It has been a large part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its introduction in 1998, and has evolved through four distinct forms. In its original form, the iMac G3, the iMac was gum drop- or egg-shaped with a CRT monitor, mainly enclosed by colored, translucent plastic. The second major revision, the iMac G4, moved to a design of a hemispherical base containing all the main components and an LCD monitor on a freely moving arm attached to the top of the base. The iMac G5 and the Intel iMac placed all the components immediately behind the display, creating a slim design that tilts only up and down on a simple metal base. The current iMac shares the same form as the previous models, but is now thinner and uses anodized aluminum and black-bordered glass for its case.
Apples introduction of the iPod, iBook G3 (Dual USB), and iMac G4, all featuring snowy white plastic, inspired similar designs in consumer electronic products. The color rollout also featured two distinctive ads: one called Life Savers featured the Rolling Stones song "She's a Rainbow" and an advertisement for the white version had the introduction of Creams "White Room" as its backing track.
In fact, USB was the only peripheral interface built into the original iMac; Apple dropped previous ports such as the Apple Desktop Bus and SCSI in favor of the newer interface. Although USB was invented by Intel and was barely available on PCs at the time, the iMacs popularity and sole dependence on USB helped popularize the interface among third party peripheral makers, as evidenced by the many early USB peripherals that were made of translucent colored plastic to match the color schemes of the original iMac.
Since then, the company has continued this strategy of differentiating the consumer versus professional product lines. Apple's focus on design has allowed each of its subsequent products to create a distinctive identity. Apple derided the beige colors then pervading the PC industry. The company would later drift from the multicolored designs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The later part of the first decade of the 21st century saw Apple using anodized aluminum and white, black, and clear polycarbonate plastics. Today many PCs are more design-conscious than before the iMac's introduction, with multi-shaded design schemes being common, and some desktops and laptops available in colorful, decorative patterns.
The new design on its exterior is nearly identical to any of the 2007 Intel-based iMac systems. Apple did change the iMac though, they have started a shift from the 20-inch screen size over to the 24-inch screen size. Before this redesign, the iMac was available in two 20-inch options and two 24-inch options. The new iMacs are available in one 20-inch configuration and three 24-inch configurations which differ in Video Cards, Hard Disk space, and Processor Speed. Other than just changing the iMac's screen resolution, Apple doubled the RAM and hard-disk space on all iMac models compared to the previous generation, the new, faster Hard-Disks and DDR3 RAM pushed the iMac far above industry standard for graphic machines. The most powerful iMac model's closest rival is Apple's own Mac Pro (base configuration) All of these new features were instilled just at the right time for Apple, this update also meant that Apple reduced the prices of iMac models to around 66.6% of the previous generation, this update happened near the arguable "turning point" of the 2009 American Economic Recession.
Source: Wikipedia > Imac
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