512 Pixels

Nine months after announcing the Five Flavors, Steve Jobs took the stage to rev the iMac G3s again.

These new iMacs all had three main new features: a slot-loading optical drive, Airport capability and a tweaked case that allowed for fanless operation.

Jobs opened the iMac pitch with the optical drive. Gone was the tray-loading drive, replaced with a slot-loading drive. This may seem odd now, but according to Walter Isaacson, it was important to Jobs. Here’s a story from the time leading up to the original iMac’s 1998 launch:

Jobs had not seen the final product before, and when he looked at it onstage he saw a button the front, under the display. He pushed it and the CD tray opened. “What the fuck is this?!?” he asked, though not as politely.

[…]

“Steve, this is exactly the drive I showed you when we talked about the components,” Rubinstein explained. “No, there was never a tray, just a slot,” Jobs insisted. Rubinstein didn’t back down. Job’s fury didn’t abate. “I almost started crying, because it was too late to do anything about it,” Jobs later recalled.

Beyond the optical drive, the October 1999 iMacs all shipped with slots for an optional $99 Airport card, bringing wireless networking to the iMac for the first time. Tray-loading iMac users were stuck with modems and Ethernet cables.

Next, Jobs highlighted the fact that this model of iMac shipped without a fan. The slot loading machines featured a slight case redesign that included a much larger area for ventilation around the handle, as you can see on my Grape and Indigo models:

Compared to the tray-loading models, these computers were quieter and more power efficient.

Slot-loading drives, Airport and no fan were big improvements. Additionally, these machines were more transparent than before and came with built-in Harman Kardon speakers.

I get the sense this is the iMac G3 Apple wanted to ship in 1998.

The 1998 iMac — available only in Blueberry — sold for just $999, the first Mac to ever ship with a sub-$1,000 price point since a handful of Macintosh LCs from the 1990s.¹ It came with a 350 MHz G3 and a 6 GB hard drive.

There was, however, one more thing: the iMac DV. With this revision in October 1998, Apple split the iMac lineup for the first time into a “Good, Better, Best” arrangement:

The middle rung — dubbed the iMac DV — shipped with slightly revised Five Flavors colors,² and a whole lot more for $1,299.

• A faster 400 MHz G3
• A larger 10 GB hard drive
• VGA video out for mirroring
• A DVD-ROM drive
• iMovie
• A pair of FireWire 400 ports

(The VGA port was stashed behind a removal panel on the back of the iMac. You could replace with a second panel that included an opening that exposed the port. Fiddly, but I guess Apple didn’t want to show that ugly port off to the world.)

Bringing FireWire to the iMac was a big deal. While this was before the Digital Hub strategy had a name, it gave regular consumers access digital camcorders. FireWire was developed by Apple starting in 1986 as a high-speed serial bus to replace the clunky and problem-prone SCSI interface found on Macs. With help from Sony and other companies, FireWire entered the market in the mid-1990s. Commonly used for transferring digital video and other large files, FireWire was a major part of Apple’s computer lineup and feature set for many years, eventually giving way to Thunderbolt.

This computer marked the introduction of iMovie. Built on the back of QuickTime, it allowed users to import and edit videos right on the desktop. DVD burning was still a little ways off, but these movies could be exported to disk, back to the camcorder (and out to a VHD recorder) or published online.

“Desktop video,” Jobs said, “will be as big as desktop publishing.”

In his demo of iMovie, Jobs imported footage over Firewire to a Grape iMac DV. Once imported, he stitched them together with some transitions with just a few clicks.

There, was, one more one more thing, however: the iMac DV Special Edition.

Available only in a stunning new color called Graphite, this machine was an iMac DV with 128 MB of RAM and a 13 GB hard drive that sold for $1,499.

Oh mama.

Yes, please.

This week on Connected:

The team catches up on pre-WWDC rumors concerning MacBook Pros, the Apple TV and Siri.

My thanks to our sponsor:

• Backblaze: The unlimited, native backup solution for your Mac and PC.

This document defines the term “pixel anomaly”, explains why such anomalies occur, and describes what to do if you feel your LCD panel has more than an acceptable number of pixel anomalies.

This week on Upgrade, I joined Myke and Jason to discuss the product that changed Apple’s fortunes: the original iMac.

When first introduced with Mac OS X Tiger, Spotlight offered fast and accurate file and metadata searching on the Mac.

Spotlight made the jump to the iPhone with iPhone OS 3, giving users a quick way to find apps, contacts, emails, events and music.

Today, things are messier. Spotlight is still mostly about search and Siri is still mostly about being a helpful digital assistant, but the lines are more blurred then ever.

Right below Spotlight’s text search are Siri’s “proactive” recommendations for apps and contacts.

Spotlight can open apps and search their content; Siri can open apps, but can’t see into them or control them. Both can search the web.

You can only talk to Siri, while Spotlight requires keyboard entry or dictation. Many have voiced hope that Apple will give users a way to text with Siri, which would further muddy the waters between the two services.

It feels like Spotlight has already become a subset of what Siri is. The only place the word “Spotlight” even appears on iOS is in the Settings app. Even on Apple’s own site, “Search” seems to be a part of Siri’s domain.

Google Now, Alexa and Cortana have all removed the boundaries between what information is local and what’s not. Apple’s not quite there with iOS 9, but I think iOS 10 could push it to the next level. Why maintain two services, with overlapping and somewhat confusing feature sets, when a single, unified experience could get the job done?

Siri’s brand can extend past what happens if you hold down the home button; it can encompass any digital assistant or search functionality that takes place in apps, at the OS level or on the open web.

This is a fun post. I wish some of these existed in much higher resolutions.

Anil Sabharwal, Vice President of Google Photos:

A year ago, we introduced Google Photos with one mission: To be a home for all your photos and videos, organized and brought to life, so that you can share and save what matters.

Now 200 million of you are using Google Photos each month. We’ve delivered more than 1.6 billion animations, collages and movies, among other things. You’ve collectively freed up 13.7 petabytes of storage on your devices—it would take 424 years to swipe through that many photos! We’ve also applied 2 trillion labels, and 24 billion of those have been for … selfies.

I still keep all of my photos in Dropbox, and started backing them up to Google Photos many months ago. It’s an amazing tool; searching for photos is fast and easy, and the built-in Assistant makes it easy to relive days in the past, and organize photos into albums. While I still sync some albums to my iPhone via USB, but I love having all of my photos just a few taps away. I’m glad it seems to be successful.

Jordan Novet at VentureBeat:

Apple is working on its answer to Amazon’s Echo, the voice-activated assistant packaged inside a speaker, but it may come in the form of a refreshed Apple TV, rather than a new hardware product, VentureBeat has learned.

The company will build on its enhancements to the Apple TV announced last year, which brought the Siri virtual assistant to the set-top box. A new version of the Apple TV will solve problems with the existing box and remote control, a source familiar with the matter claims.

“They want Apple TV to be just the hub of everything,” the source told VentureBeat.

While an improved Siri experience on the Apple TV would be nice, the idea that the Apple TV could evolve into an always-ready assistant misses the mark for me.

Why should a home assistant be tied to the television? I can put an Echo in my bedroom or even outside on the porch, where I don’t have TVs. Even if I had a TV in the kitchen where my Echo sits today, I wouldn’t want it on all the time just so I can ask Siri a question.

The Echo is perfectly suited to be in the kitchen, where every day tasks making interacting with a phone or watch more difficult. From what I’ve heard from other Echo users, I’m not alone in thinking that.

I just don’t buy this being a viable product strategy, and I hope Apple doesn’t either.

If these photos weren’t enough for you, here are a whole lot more. Do with them as you wish!

As a bonus, here are some of the wallpapers that came with these machines.

BEAM — the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module — is an expandable module that’s in testing at the International Space Station. As opposed to being built out of rigid material like other components on the Station, BEAM is designed to “inflate” once installed.

The upsides of this tech are huge. Currently, the size of any one structure in space is limited to what can be carried to orbit on the top of a rocket. In flight, BEAM was much smaller than it’s size will be once it’s fully expanded in space.

That was supposed to happen this morning, but the experimental mission was halted:

The operation took longer than expected as slightly higher pressure than expected was seen. Ground teams had to assess the situation and let the pressure settle before continuing expansion. Afterword, ground teams gave [NASA Flight Engineer Jeff Williams] the go ahead to add more air via the MPEV in “generous” one second bursts.

However, the module continued to remain unchanged with the initial bulge. Then just after 8:30 a.m. EDT (12:30 GMT), called off the rest of the expansion to assess the data. Expansion could resume as early as tomorrow morning.

Hopefully, this can move forward soon. Expandable modules offer lots of interesting opportunities for NASA and private companies, but sometimes early days of new tech include failures.

We’re introducing a new show today on Relay FM, hosted by Jeffrey Veen:

The Presentable Podcast focuses on how we design and build the products that are shaping our digital future. We’ll track the tools, trends, and methods being used by teams from the biggest companies and latest startups. In each episode, Jeff will bring over two decades of experience as a designer, developer, entrepreneur, and investor as he chats with guests about the how design is changing the world.

It’s really good. You should check out both the pilot and the first episode.