iMac is a success. Despite being released halfway through the month, it was the second-best-selling computer for August 1998. And it is still selling well. In retrospect, this may not seem surprising. iMac had nearly everything going for itΓÇöspeed, simplicity, price, industrial design, Mac OS, and $100 million of advertising. Still, I am amazed and thankful that the iMac launch actually worked, because on August 15th there were three things that worried meΓÇöany one of which could have made iMac a dismal failure: ΓÇÿHow will the media react?ΓÇÖ ΓÇÿWill iMacΓÇÖs many omissions deter customers?ΓÇÖ and ΓÇÿEven if itΓÇÖs successful, will Apple be able to meet demand?ΓÇÖ
The most memorable part of the November ΓÇÖ97 ΓÇ£eventΓÇ¥ where Apple introduced the Power Mac G3ΓÇÖs was Steve JobΓÇÖs somewhat awkward line: ΓÇ£In order for Apple to succeed, we have to execute ourselves.ΓÇ¥ Well, he almost shot himself in the foot when he said that, but the sentiment was correct. Over the years, Apple has built many great products that never quite ΓÇ£made itΓÇ¥ because Apple didnΓÇÖt stick by them long enough or market them strongly enough. With iMac Apple went all-or-nothing, they got a little bit lucky, and thankfully, everything seems to have worked out.
Apple Was Lucky
iMac won the most important battle of all: the battle of perception. Maybe, you could argue, Apple created its own luck through the iMac advertising campaign. Perhaps the media gave iMac so much press because the only story that sells better than a disaster story is a comeback story. Still, I think Apple got lucky. The media didnΓÇÖt rave about iMac, but almost every article on it gave a mixed review, and thatΓÇÖs a lot better than Apple products have been receiving in the past. In fact, the controversy and differences of opinion are what kept it in the news for so long.
An MSNBC reporter complained that essentials like a floppy drive cost extra. iMac, he wrote, wouldnΓÇÖt be a real computer until it came with a real keyboard and mouse. ItΓÇÖs true that the keyboard and mouse are different in more ways than looks. The keyboard has smallish function keys, small arrow keys that make gameplaying in iMacΓÇÖs target home market difficult, and a non-standard page-up/page-down layout. Nevertheless, most articles pointed out that iMacΓÇÖs keyboard and mouse are among the most comfortable available, neglecting to mention their short-comings. After years of conditioning from reading anti-Apple stories, this is about the most I could hope for.
Apple Messed Up
Apple messed up big time. IΓÇÖm not talking about the iMacΓÇÖs controversial casing, color, expandability (or lack thereof), or even its lack of a floppy drive. AppleΓÇÖs big mistakeΓÇöthat could have been a fatal flawΓÇöwas not taking the necessary steps to make sure iMacΓÇÖs apparent flaws were plugged by the August 15th release date.
Although my initial reaction was that Apple was crazy for not including a floppy drive with iMacΓÇöafter all, Apple was the company to standardize the 3.5" floppyΓÇöI no longer see that as a problem. No doubt AppleΓÇÖs market research people are good at what they do and determined that most people donΓÇÖt use their floppy drives. I know I donΓÇÖt much anymore. So why bloat the case and charge customers for a feature they are unlikely to use?
ThatΓÇÖs a fine philosophy, except that when iMac was released, there were no external floppy drives to be bought. No SuperDisk drives, Zips, or SparQs either. ItΓÇÖs one thing to design a computer without a floppy disk drive; itΓÇÖs quite another to sell a computer that is incapable of connecting to any removable storage solution until a month after its release date. Depending on public reaction, this could have permanently doomed iMac.
Apple should have done whatever it took, from developing its own solutions in-house to providing the requisite third-parties NDAΓÇÖd information in April to make sure that a full line of removable media drives and USB to Serial/ADB/SCSI adapters were available on iMacΓÇÖs launch dateΓÇöpreferably available from the Apple Store and displayed right next to iMac at CompUSA. No iMac user should have to trek to FarallonΓÇÖs Web site, figure out that an iPrint is what they need to connect a StyleWriter to an iMac, then read that the iPrint isnΓÇÖt yet available. ThereΓÇÖs no telling how many potential buyers were forever turned away from iMac by its initial image of a completely closed design and lack of peripherals.
And what was Apple thinking when they decided to bundle two of the most un-Mac-like programs with iMac? Cool as they are, MetaToolsΓÇÖ KaiΓÇÖs PhotoSoap offers nothing in the way of a traditional Mac user experience, and the first-person shooter MDK has the feel of a clunky DOS port. Its key configuration panel is among the worst IΓÇÖve seen anywhere. YouΓÇÖd think Apple could have arranged to bundle a few distinctly Mac games like BungieΓÇÖs Marathon Trilogy or some of the Ambrosia or C & G classics. (For what itΓÇÖs worth, the included Nanosaur game fits this description.) Kudos to Apple on bundling AppleWorks instead of Office 98, though. AppleWorks feels so much like what a Mac program should be; itΓÇÖs great.
But It All Worked Out
Still, AppleΓÇÖs strong media presence and the willingness of customers to think differently made iMac a success. To see just how amazing and important an accomplishment this was, consider:
Rather than being seen as a cost-cutting measure, iMacΓÇÖs lack of SCSI, standard Mac serial ports, and a floppy drive was seen as revolutionary. One article went so far as to complain that PCΓÇÖs with USB also have standard PC ports. Several thought not having a floppy drive was a great feature because it made it easier to control what got ontoΓÇöand off ofΓÇöthe computer. No worries about students bringing viruses to school with them or government employees taking home sensitive information. Who wants backwards compatibility when you can get rid of it and call your product revolutionary?
Apple was able to successfully convince many people that iMacΓÇÖs many omissions were features. Namely, the omissions were aimed at making iMac as simple as possible. Perhaps ΓÇ£simpleΓÇ¥ has become the new marketspeak for ΓÇ£not expandable.ΓÇ¥ Truthfully, I donΓÇÖt know what to make of this. Was Apple finally able to break the publicΓÇÖs obsession with feature checklists? I hope so. Or did it win them over with the iMacΓÇÖs style? Probably.
iMac represents AppleΓÇÖs first serious attempt in a long time to differentiate its products from the competition in terms of industrial designΓÇöand then make sure the media hear about it. Just look at its series of ΓÇ£Chic. Not Geek.ΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£Beige-Free ZoneΓÇ¥ digs against the PC industry. Ask yourself how many people knew what color ΓÇ£BondiΓÇ¥ was five months ago. The survey that ran in ATPM 4.08 shows the power of AppleΓÇÖs marketing engine.
 
ATPM ReadersΓÇÖ Favorite Colors
Although more than half of those who voted for Bondi Blue as their favorite color didnΓÇÖt know its correct name (ΓÇ£iMac blueΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£teal like the iMacΓÇ¥ were common answers), that didnΓÇÖt stop it from taking a second-place to plain old generic blue, beating out such classics and red, green, and EvangeLista blood. (Disappointingly, not one person chose ΓÇ£ATPM BlueΓÇ¥ as their favorite color. Maybe we need to advertise a bit more.)
Besides what it says about Apple, iMacΓÇÖs success also suggests that there is hope for the Mac platform winning PC converts. I donΓÇÖt know which we have to thank for PC users converting to iMac: its jaw-dropping appearance, or the fact that Apple is finally buying advertisements where non-Mac users will see them.
What iMac Is
It seems that Steve Jobs can sell sugared water and change the world at the same time. This is why I think it would be interesting to see how well iMac could do without its Bondi case. In many ways iMac differs little from the 5x00 all-in-one Macs that Apple has been selling to education customers for several years now. In fact, the 5x00 series bests iMac in some important areas. It has a pivot-mounted monitor, SCSI, an optional TV tuner, Mac serial ports, and, of course, a floppy drive. Granted, its monitor isnΓÇÖt as nice as iMacΓÇÖs, and itΓÇÖs a little bigger, but suppose Apple had modified the 5x00 to give it a better monitor, USB, and a G3 processor, and called that iMac? With full peripheral backward compatibility and a built-in floppy drive, there would have been virtually nothing for critics to complain about. And that would have made for boring newspaper and magazine articles.
I donΓÇÖt think even a $100 million advertising campaign could make such a machine sell as well as iMac has. Probably, Apple would be seen as playing catch-up with the likes of Dell and Compaq. Like it or not, the Bondi blue serves a purpose. Without it, no one would be touting the built-in 100Base-T Ethernet as a signal that the network age is upon usΓÇöbecause no one would have taken notice of iMac.
The Future
Whether or not you happen to like iMac, you have to agree that it was just the kind of home run Apple needed to win back some serious mind share. Apple hasnΓÇÖt said much about its future products, but all indications are that the company just might have a few more home runs lined up. Soon, weΓÇÖll have a new line of ΓÇ£ProΓÇ¥ Macs that werenΓÇÖt based on a motherboard originally designed for the low-end. And sometime next year weΓÇÖll finally see the debut of iMacΓÇÖs counterpartΓÇöthe consumer portable.
But we shouldnΓÇÖt let this talk of next yearΓÇÖs hardware overshadow the fact that Apple has two major software releases scheduled for delivery this fallΓÇöMac OS 8.5 and Mac OS X Server. (Please think of a better name, Apple!) Apple hasnΓÇÖt quite kept to its target yearly scheduleΓÇöMac OS 8 was released in July and 8.5 looks to be released 14 months after thatΓÇöbut it is much better than the company has done in the past and certainly much better than MicrosoftΓÇÖs schedule for Windows releases.
To me, OS 8.5 is a much more important update than 8.0. Though it still does not offer all the features originally promised for Copland, OS 8.5 adds a lot of polish to 8.0ΓÇÖs rough edges. At last, AppleScript will be native, QuickDraw will be faster, folder windows will have icon proxies, and there will be an application dockΓÇöjust to name a few of the things took forward to.
Personally, IΓÇÖm waiting for Mac OS X Server (which will include OS 8.5 in the Blue Box). For all intents and purposes, OS X Server is the Rhapsody Unified that the Amelio administration promised us. The fact that OS X and Carbon are on tap for next year in no way diminishes the importance of OS X ServerΓÇödespite what you might think from the rumblings, or lack thereof, about OS X Server from Cupertino. Not only does the Blue Box reboot more quickly after a crash than Mac OS 8.x, but there are plenty of good Yellow Box applications from the days of NeXT. I canΓÇÖt wait to try out Mesa as an alternative to Excel 98. And itΓÇÖs always handy to be able to run UNIX programs now and then.
In short, I havenΓÇÖt been so optimistic about AppleΓÇÖs future in a long time. Apple has been on the recovery path for a while, since Dr. AmelioΓÇÖs tenure, in my opinion. But even with the return of Steve Jobs, the press, and people in general, I think, needed a dramatic way to recognize that Apple once again had a viable future. Someone at Apple apparently realized this, for nearly everything about iMac seems designed to say, ΓÇ£Hey, AppleΓÇÖs back!ΓÇ¥ And, it worked. But the best part is that we ainΓÇÖt seen nothinΓÇÖ yet.
“The Personal Computing Paradigm” is copyright © 1998 by Michael Tsai,  <mtsai@atpm.com>.  
