hey guys it's Greg with Apple explained
and today we're going to explore the
history of the iMac how it was developed
why it represented the beginning of a
new era at Apple and how it saved the
company from bankruptcy this topic was a
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so the iMac story begins with Steve Jobs
returned to Apple in May 1996 he
realized Apple still had a lot of
talented people but their talents
weren't being utilized effectively the
Macintosh product lineup was so complex
that retail workers were using
flowcharts to get a better understanding
of each model Jobs figured that if their
own employees couldn't figure out the
product lineup then their customers
certainly couldn't either to remedy this
Jobs till the designers that Apple would
be putting all its energies behind just
four products a consumer desktop Pro
desktop consumer notebook and pro
notebook and the first model that would
begin working on was the consumer
desktop computer job said my daughter is
going to college and I've looked at
everything out there and they're all
crap there's a real opportunity our
target now is to build an internet
computer he was envisioning the iMac and
he was betting the company on it so what
was his vision for this computer exactly
well Jobs wanted an inexpensive computer
something that would appeal to
mainstream consumers eager to try out
the internet which was just becoming
popular thanks to Netscape Navigator
browser cheap modems in an explosion in
Internet service providers like AOL
which offered inexpensive internet
access plans and he wanted it quickly
he'd made cuts to Apple to make it more
lean and efficient but he needed new
products as soon as possible to recover
from plummeting sales at the time
Apple's cheapest computer was $2,000
more than eight hundred dollars above
the average Windows PC to be competitive
against cheaper Windows offerings Jobs
initially pushed for a radically
stripped back machine called a networked
computer or NC for short a popular
concept in Silicon Valley at the time
the NC would be a cheap simple terminal
that connected to a central server over
the Internet that had no hard drive or
optical disk drives just a screen in a
keyboard it was perfect for schools and
workplaces and it seemed at first glance
ideal for consumers eager to access
the internet before jobs returned in May
1996 Apple had joined Oracle Corporation
and 30 other hardware and software
companies in the networking competing
Alliance which set the standard for
chief diskless computers based on a
common networking platform jobs is
billionaire best friend Larry Ellison
was especially adamant on NCS as the
future of the computer industry and as a
newly installed member of Apple's board
Ellison told the press that Apple was
building an NC he'd recently launched a
startup network computing incorporated
to kick-start the sector influenced by
Ellison's thinking but also eager to
compete with them
jobs also talked up the NC idea he said
Apple would beat Ellison at his own game
just as he done with the first Macintosh
jobs began laying out certain specific
patient's the Mac NC should be an
all-in-one product ready to use right
out of the box in a distinctive design
that made a brand statement and it
should sell for about twelve hundred
dollars Phil Schiller said he told us to
go back to the roots of the original
1984 Macintosh an all-in-one computer
appliance that meant design and
engineering had to work together so
Johnny gathered the entire design team
in the studio to hash it out they
started by discussing the mac n C's
potential target market Johnny said we
didn't start with engineering dictates
but actually started with people the
iMac resolved not around chip speed or
market share but more emotional
questions like how do we want people to
feel about it sitting around a table
Johnny and the rest of the team started
sketching SATs Joe remembered the table
was covered with loose sheets of copy
paper colored pencils and pilot pens the
team drew up ideas together passing the
loose sheets of paper between them as
they worked trying to imagine a machine
that dispensed positive emotions as they
hoped the iMac would designer Chris
stringer made a beautiful sketch of a
colorful candy dispenser he remembers
coming up with the initial egg shape for
the iMac based on TVs he had previously
designed for Thompson consumer
electronics and if you look at the shape
it's easy to see the resemblance the
idea appealed to Johnny and the rest of
the team and the decision was made to
pursue the egg shape as the primary
design direction during that first month
Johnny's team built at least 10 models
for the Mac NC but they didn't show them
all to jobs Johnny's team knew right
away they wanted that egg shape so they
shared only very
of that shape Sacher said when it came
to showing models to Steve Jobs we would
select models that we ourselves thought
were good
Steve would then approve or not many
times he simply say no to a model design
but we never presented anything to Steve
that we didn't want him to pick when
Johnny first showed Jobs the egg-shaped
machine in a studio he rejected it but
Johnny persisted he agreed with jobs
that it wasn't quite right but suggested
it had a sense of fun it was playful
he told jobs it has a sense that it's
just arrived on your desktop or it's
about to hop off and go somewhere the
next time Johnny showed the egg-shaped
to Jobs he went nuts for it
job started carrying the foam core model
around campus showing it to people to
test their reaction at the same time he
was opening to the idea of a
stripped-down networked computer but
Jobs ordered the NC be upgraded to a
real computer with among other things a
bigger hard drive and an optical drive
to prevent any delays Rubenstein
suggested the hardware should be based
on the g3 desktop a machine for
professionals that had been in the
pipeline before Jobs took over and had
just been released the iMac was going to
be made in plastic would be an
unashamedly plastic product in Johnny's
words but plastic came with difficulties
Johnny said we didn't want it to look
trashy there's a fine line you walk
between affordable and cheap we
certainly wanted it to appear affordable
and we wanted to make it clear that this
isn't a terrifying technology a
technology that still alienates a huge
number of people
Johnny's group made models in a reddish
blue almost purple and an orange but the
solid plastic looked cheap so someone
suggested the case be transparent Johnny
immediately approved of the idea
transparent plastic had already started
to creep into some of Apple's products
like printer trays and covers in the
clam shell shaped email designed by
Thomas Meyer Hopper who said that
translucency gave the II made a sense of
accessibility by allowing users to see
inside once Johnny decided to make the
iMac transparent he realized the
internals would have to be designed with
care to since they would now be visible
to users so the transparency added a
sense of accessibility but in order to
give the iMac an even more approachable
feel the designers added a handle on top
for Johnny the handle on the iMac wasn't
really for carrying it around but to
spark a connect
with the consumer by encouraging them to
touch it it was a subtle but important
innovation that would change the way
people interacted with computers the
idea came with a downside though since
manufacturing a recessed handle wasn't
cheap and at the old Apple the addition
wouldn't have been approved but things
were different with Steve Jobs at the
helm because when he saw it he simply
said that's cool and didn't let them ena
factoring costs hinder the IMAX great
design but there is one thing Jobs
didn't want on the iMac and that was
legacy technology like the old ADB SCSI
and serial ports instead the iMac
included Ethernet infrared and USB
he also abandoned the floppy drive a
decision that drew more backlash than
any other these changes reflected jobs
simplification philosophy which would
soon come into play and many other
products down the road another
controversial addition to the iMac was
its mouse something Jonathan Ive was
particularly proud of he wanted to give
users an intriguing insight into what
went on inside their Mouse through the
transparent Apple logo but it proved to
be an ergonomic nightmare
it was skittish on tabletops and
difficult to orient properly it was
always pointed in the wrong direction
and was too small for many adults users
had to pinch their hands into a cloth to
use it giving them cramps now up to this
point the iMac name hadn't actually been
created yet the project was referred to
by its codename Columbus the
responsibility for giving the Columbus
product a name was given to Lee Clow and
Ken Segal old advertising friends of
jobs from China a jobs told them that
the new computer was a Mac so the name
had to reference the Macintosh brand the
name also had to make clear the machine
was designed for the Internet and it had
to be adaptable for several other
upcoming products Segal came back with
five names but there was one in
particular that he loved iMac they
referenced the Mac and the I stood for
Internet but it also meant individual
imaginative and all the other things
that it came to represent unfortunately
Jobs rejected all five names but Segal
refused to give up on iMac he went back
a second time with a few new names but
again pitched iMac this time job said I
don't hate it this week but I still
don't like it
Segal heard nothing more about the name
from jobs personally but friends told
him that Jobs had the name silk-screened
on two prototypes of the new computer
testing
now to see if he liked the look into
Segal surprise the name ended up on the
final prototype he came to believe that
Jobs changed his mind just because the
lowercase I looked good on the product
itself there were still bumps in the
road ahead though the day before the
launch while practicing his presentation
with an iMac prototype Jobs pressed a
button on the front of the iMac and a CD
tray slid out this prompted a what the
eff is this from Jobs who had been
expecting a slot-loading drive which
were just starting to appear on high-end
stereos no one said a thing
but Jobs flew into a full-on rage
whoopin Stein had chosen a trade drive
to keep pace with rapidly changing CD
technology with writable CD drives on
the horizon Rubinstein knew a
slot-loading drive would put the iMac a
generation behind he insisted that Jobs
had been aware of this but Jobs became
so upset he almost canceled a launch
Phil Schiller later said that that was
his first product launch with Steve and
the first time he saw his mindset of if
it's not right were not launching it
Jobs was only satisfied when Rubinstein
promised to replace the CD drive in the
next version of the iMac on May 6th 1998
the following day Jobs unveiled the iMac
at a packed Flint Center in Cupertino
the same venue were Apple introduced the
original Macintosh 14 years earlier
let's take a look at how the audience
reacted to seeing the IMAX radical
design for the first time
[Applause]
you go back to and do that again
[Applause]
so clearly the iMac generated a lot of
excitement among users before its
release but the tech community didn't
seem to share that excitement the first
reviews of the iMac were surprisingly
negative saying it was too radical to
break with the past and complained about
the legacy free technology since there
was an uproar in the tech press about
the lack of a floppy drive hi Wafaa Bray
from the Boston Globe wrote the iMac
doesn't include a floppy disk drive for
doing file backups or sharing of data
it's an astonishing lapse from jobs who
should have learned better the iMac is
clean elegant floppy free and doomed
but despite the critics apples fanbase
was hyped and the reaction from
consumers was unmistakable the iMac went
on sale in August 1998 for twelve
hundred ninety nine dollars it sold 278
thousand units in its first six weeks
and would sell eight hundred thousand by
the end of the year making it the
fastest selling computer and Apple
history up to that point just as Jobs
had hoped and predicted the iMac sold
well to first-time consumer buyers and
PC users with an impressive 32 percent
of the sales going to first-timers and
another 12 percent to PC switchers at
the end of the quarter Apple announced
its third consecutive profits and Steve
Jobs returned the 101 million exceeded
everyone's expectations and proved loud
and clear that Apple was back so that's
the history of the iMac and if you want
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