devices you said that stuff just didn't exist when they

00:41:55 ◼   ► announced it. Yeah, that's something, I mean, we definitely need to talk about the universal

00:41:59 ◼   ► serial bus. Thank you, Myke. Yes, it's the new, it's the universal serial bus, which

00:42:03 ◼   ► replaced ADB and serial and SCSI, right? So all of those things that we used to connect

00:42:10 ◼   ► devices to the Mac in different ways were replaced by USB. That was it. We had never

00:42:17 ◼   ► seen it before. And so that was what this had. And the funny thing is that the devices

00:42:24 ◼   ► didn't exist. So fortunately we did have those four months or whatever where Apple announced

00:42:28 ◼   ► this where basically Apple saying, "People are going to want this computer. You should

00:42:32 ◼   ► build USB devices for it." And everybody like was scrambling. There were a lot of companies

00:42:36 ◼   ► that were working on USB peripherals for the PC market because it was starting to happen,

00:42:41 ◼   ► but this was the impetus for people to use USB. Like USB as a standard really owed its

00:42:48 ◼   ► existence to, maybe it would have happened anyway, but the iMac made it happen. The iMac

00:42:53 ◼   ► made USB a thing. This reminds me a lot of like Thunderbolt and the Mac Pro, like, "We've

00:43:00 ◼   ► got this thing and it's awesome!" No peripherals. Right, and this was, so some of them were

00:43:09 ◼   ► out there or were being worked on and so we ended up in the months following this some

00:43:14 ◼   ► hilarious things where we would get, we were trying to do a feature about USB stuff. We

00:43:17 ◼   ► literally in the next issue of Macworld had a table of like, here are products that people

00:43:22 ◼   ► say they're going to make that are USB and it's not that big a list. I remember it as

00:43:27 ◼   ► this huge table, it's like 25 products. Like literally, here's every USB product that anybody

00:43:32 ◼   ► has announced. And we had a couple of them, like two, three of them that we got in non-working

00:43:39 ◼   ► - we didn't have any USB devices to plug it into anyway, iMac hadn't shipped yet - non-working

00:43:44 ◼   ► samples and they were generally like, like iOmega sent us a zip drive where instead of

00:43:50 ◼   ► it being the the opaque blue enclosure it was translucent blue plastic enclosure

00:44:00 ◼   ► around the zip drive and they said see it's for the iMac that's how you know it

00:44:07 ◼   ► looks just like yeah it's there's plus and there was like a printer that a USB

00:44:11 ◼   ► printer was announced because that was a big thing is like how are they going to

00:44:14 ◼   ► print it's like well there will be USB printers and it was like literally just

00:44:18 ◼   ► a regular printer it was gonna have USB on it and what they did was they the

00:44:22 ◼   ► the little lid that you would lift to do the ink and stuff they replaced that

00:44:27 ◼   ► with a with a translucent blue plastic panel so now it's for the iMac and I

00:44:34 ◼   ► think they called it it was instead of the 880 it was the 880 I because it had

00:44:40 ◼   ► that little plastic thing or inspire it could be it could be ordinance or

00:44:46 ◼   ► instruct? Who knows? Who knows? So, USB was strange and weird and we didn't really understand

00:44:52 ◼   ► it. And in that Macworld issue, there are some hilarious diagrams because hot-plugging

00:44:57 ◼   ► wasn't a thing. Like with SCSI, if you wanted to plug in a hard drive, you were supposed

00:45:03 ◼   ► to turn off your computer, plug in the hard drive, and then turn on your computer. And

00:45:06 ◼   ► then if you needed to unplug it, you needed to turn off your computer, and then unplug

00:45:10 ◼   ► it, and then turn on your computer. And with USB, it was like, "Eh, just, uh..." We had

00:45:14 ◼   ► have a little diagram of like, you could have a hub, and then you can plug things into the

00:45:17 ◼   ► hub, that works. All the stuff we take for granted now, but at the time it was like mind-blowing

00:45:22 ◼   ► kind of things, because you were never supposed to hot-plug, unplug anything, not a keyboard,

00:45:26 ◼   ► not a mouse, certainly not a hard drive. And that you could chain things on the hub, which

00:45:32 ◼   ► was a much different approach than SCSI, where they kind of like all had to chain one after

00:45:35 ◼   ► another of this, you could plug in a thing and then plug five things into it. It was

00:45:41 ◼   ► big deal. The downside was you lost or you needed an adapter for ADB keyboards

00:45:50 ◼   ► and mice, for serial, for like modems and things like that, or whatever else you

00:45:55 ◼   ► would use with serial. All your floppies are now useless because there was no

00:46:00 ◼   ► floppy drive on this thing, only a CD-ROM drive, and that freaked people out.

00:46:04 ◼   ► That's famously a panic, but it was true. People were like really blown

00:46:07 ◼   ► away that there was no floppy on it. It's true. Any other questions children? Oh you

00:46:12 ◼   ► want to know about infrared? Yeah so so the front of this thing on the so you

00:46:17 ◼   ► had the stereo speakers and on the left one was a little cutout with a with an IR

00:46:22 ◼   ► window. Yes. And I could only think of two things that you would use this for. One, a

00:46:28 ◼   ► bunch of the Newton's had a little IR window at the top so you could like beam

00:46:31 ◼   ► information to your computer. Yeah. I mean never mind that your keyboard was in the

00:46:34 ◼   ► move your keyboard, put the Newton down, do it. And then I seem to remember, but

00:46:39 ◼   ► maybe this is just a hallucination from moving iMacs all day, that some cameras

00:46:45 ◼   ► had this as well so you could transfer your photos, but did that, I mean,

00:46:49 ◼   ► I know for a fact because I have them all here, this didn't last very long.

00:46:52 ◼   ► What was the deal? This was like the Bluetooth of the day, was how do you do

00:46:57 ◼   ► simple peer-to-peer data transfer. So in the presentation, Jobs chalks it up to

00:47:06 ◼   ► like transferring your photos, although I never ever did that. I don't remember

00:47:10 ◼   ► that happening once. People who had like palm organizers and stuff like that, you

00:47:16 ◼   ► could like beam your business card to somebody else who had a palm by holding

00:47:19 ◼   ► down a button. And what palm did is palm actually wrote software that let you use

00:47:27 ◼   ► the IR port on the iMac to sync with the iMac. It was slow because you are literally blinking a light

00:47:38 ◼   ► to do data transfer. It is light blinking data transfer. But it was, yeah, I mean, it was really

00:47:46 ◼   ► not that reliable and it was super slow and I don't think people really ever used it. I'm

00:47:52 ◼   ► surprised that it got in there at all. I suspect this is the flip side of Steve Jobs being open to

00:47:56 ◼   ► to let's put that in there who knows what people will do with it and in

00:48:00 ◼   ► hindsight what happened is this is not a thing people did anything with and they

00:48:03 ◼   ► took it off but but that's my memory is that the IRDA port was the I think you

00:48:10 ◼   ► could sync like your palm update update the palm contact information from the

00:48:15 ◼   ► iMac it lasted exactly one revision yeah so not not a not a winner compared to

00:48:23 ◼   ► something like USB.

00:48:24 ◼   ► I mean so much of this computer is so forward thinking.

00:48:27 ◼   ► - It's true.

00:48:28 ◼   ► - And it's one of those things too,

00:48:29 ◼   ► like it's really hard to separate,

00:48:31 ◼   ► so there's like two parallel thoughts

00:48:33 ◼   ► in my brain about this.

00:48:35 ◼   ► One is that Apple through Steve Jobs

00:48:38 ◼   ► saw a vision for the future of consumer computing.

00:48:41 ◼   ► And they built the iMac and the future

00:48:43 ◼   ► was going to be that, right?

00:48:44 ◼   ► They met the future.

00:48:46 ◼   ► But there's also this thought that

00:48:48 ◼   ► it's also kind of the future that Steve Jobs

00:48:50 ◼   ► wanted to see happen, and so they forced it.

00:48:53 ◼   ► So like, you know, if Steve Jobs says

00:48:56 ◼   ► you don't get a floppy drive,

00:48:57 ◼   ► or in 2008 with the MacBook Air,

00:48:58 ◼   ► he says you don't get CD drives anymore.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Then floppy disk and CDs kind of die, right?

00:49:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, there was a huge market momentarily

00:49:08 ◼   ► for USB floppy drives.

00:49:11 ◼   ► Like, oh God, we need a floppy drive, USB floppy drives.

00:49:14 ◼   ► And very quickly it went away.

00:49:16 ◼   ► But yeah, that was that moment of like,

00:49:19 ◼   ► can I just be unburdened and make a product?

00:49:21 ◼   ► this is still in Apple's DNA to this day, it's like let us be unburdened by the

00:49:25 ◼   ► past and make a product that we think is the best product for the future even if

00:49:29 ◼   ► the future is not here yet because it'll be here soon and we will have been ahead

00:49:32 ◼   ► of the curve. I mean look at the MacBook but something I guess my question in that

00:49:37 ◼   ► is like where did this seem to fall between those two things like I mean was

00:49:43 ◼   ► it a big pain or did people kind of very quickly get over it and Phobbe just went

00:49:47 ◼   ► way overnight. I'd say, well, I mean, so I'd say it's kind of like now or like with a MacBook

00:49:54 ◼   ► or something like that, where there are people whose worldview is like, "This is something

00:49:59 ◼   ► you have to have in a computer." And then there are people who were thinking about things

00:50:06 ◼   ► a little bit more deeply and would say, "Do you really need that in a computer?" Who's

00:50:10 ◼   ► using that? Is that something that most people are using or almost nobody? Quite honestly,

00:50:15 ◼   ► One of the reasons that I think people were skeptical about the floppy is that the floppy

00:50:18 ◼   ► was much more necessary on the PC.

00:50:22 ◼   ► This was the era where still PCs needed to have floppies, because sometimes you would

00:50:27 ◼   ► need to boot off of the floppy.

00:50:31 ◼   ► And so how could you not have--I believe at this point you literally could not have a

00:50:35 ◼   ► PC without a floppy, because the floppy drive had to be there.

00:50:40 ◼   ► That was your emergency boot solution, was the floppy drive.

00:50:45 ◼   ► And so some people just couldn't get over that.

00:50:48 ◼   ► It's like, well, how could you have a computer

00:50:49 ◼   ► that doesn't have a floppy drive?

00:50:50 ◼   ► But this is the zip drive era.

00:50:52 ◼   ► People are already buying external storage

00:50:55 ◼   ► with way more than the one megabyte

00:50:57 ◼   ► that you could fit on an HD floppy

00:51:00 ◼   ► because that wasn't enough space.

00:51:03 ◼   ► Like System 7 came on what, 10 floppies or something?

00:51:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a whole like little booklet of them.

00:51:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, a little envelope full of floppy disks

00:51:12 ◼   ► and you had to put them in one at a time

00:51:13 ◼   ► to install it on your hard drive

00:51:14 ◼   ► 'cause it was just, so that technology had already

00:51:18 ◼   ► outlived its usefulness.

00:51:19 ◼   ► I'd say the trick of this timing is that CDR

00:51:23 ◼   ► wasn't ready yet.

00:51:25 ◼   ► And so there was no writable storage on this device at all,

00:51:29 ◼   ► like for portability reasons.

00:51:31 ◼   ► And that bothered people

00:51:32 ◼   ► 'cause there was still a lot of sneaker net.

00:51:34 ◼   ► There was still a lot of taking things to your friends.

00:51:36 ◼   ► And how could you do that on your iMac now?

00:51:38 ◼   ► Like how do you get data somewhere else?

00:51:41 ◼   ► And people didn't know.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And there weren't just USB keys back then, right?

00:51:47 ◼   ► It's like maybe you get a USB hard drive

00:51:49 ◼   ► and you copy it to the hard drive.

00:51:50 ◼   ► So I think that was painful,

00:51:52 ◼   ► that this landed before you could even burn a CD-ROM

00:51:57 ◼   ► to give to people.

00:51:58 ◼   ► So how do you get data out of this thing

00:52:00 ◼   ► other than by emailing it to somebody

00:52:04 ◼   ► from your AOL account, I guess?

00:52:07 ◼   ► So I'd say that was the reaction to that.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And the same, ADB,

00:52:10 ◼   ► I mean, USB was very clearly superior to ADB

00:52:12 ◼   ► and serial, but you definitely had everybody complaining.

00:52:16 ◼   ► Like people are worried about their headphones

00:52:18 ◼   ► with their headphone jack, right?

00:52:20 ◼   ► They were like, man, I'm gonna buy adapters

00:52:22 ◼   ► and it's gonna be, you know, I'm gonna have to do that.

00:52:24 ◼   ► And I wager that, you know, they made so many ADB

00:52:28 ◼   ► and serial adapters for USB back then

00:52:30 ◼   ► that, you know, you can still get.

00:52:33 ◼   ► They probably were all made in 1998.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And if you use like, you hear about people

00:52:40 ◼   ► who use the Apple extended keyboards to this day,

00:52:42 ◼   ► like John Gruber, right?

00:52:43 ◼   ► They're all using an ADB to USB adapter to do that.

00:52:48 ◼   ► - You can still get them on Amazon.

00:52:50 ◼   ► - Sure, they're out there.

00:52:51 ◼   ► And serial, I used a Mac serial to USB adapter for years

00:52:56 ◼   ► with my weather station,

00:52:57 ◼   ► 'cause it had a serial port on it,

00:53:00 ◼   ► and then it had a little Mac adapter for it,

00:53:02 ◼   ► and it was just a Mac serial.

00:53:04 ◼   ► What the heck is this?

00:53:06 ◼   ► That was 2000, I got that in 2004,

00:53:08 ◼   ► and they still were just like,

00:53:08 ◼   ► "Here's a Mac serial adapter."

00:53:10 ◼   ► I'm like, "Okay."

00:53:11 ◼   ► And there's a, yeah, there's a key span USB serial adapter

00:53:14 ◼   ► that I put in and that gave me the access that I needed.

00:53:17 ◼   ► So yeah, I think it was, in hindsight,

00:53:21 ◼   ► it was largely a great move.

00:53:22 ◼   ► The infrared didn't carry off, but the rest of it,

00:53:24 ◼   ► they were correctly envisioning what the future

00:53:26 ◼   ► was gonna be like and what the needs were.

00:53:28 ◼   ► And the biggest hit they took

00:53:30 ◼   ► was not having writable storage on it,

00:53:32 ◼   ► other than like removable writable storage.

00:53:34 ◼   ► You couldn't get data out of it in any good way to a disk.

00:53:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it really is just fascinating.

00:53:43 ◼   ► We obviously have the benefit of time now,

00:53:47 ◼   ► but I like to play this game even now,

00:53:49 ◼   ► where you can get the MacBook of like,

00:53:51 ◼   ► is USB-C the thing?

00:53:52 ◼   ► Like, is that where we're going?

00:53:54 ◼   ► And sometimes Apple gets it right,

00:53:56 ◼   ► sometimes they don't, or sometimes they're too early.

00:53:59 ◼   ► But it's always like this repeating cycle with the company.

00:54:02 ◼   ► And clearly the iMac is one of the biggest examples.

00:54:05 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it's like the root example.

00:54:08 ◼   ► - So with a lot of Apple products,

00:54:10 ◼   ► this thing came with a new keyboard and mouse.

00:54:14 ◼   ► And of course they were using the new fangled USB.

00:54:18 ◼   ► And they even have a little side of like,

00:54:21 ◼   ► you can plug the mouse on either side.

00:54:23 ◼   ► So if you're left-handed,

00:54:24 ◼   ► you can use the mouse on the left side

00:54:25 ◼   ► 'cause the ports were on the right side of the computer.

00:54:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the ADB did that too.

00:54:30 ◼   ► I mean, the ADB keyboards for Apple

00:54:31 ◼   ► had the left and the right too, but still.

00:54:33 ◼   ► - Look at this mouse.

00:54:34 ◼   ► It's the most wonderful mouse you've ever used.

00:54:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, so this mouse, I mean,

00:54:40 ◼   ► we'll put a picture in the show notes,

00:54:42 ◼   ► it is perfectly round and it's very,

00:54:45 ◼   ► I mean I've got a whole stack of them.

00:54:47 ◼   ► It is very difficult to use it

00:54:49 ◼   ► because it's easy to get it like turned

00:54:51 ◼   ► and suddenly going up or down isn't quite up or down,

00:54:54 ◼   ► it's diagonal and for me at least,

00:54:57 ◼   ► and I just have like I guess like normal sized human hands,

00:55:00 ◼   ► it's pretty small and so it's uncomfortable for me at least

00:55:03 ◼   ► to use for long periods of time and they,

00:55:06 ◼   ► what kills me about this is they stayed with it

00:55:09 ◼   ► And as they moved on, they did like the five flavors.

00:55:12 ◼   ► They introduced this mouse in a bunch of different colors,

00:55:14 ◼   ► but they didn't change anything.

00:55:15 ◼   ► It was just like, oh, now it's an orange.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Eventually they moved away from it,

00:55:19 ◼   ► but it's definitely a mess in the design department.

00:55:24 ◼   ► - Did people hate it?

00:55:25 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's good looking,

00:55:27 ◼   ► but when you say from the design,

00:55:28 ◼   ► it was like, economically, and just to use it,

00:55:31 ◼   ► people didn't like it.

00:55:33 ◼   ► But was that the feeling at the time?

00:55:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think when people started using it,

00:55:37 ◼   ► was a feeling of like, "Oh, I don't know about this thing," but you want to give it a chance.

00:55:43 ◼   ► I think when people were looking at it, they were just like, "Well, that's really cool. It's all

00:55:46 ◼   ► like translucent-y plastic, and isn't that awesome? And it's USB, and it's very different

00:55:51 ◼   ► from the old mouse." And always people will be skeptical because they like their new thing,

00:55:56 ◼   ► and that's why they rushed out to buy an ADB adapter. But once it came out, it became clear

00:56:03 ◼   ► very quickly I would say that you couldn't orient it properly. Right? You pick it up,

00:56:09 ◼   ► it's turned a little bit but you haven't noticed and you just reach your hand down and you start

00:56:13 ◼   ► to push it upward to move your cursor upward and your cursor goes left. You're like, "Oh,

00:56:18 ◼   ► damn it mouse!" And then you gotta like reorient it to get it back to upright because you can't.

00:56:22 ◼   ► And that was the killer. It's like it's not comfortable in your hand. My favorite accessory

00:56:26 ◼   ► at the time was there was a plastic shell that you basically snapped onto it that made it shape

00:56:31 ◼   ► like essentially like the old Apple mouse where it made it oval and it was

00:56:35 ◼   ► like literally it just made it so that you could tell you it was bigger to grip

00:56:39 ◼   ► and you could tell whether you were using it up and down or not the fact that

00:56:44 ◼   ► that exists is just really sad for the people who designed this mouse yeah yeah

00:56:49 ◼   ► it looked great I mean it looked great but but it was a mistake and obviously

00:56:53 ◼   ► they did correct the hockey puck mouse eventually with the with the the one

00:56:57 ◼   ► that they, I think in 2000 maybe it was, that they did at Macworld Expo that was

00:57:02 ◼   ► the new, yeah the one with the that was a like a big dome and it was it was

00:57:09 ◼   ► mouse-shaped, it was elongated and had the little like laser underneath and and

00:57:16 ◼   ► that was that was that design is still in use. I mean essentially Apple's mice

00:57:23 ◼   ► today are the same sort of design as that. Today's episode of Upgrade is also

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00:59:08 ◼   ► - So I mean, how was the response to this?

00:59:11 ◼   ► So this thing goes on sale in the fall of '98.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Was it just mayhem to get your hands on one?

00:59:18 ◼   ► Or did it take time for people to catch on?

00:59:22 ◼   ► - No, I mean, there was a huge,

00:59:24 ◼   ► my recollection is there's a huge pent up demand.

00:59:26 ◼   ► People were really excited about it.

00:59:29 ◼   ► It came out in the fall.

00:59:30 ◼   ► I think the idea that you would buy these,

00:59:32 ◼   ► keeping in mind the internet at that time,

00:59:34 ◼   ► like the idea that you could buy a computer,

00:59:37 ◼   ► like I said earlier, and just do it to get on the internet,

00:59:39 ◼   ► get you do it to do email.

00:59:41 ◼   ► They were selling to people who finally had a reason

00:59:44 ◼   ► buy a computer or had bought a computer in the past but have been frustrated by it, and

00:59:49 ◼   ► the idea was, "This is like an internet appliance. Use it to get onto the internet." And that

00:59:53 ◼   ► was a powerful message because then it doesn't matter about compatibility. Like, it'll do

00:59:57 ◼   ► email and it'll do a web browser, and that's all you really need. So you can buy a Mac,

01:00:05 ◼   ► you don't have to worry about it not running Windows. And so that was successful, the fact

01:00:10 ◼   ► that they had product-focused ads beginning with the original one with a,

01:00:14 ◼   ► you know, there's no step three, but in for the later editions they also did ads

01:00:19 ◼   ► that were, you're like, "I see now this is like Apple," like the the multicolored

01:00:23 ◼   ► iMac ads feel very Apple and point the way to the iPod. So I think, yeah, I

01:00:29 ◼   ► think it was very successful with a broad number of people. I will say that

01:00:32 ◼   ► that people, you know, power users were really not a fan of it because they were Power Mac

01:00:41 ◼   ► users and this was a toy. It was not as powerful as their Power Macs. It didn't have the ports.

01:00:46 ◼   ► And so I think in the install base, there was an enthusiasm for it because it got people

01:00:52 ◼   ► excited about it. But in the like grizzled veterans who were power users, they were not

01:00:57 ◼   ► impressed by the iMac because and it took years I think for Apple to drive

01:01:03 ◼   ► pro model users down to the iMac to the point now where very few even like

01:01:11 ◼   ► high-end Apple users are actually using the Mac Pro but it took a while

01:01:17 ◼   ► because this was as many nice things as they say about it it was kind of

01:01:22 ◼   ► underpowered like it was not super fast it was okay it was not cut rate but it

01:01:26 ◼   ► was not super fast and it was super super incompatible so it took time it

01:01:33 ◼   ► took time for that also lots of adapters lots of USB floppy drives sold lots of

01:01:39 ◼   ► USB products rushed to the market some of which were super buggy they were

01:01:44 ◼   ► arriving oftentimes after the iMac I think there was a printer that arrived

01:01:48 ◼   ► about when the iMac did but a lot of times you get the iMac and then there

01:01:51 ◼   ► would be months where you were still waiting for your additional USB products because they

01:01:59 ◼   ► just weren't ready because it was an entirely new market and there was not a lot of USB

01:02:04 ◼   ► stuff for it. And then of course there was the mezzanine slot which I should mention

01:02:08 ◼   ► which was there was like a testing slot inside and people took it apart and discovered this

01:02:12 ◼   ► thing and they tried to make some products for it and it was like to add a port or to

01:02:17 ◼   ► add video out or all these things that people tried to do with it. And the

01:02:22 ◼   ► problem was, like, to crack the iMac case was not something anybody should try to

01:02:25 ◼   ► do. It was not good. So people tried, and Apple learned its lesson and did not

01:02:30 ◼   ► leave an open testing slot on future editions of the iMac. But I

01:02:36 ◼   ► remember we had, at Macworld, we had one where we had done some mezzanine hack to

01:02:40 ◼   ► it, where there was, like, a port that was, like, added on to the existing ports on

01:02:47 ◼   ► the iMac where we had added whatever thing turned that mezzanine slot into

01:02:51 ◼   ► something useful. It was super weird. So people were enthusiastic but

01:02:54 ◼   ► they were also, I think, frustrated longtime Mac users by just how

01:02:57 ◼   ► untouchable it was. People complain about that today but this

01:03:02 ◼   ► is like where it really started, where it's like, "No, don't open it, don't

01:03:06 ◼   ► change it, don't modify it, it is what it is, just use it, it's an appliance."

01:03:10 ◼   ► That appliance mentality is really what sums the whole thing up for me. Like we spoke

01:03:14 ◼   ► about early with the original Mac but this thing was designed something you

01:03:18 ◼   ► bought you sat on your desk and you didn't have to be some sort of like

01:03:23 ◼   ► really nerdy or like technical person you could just sit down and use it and I

01:03:28 ◼   ► think yeah that this computer for so many reasons like it doesn't nailed that

01:03:34 ◼   ► a hundred percent and it is what like without a doubt like I wrote this thing

01:03:39 ◼   ► years ago and called it the Mac that helped save Apple and like it absolutely

01:03:42 ◼   ► is because it returned them to that demographic of user.

01:03:47 ◼   ► - The computer for the rest of us, right?

01:03:50 ◼   ► 14 years later, here's Steve Jobs again

01:03:53 ◼   ► with a computer for the rest of us.

01:03:54 ◼   ► And it's the same rationale.

01:03:56 ◼   ► - Yep, and it was one that really, I mean,

01:03:58 ◼   ► so many of these things are sold to education,

01:04:01 ◼   ► it really returned them to that world as well in a big way.

01:04:05 ◼   ► And this single computer would spin off,

01:04:10 ◼   ► depending on how you count them,

01:04:12 ◼   ► like three or four or five generations after it,

01:04:14 ◼   ► but this moment in 1998 is like one of the purest looks

01:04:19 ◼   ► at like Steve Jobs' vision, not only for Apple,

01:04:24 ◼   ► but for computing in general, that it's simple,

01:04:26 ◼   ► it's easy to use, and you don't have to like deal

01:04:30 ◼   ► with all these antiquated connectors with pins

01:04:34 ◼   ► and like terminators, like you could just plug something in

01:04:36 ◼   ► and use it and unplug it when you're done, just simple.

01:04:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it was, and having new stuff like that,

01:04:43 ◼   ► right, I mean, often the cutting edge stuff

01:04:45 ◼   ► doesn't go on the computer that regular people buy,

01:04:48 ◼   ► but on the iMac it did.

01:04:49 ◼   ► Like this is for regular people, but it's got the USB,

01:04:52 ◼   ► it's a lot easier to use with USB, you don't have to,

01:04:55 ◼   ► these people don't care about legacy hardware, right?

01:04:58 ◼   ► These new Mac buyers, iMac buyers do not care about that.

01:05:01 ◼   ► They just wanna have a thing that lets them get

01:05:03 ◼   ► on the internet and they can just plug it in,

01:05:05 ◼   ► or a school or a business just wants to put it down

01:05:07 ◼   ► plug in an ethernet cable and they're on the internet and they can, you know, use this Mac.

01:05:14 ◼   ► And it's got all the Mac software and they can use the CD-ROMs and, you know, their software

01:05:17 ◼   ► story was still in flux at this point. But yeah, it is the Mac that saved Apple. This

01:05:23 ◼   ► is the thing that turned it around. And then the growth really kind of followed as they

01:05:28 ◼   ► cleaned up the rest of the product line and then they eventually went to the iPod and

01:05:32 ◼   ► the rest is history. But this was the start of it. This was the artistic statement in

01:05:35 ◼   ► addition to being strategic by Steve Jobs about what they were trying to do. It fits

01:05:40 ◼   ► in with the story of all the products that he made before and after, really. And from

01:05:46 ◼   ► here, the question—and you sent me a little clip from that Macworld article that I was

01:05:52 ◼   ► talking about earlier about what is missing, where could we go from here? And I feel like

01:05:58 ◼   ► the two things that were obvious were more colors and more, you know, writable storage,

01:06:05 ◼   ► I mentioned, the ability to like do CDR or something like that so you could get data

01:06:08 ◼   ► out of this thing in some way. And when we look at the history, I mean we've been talking

01:06:13 ◼   ► about the initial Bondi iMac, but as you look at the history, that's exactly what happened.

01:06:19 ◼   ► The next generation was the famous five flavors. You can go look at them right now in the room

01:06:24 ◼   ► that you're in, right? Blueberry, strawberry, lime, tangerine, and grape. Aw, how cute.

01:06:31 ◼   ► that and they did that took out the infrared took out the mezzanine slot

01:06:36 ◼   ► stop messing with our computers right and then and then later that year in 99

01:06:42 ◼   ► they did the iMac DV which is a big deal because that was the one where they got

01:06:47 ◼   ► they got slot loading that had CDR right some of them did some of them had CDR

01:06:57 ◼   ► right sure so that firewire some of them had CDR on the iMac DV and then and then there was

01:07:07 ◼   ► the graphite special edition which was like the fancy high-end iMac for $14.99 you got you got

01:07:13 ◼   ► more RAM and oh and it had video out I mean they added that was when they really kind of like turned

01:07:18 ◼   ► the turned the product over and they made the slot load because the first iMacs just had the little

01:07:22 ◼   ► slide out like you had to pull the drive out a little drive it was it was a

01:07:26 ◼   ► compromise I mean I think Steve Jobs didn't want the trail loading CD and I

01:07:31 ◼   ► think he wanted them to be CD-R and it just they couldn't make it work yeah I

01:07:35 ◼   ► get I had that feeling as well because they did it really as soon as they could

01:07:39 ◼   ► and you know so that they as they're adding all these things on and adding

01:07:46 ◼   ► firewire and a big push in this machine later in this life was iMovie right you

01:07:50 ◼   ► You have a Firewire digital camcorder,

01:07:53 ◼   ► and you can come in, you can edit your videos in iMovie,

01:07:55 ◼   ► which is-- - That's what the DV is.

01:07:57 ◼   ► The whole idea here is you sell people digital camcorders,

01:08:00 ◼   ► they edit their camcorder files on iMovie and output them,

01:08:04 ◼   ► and that's how you make movies in 1999.

01:08:08 ◼   ► I made a lot of iMovies in 2000 and 2001.

01:08:12 ◼   ► - But seeing all these things together,

01:08:14 ◼   ► the heart and soul of the machine is the same.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Even the way, one of the little details that I love

01:08:20 ◼   ► the later ones when they added the VGA out so you could you know you could if

01:08:25 ◼   ► you were like a teacher and you wanted to put it on a TV or projector it

01:08:28 ◼   ► mirrored it yeah but there was a little there were two covers for it and so if

01:08:32 ◼   ► you didn't want to see the port you could snap a cover on the back and not

01:08:34 ◼   ► see the port sticking out or if you wanted to use it put another cover on

01:08:38 ◼   ► and the port was exposed like even then adding that that expand you know simple

01:08:43 ◼   ► expansion Apple did it in a way that still kept the the product as a whole

01:08:49 ◼   ► like clean and neat and sort of unassuming and

01:08:52 ◼   ► You know if you didn't know what you were looking at

01:08:55 ◼   ► it's really kind of hard to tell besides the case colors like the evolution of these things because they

01:09:00 ◼   ► That that shape was a so well defined by the CRT

01:09:04 ◼   ► But they kept it so similar over the years where if you sat down to iMac from 1998 or 2000, you know, you felt

01:09:13 ◼   ► familiar with it. And I think a part of that, a big part of that, is how fast they turn

01:09:18 ◼   ► these things over. So in their heyday, they were revising these things every nine months.

01:09:24 ◼   ► And you would have new colors, new technology come in at the top of the line. And just like

01:09:27 ◼   ► the iPhones today, you know, the previous best case iMac would sort of drop down to

01:09:33 ◼   ► the middle slot and sometimes they would have a really cheap one.

01:09:36 ◼   ► If you look at 2000, which I remember clearly the Mac World Expo in 2000, I remember, you

01:09:40 ◼   ► this is when the G4 Cube came out. I think this is when when this is like a year

01:09:46 ◼   ► after maybe the iBook came out. So this product line they've got a generic iMac

01:09:50 ◼   ► at $799. That is your low price leader. It's old tech basically. No

01:09:56 ◼   ► airport card slot, no video out, no firewire, CD-ROM instead of DVD-ROM. But

01:10:04 ◼   ► you know that was the $799. Then at $999 you get something a little bit better.

01:10:07 ◼   ► That's the iMac DV.

01:10:10 ◼   ► And at $1299 you get the DV Plus.

01:10:12 ◼   ► And at $1499 you get the DV Special Edition.

01:10:16 ◼   ► And the colors are variants of each other.

01:10:20 ◼   ► This is when they've got new names.

01:10:23 ◼   ► This is the Indigo, Ruby, Sage, Graphite, and Snow iMacs that they did.

01:10:29 ◼   ► So the colors are a little bit different and they've got different names.

01:10:32 ◼   ► But they still have that product line spread.

01:10:34 ◼   ► Seems like the complication came back though, you know, like some of the complication that Steve tried to get rid of with this product

01:10:40 ◼   ► Seemed to come back

01:10:42 ◼   ► I don't know

01:10:43 ◼   ► I mean because it's sort of like now right where you know, you can get max in different different skews with different features

01:10:49 ◼   ► but essentially it's sort of like

01:10:51 ◼   ► You know good better best inside a single product line

01:10:55 ◼   ► There's some more

01:10:55 ◼   ► Complication but yeah more about like we have lower margins on this one and we can blow it out for

01:11:00 ◼   ► $7.99 and get it off the price list. I think what why it seems messy now is that you know

01:11:06 ◼   ► Apple has for a very long time done good better best

01:11:09 ◼   ► But they in this era they were naming those things right now if you go in and you want to buy a 13-inch MacBook Pro

01:11:15 ◼   ► Apple sells several default SKUs of that but they're all named

01:11:19 ◼   ► 13-inch MacBook Pro

01:11:22 ◼   ► where in these days they

01:11:24 ◼   ► labeled each of those steps in between yeah and TV plus

01:11:29 ◼   ► Yeah, DV special DV se okay, that's that's why I think yeah, I'm like I'm hearing you list these and I'm like

01:11:36 ◼   ► This is horrible, but that makes sense, but they're really just yeah good better best kind of skews

01:11:42 ◼   ► Yeah, and sometimes it'd be like a real cheap one down at the bottom

01:11:45 ◼   ► But um, and I think they learned from that right they did this and the iMac and they did it in the iBook g3

01:11:50 ◼   ► but the time they got the g4 error all that was gone and it was just

01:11:53 ◼   ► iBook g4 and there were a couple different

01:11:56 ◼   ► default SKUs and you could custom build one in between. Did they not have the facility to custom build them?

01:12:01 ◼   ► Was that maybe why they offered more kind of SKUs on the shelf? Yeah, I think that's exactly it.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Steven, we need to talk about 2001 and what happened that year. Yeah.

01:12:10 ◼   ► But I want to start with an anecdote, which is we did a "Customize your Mac" feature early in 2001, late in 2000.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Customize your Mac. Idea was like, you know, utilities to change your menu bar and your backdrop and

01:12:25 ◼   ► sounds and whatever. It was just a little feature about ways you can personalize your Mac. And we thought, "What is the cover?"

01:12:31 ◼   ► Because that was gonna be the cover story. We're like, "What?

01:12:33 ◼   ► What is the cover?"

01:12:35 ◼   ► And

01:12:38 ◼   ► we decided to do something fun with the cover, which is actually hire a couple of models and do like

01:12:44 ◼   ► fanciful ideas of like

01:12:48 ◼   ► fancifully decorating an iMac. So we had one like with a cowboy

01:12:54 ◼   ► lassoing an iMac that had like cow spots on it.

01:12:59 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:13:01 ◼   ► - And I think we had a hippie with like a hippie iMac.

01:13:05 ◼   ► We did multiple covers.

01:13:06 ◼   ► So depending on where you are, you got different covers.

01:13:09 ◼   ► And this issue came out in late 2000, early 2001.

01:13:13 ◼   ► And we got this furious call from somebody at Apple

01:13:16 ◼   ► and we couldn't understand it.

01:13:17 ◼   ► They're like, how dare you deface our computers?

01:13:20 ◼   ► They made this argument like we didn't have the right

01:13:23 ◼   ► to change the appearance, it made no sense.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Like the appearance of their computers,

01:13:30 ◼   ► that that was their trademark and something like that.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And you know, they were, it's Apple.

01:13:33 ◼   ► So, you know, the CEO of the company

01:13:35 ◼   ► and the editor-in-chief, I think were concerned

01:13:37 ◼   ► about Apple being mad about this, but we were all baffled.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Like, why is it that you don't want us to do that?

01:13:44 ◼   ► Do you not like the photos?

01:13:45 ◼   ► Do you not like our silly kind of customized Mac designs?

01:13:48 ◼   ► They claimed that that was the reason.

01:13:50 ◼   ► And then what happened is they announced the Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power IMAX.

01:13:57 ◼   ► So you beat them to it!

01:13:59 ◼   ► And we went "ohhh" because we beat them to it. Yeah.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Turns out we just stepped in it.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Wow.

01:14:07 ◼   ► So, and it's fine because those are really, really ugly computers.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Yeah, they're not great.

01:14:13 ◼   ► The flower power one is the weird one to me because like the flowers are all like weirdly oriented and they're like different sizes and stuff. Very strange.

01:14:23 ◼   ► And it's interesting note too that these aren't like vinyl wraps like they are embedded in the plastic.

01:14:31 ◼   ► In the plastic, yeah.

01:14:32 ◼   ► It's very strange and thankfully they only did two of them.

01:14:35 ◼   ► It surprises me you could find these ones as easily as you did, Steven.

01:14:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:14:41 ◼   ► - It feels like you couldn't have sold

01:14:42 ◼   ► that many of these, surely.

01:14:44 ◼   ► - I tapped into some weird Macintosh gray markets.

01:14:47 ◼   ► There's also some other weirdness,

01:14:48 ◼   ► like the cases have Apple logo embedded in the top

01:14:52 ◼   ► above the CRT and then one right on the back.

01:14:55 ◼   ► And so the Ruby one, which I can see right now,

01:14:57 ◼   ► that Apple is red to match the rest of the case.

01:15:00 ◼   ► The blue dimension and flower power,

01:15:01 ◼   ► they use a baby blue and a white, but they don't match.

01:15:04 ◼   ► So the one on the top is white

01:15:06 ◼   ► and the one on the back is baby blue,

01:15:08 ◼   ► and then vice versa on the flower power.

01:15:10 ◼   ► like why did you change it?

01:15:13 ◼   ► Like why did you think that was an important thing to do?

01:15:16 ◼   ► But they're so strange and what really kind of

01:15:20 ◼   ► is most upsetting to me about it

01:15:22 ◼   ► is that the ones right before it looked so good,

01:15:24 ◼   ► like the Sage and the Indigo and the Ruby and the Graphite

01:15:28 ◼   ► like are very subdued.

01:15:29 ◼   ► Like you could see them like in an office, right?

01:15:32 ◼   ► Like if you walked into your attorney's office

01:15:33 ◼   ► and he had a Graphite iMac,

01:15:35 ◼   ► you wouldn't think twice about it.

01:15:36 ◼   ► But if you walked in and he had a flower power,

01:15:38 ◼   ► be like, okay. - What I like about that

01:15:41 ◼   ► addition, like the graphite, sage, ruby ones,

01:15:44 ◼   ► is that the plastic is clear.

01:15:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, so they, a big change when they went,

01:15:50 ◼   ► so when they went to the slot loading optical drives,

01:15:53 ◼   ► they, the case got just slightly bit smaller

01:15:57 ◼   ► and you would never know unless you had two of them

01:15:59 ◼   ► side by side, the case gets a little bit smaller.

01:16:02 ◼   ► - Do you know? (laughs)

01:16:04 ◼   ► - I do know. (laughs)

01:16:05 ◼   ► also got lighter they got substantially lighter like I think they dropped like six

01:16:09 ◼   ► pounds and the reason for that is the the early ones had some electronics that

01:16:14 ◼   ► were vertically oriented kind of next to the CRT and they had to shield those

01:16:19 ◼   ► with metal and so if you look at the side photos of those early ones you can

01:16:24 ◼   ► see through the plastic and all you see is like a big sheet of metal and they

01:16:27 ◼   ► were able to get rid of that over time and with the slot load it was it was

01:16:31 ◼   ► gone all together you could see right through it. So you could see the CRT

01:16:36 ◼   ► which I think is really like a beautiful way just to embrace the technology and

01:16:39 ◼   ► they decrease the opacity on the plastic so you could actually see through this

01:16:44 ◼   ► the graphite probably being the best example you can just see through the

01:16:47 ◼   ► thing. I think graphite is my favorite looking at your photos for sure. You

01:16:54 ◼   ► know this will make me unpopular but I didn't like it because all you can see

01:16:58 ◼   ► is the back of that CRT and I think it's better imagined than seeing. What's your

01:17:04 ◼   ► favorite, Jason? I don't have a favorite. I guess maybe snow because it

01:17:08 ◼   ► just obscures the CRT as much as possible. I would not have said this, I

01:17:12 ◼   ► would have said graphite until I unboxed my tangerine and something about that

01:17:16 ◼   ► bright orange just speaks to me. It is a very good-looking one and I know it's

01:17:20 ◼   ► like the one that you picked out was like for the video that you did like

01:17:23 ◼   ► it's the thumbnail animation and stuff like that yeah that is a beautiful

01:17:27 ◼   ► and the tangerine, the orange is great.

01:17:29 ◼   ► - And keep in mind that the colors that they decided

01:17:32 ◼   ► to import into the iBook were blueberry and tangerine.

01:17:36 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:17:37 ◼   ► - They decided that they were only gonna do two colors

01:17:38 ◼   ► of iBook and those were the colors that they chose.

01:17:41 ◼   ► So you could get it in blue or orange.

01:17:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, they eventually brought graphite

01:17:45 ◼   ► and then a variant of, so the lime iMac

01:17:49 ◼   ► and the key lime iBook are slightly different,

01:17:51 ◼   ► but they did bring them eventually, but--

01:17:54 ◼   ► - Eventually, but when they launched them,

01:17:55 ◼   ► they launched them with two colors

01:17:56 ◼   ► and it was Blueberry and Tangerine.

01:17:58 ◼   ► - So the thing for me is like,

01:18:01 ◼   ► these things have a lot of personality, right?

01:18:03 ◼   ► And I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing some of that come back.

01:18:07 ◼   ► I mean, now you look at a MacBook Pro

01:18:08 ◼   ► and you have no idea how old it is

01:18:10 ◼   ► 'cause they all look the same,

01:18:11 ◼   ► and they've become very utilitarian in design.

01:18:16 ◼   ► And I'm not saying that I want a Blue Dalmatian Mac Mini,

01:18:21 ◼   ► but I do think there's room for like some whimsy

01:18:24 ◼   ► and some fun in the hardware

01:18:26 ◼   ► that we just don't see anymore.

01:18:28 ◼   ► - So the funny thing is when you,

01:18:30 ◼   ► when people talk about the unibody aluminium computers,

01:18:35 ◼   ► they talk about them as like a timeless design, right?

01:18:38 ◼   ► When they're introduced, you know,

01:18:39 ◼   ► like, oh, this timeless design.

01:18:40 ◼   ► I actually think this is more of that, right?

01:18:43 ◼   ► This personality, I think,

01:18:45 ◼   ► 'cause making these really stand out,

01:18:47 ◼   ► I'd be like, I would love something like this right now.

01:18:50 ◼   ► I think that the unibody aluminium style

01:18:54 ◼   ► will become boring and old quicker than this will.

01:18:57 ◼   ► - Also there's something about personality

01:19:00 ◼   ► and making memories.

01:19:01 ◼   ► I mean, Myke, you stick your stickers on everything, right?

01:19:04 ◼   ► - Uh-huh.

01:19:04 ◼   ► - I remember, like, I never owned one of these

01:19:08 ◼   ► 'cause I was one of those people,

01:19:10 ◼   ► one of those Power Mac people.

01:19:11 ◼   ► But like, I remember my blue and white G3.

01:19:14 ◼   ► I remember my graphite G4.

01:19:16 ◼   ► It had some personality that, you know,

01:19:18 ◼   ► those models got the plastic treatment

01:19:20 ◼   ► and the color treatment and all of that,

01:19:21 ◼   ► although only one color.

01:19:23 ◼   ► And I remember like my mom, when she, when they,

01:19:28 ◼   ► my parents sold my my childhood home and they moved into a motorhome and started

01:19:33 ◼   ► traveling the country, you know, she had a series of laptops over the,

01:19:36 ◼   ► over the years, but the first one she had was the Tangerine iBook.

01:19:39 ◼   ► And I remember that. I remember that that it's Tangerine.

01:19:42 ◼   ► I remember the personality of that laptop because, uh,

01:19:47 ◼   ► because of that. And I feel like Apple's designs are missing that.

01:19:50 ◼   ► And the shame of it is that they had it with the iPods,

01:19:54 ◼   ► with all the colors, and I feel like they're getting there.

01:19:59 ◼   ► They're bringing it back slowly with the MacBook

01:20:02 ◼   ► having the color options, the four color options.

01:20:06 ◼   ► I'm hoping the MacBook Pro will get that too,

01:20:09 ◼   ► but boy, I would really like it

01:20:11 ◼   ► if they would go to colors again and let people,

01:20:15 ◼   ► you know what, if somebody wants to get a blue MacBook,

01:20:18 ◼   ► let them get a blue MacBook.

01:20:19 ◼   ► It would look great.

01:20:20 ◼   ► - I want a blue iPhone though.

01:20:22 ◼   ► That's what I want.

01:20:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true too.

01:20:24 ◼   ► And I know people can do cases and all that,

01:20:25 ◼   ► but the iPod taught us the anodized aluminum is beautiful.

01:20:30 ◼   ► It's just like, and Apple can do it.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Apple can do beautiful colored anodized aluminum shells

01:20:36 ◼   ► on these things.

01:20:36 ◼   ► So I would love to see more of that.

01:20:38 ◼   ► - I've been looking at white plastic and blue plastic

01:20:41 ◼   ► for the last nearly 10 years.

01:20:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:20:43 ◼   ► - I would love to see a blue here or an orange here

01:20:47 ◼   ► or a green.

01:20:49 ◼   ► - Well, and silver and black,

01:20:52 ◼   ► black glass and silver aluminum forever, right?

01:20:56 ◼   ► For so long that a little more personality.

01:20:59 ◼   ► That's something that I think I too take that away

01:21:02 ◼   ► from this, Steven, is they, Apple,

01:21:06 ◼   ► when it was not a supply chain powerhouse,

01:21:10 ◼   ► Apple managed to sell IMAX in like six, seven,

01:21:14 ◼   ► eight different colors.

01:21:17 ◼   ► wouldn't it be nice if the Apple of today could do some of that because it's fun. It's

01:21:23 ◼   ► just fun to have computers with this personality and then you remember it, "Oh, that's my blue

01:21:27 ◼   ► iMac," right? Instead of like, "That's the latest in a series of silver laptops."

01:21:33 ◼   ► You mentioned me and the stickers, right? And it's a bit of a joke, but that's like

01:21:37 ◼   ► kind of what it is for me. These machines are my machines and I decorate them with stickers

01:21:43 ◼   ► of things that mean something to me or things that I enjoy.

01:21:48 ◼   ► And that's why I do it, because now these are like my iPads,

01:21:51 ◼   ► because they're decorated in my way.

01:21:54 ◼   ► And I think we're missing that now.

01:21:56 ◼   ► Everybody has the gray one.

01:21:58 ◼   ► - There's definitely something to that.

01:21:59 ◼   ► And the idea that the computer for everybody,

01:22:04 ◼   ► part of that was having something that you could connect

01:22:06 ◼   ► with on an emotional level.

01:22:07 ◼   ► And it's funny, in posting, I posted a bunch of images

01:22:10 ◼   ► of these things, and I had several emails and tweets

01:22:13 ◼   ► people saying, "Oh yeah, like I totally had a, you know, a Ruby one in high school that

01:22:17 ◼   ► my parents bought." And like, every single time I hear about anyone about the iMac they

01:22:22 ◼   ► use, the color 100% of the time is in their comment. Because it was just so important

01:22:29 ◼   ► to people. Yeah, well, it's important to Apple's history. They made products of personality

01:22:36 ◼   ► that were important to people's lives. They reached a lot of people who Apple had never

01:22:39 ◼   ► Apple had never made a product that was fit in their life in any way. It reached an education,

01:22:45 ◼   ► it reached into the home. Yeah, it was a hugely influential product. Probably since the original

01:22:52 ◼   ► Mac, the most influential Mac that was ever made was this one. It was just a huge thing

01:22:58 ◼   ► for Apple and the culture, and Apple's future was really saved by the existence of this

01:23:07 ◼   ► And yeah, when you think about it, you kind of want Apple to embrace its

01:23:13 ◼   ► whimsical, colorful side. I don't know whether Johnny Ive got really just sick

01:23:16 ◼   ► of colors after a while or what, but Macs have been monochrome for way too long.

01:23:22 ◼   ► And although the MacBook shades are a little bit better and people are, you

01:23:27 ◼   ► know, squealing over the fact that there's the rose gold MacBook now, which

01:23:32 ◼   ► is ever so vaguely pink, like, yeah, but you haven't seen a Ruby iMac. You

01:23:37 ◼   ► haven't seen a Tangerine Eye book. Those are serious statements.

01:23:42 ◼   ► It's trends, right? I mean, and that's why I think that we have these four colors of

01:23:47 ◼   ► aluminium right now. But, you know, fashion is cyclical and I think we're going to see

01:23:53 ◼   ► colors come back again, and I hope that they do.

01:23:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so. I think they're putting their foot in the water with those four variations

01:24:01 ◼   ► on the MacBook and that it will eventually be everywhere and then they'll give us something.

01:24:06 ◼   ► moving in that direction but it's interesting to look back and see where we've been and

01:24:10 ◼   ► see how Apple succeeded so wildly by giving people the choice of six colors of iMac.

01:24:18 ◼   ► Nice plug there. You should throw six colors in there.

01:24:21 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I'd look at that. I didn't even do that on purpose but yeah, totally. That was

01:24:26 ◼   ► it. Yep.

01:24:27 ◼   ► Apple Historian with iMac Speciality, Mr. Stephen Hackett, thank you so much for lending

01:24:33 ◼   ► your thoughts and images and everything for this special episode. You are continuing to

01:24:40 ◼   ► chronicle your time with the family of computers that you have amassed. Where can people go

01:24:47 ◼   ► to find all of this interesting content that you're creating?

01:24:53 ◼   ► I've got it all up over at 512pixels.net and you can search for that name on YouTube. I

01:25:00 ◼   ► got some videos up over there as well.

01:25:02 ◼   ► I think the YouTube stuff is the best stuff.

01:25:04 ◼   ► I mean, I prefer video anyway, but you can read about these things, but you've got to

01:25:09 ◼   ► see them.

01:25:10 ◼   ► And you have bunches of great photos as well, and we'll put those in the show notes.

01:25:14 ◼   ► It's really interesting to see.

01:25:15 ◼   ► It's a very peculiar project, but now that you're kind of in the part where you're doing

01:25:21 ◼   ► stuff with it rather than just finding it, I'm starting to see a real value in it, which

01:25:26 ◼   ► I didn't expect I would initially.

01:25:29 ◼   ► So it's really great.

01:25:31 ◼   ► mentioned Six Colors, go to sixcolors.com for Jason's stuff. You can find Jason on Twitter

01:25:36 ◼   ► @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. Stephen is @ismh and he hosts Connected with me on Real AFM and

01:25:43 ◼   ► Jason and Stephen together host Liftoff. If you want to learn more about space. Are there

01:25:48 ◼   ► colored space rockets like this? Do they do this?

01:25:51 ◼   ► Oh, don't even know. There's not enough time. We'll, I'm sure we'll discuss that on a future

01:25:56 ◼   ► episode of Liftoff, but we can't. We can't. We're going to start talking about the space

01:26:00 ◼   ► Shuttles external tank and it's another rabbit hole for us to go down.

01:26:03 ◼   ► If you want to find the Shuttles for this week which you should go and check out go

01:26:06 ◼   ► to relay.fm/upgrade/91.

01:26:11 ◼   ► Thanks again to our sponsors for this week, the fine folk over at Mail Route and Fresh

01:26:16 ◼   ► Books and we'll be back next time.

01:26:19 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye guys.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Happy Memorial Day!

01:26:23 ◼   ► Go to the bank and give them a pound!

01:26:25 ◼   ► Goodbye!

01:26:26 ◼   ► I'll deposit your money quickly.

01:26:28 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:26:30 ◼   ► Bye.

01:26:31 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:26:34 ◼   ► [ Music ]