July 17, 2002: Apple ships a brand new super-sized iMac G4 with a 17-inch widescreen LCD show that turns into the envy of most laptop customers on the time.
“The best consumer desktop just got even better,” says Steve Jobs of Apple’s new all-in-one laptop in a press launch. “Having this gorgeous 17-inch flat screen floating in mid-air right in front of you is simply breathtaking. There’s nothing like it in the PC world.” He wasn’t unsuitable!
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iMac G4 with 17-inch display screen: A pure development for Apple
The iMac G4, first launched with a 15-inch display screen on January 7, 2002, might be my favourite iMac in Apple historical past. As Jobs famous, it seemed completely not like each different laptop obtainable on the time. Nevertheless, whereas it was very a lot its personal factor, it linked many concepts revolving round Apple on the time.
For starters, it represented a midpoint between the eye-catching, cutesy design of the iMac G3 and iBook, and the extra austere minimalism of Apple’s later units. It additionally echoed the Luxo lamp (Pixar’s mascot), whereas tying again to Apple’s nature-inspired hippie roots with a design primarily based on a sunflower.
Designing a pc impressed by a sunflower
In Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, he tells the story of Jobs and Apple design chief Jony Ive struggling to provide you with a brand new search for the next-gen iMac. The pair wound up in Jobs’ backyard, the place they got here up with the concept of a pc with a movable head that may very well be angled like a sunflower reaching for the solar.
They achieved this utilizing a cantilevered, absolutely posable steel arm to help the iMac G4 display screen. Opposite to fears on the time, they did it with out risking the entire thing falling over. A heavy, hemispheric base anchored the pc and contained its internals.
How highly effective was the iMac G4 17-inch?
So, what in regards to the 17-inch iMac G4 specs? The pc got here with an 800 MHz PowerPC G4 processor, an Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics card, an Apple SuperDrive for taking part in and burning CDs and DVDs, and an 80GB exhausting drive. (Apple proudly boasted it might “hold more than six hours of video, 15,000 songs and 73,000 digital photos.”)
The machine began at $1,999 (greater than practically $3,500 in right now’s cash). Just a few years later, Apple upped the display screen measurement yet another time by introducing a 20-inch iMac G4.
Did you ever get your fingers on considered one of these pivotal iMacs? Inform us what you considered the eye-catching new design within the feedback under.
