USB: Where No Mac Has Gone Before

August 1998: Three months ago it looked like a risky move: The iMac would use the universal serial bus (USB), but not ADB, SCSI, or a standard Mac serial port. Although Microsoft and Intel have promoted USB, and the vast army of clone makers have been building USB into their computers, I don’t know of […]

The iMac: First of a Family?

July 1998: Don Crabb was the first to speculate in public that the iMac wouldn’t stand alone for long (The iMac Line, Don Crabb, MacCentral, 9 June 1998). I have to agree with him. The iMac is as revolutionary as the original Macintosh – without breaking software compatibility (see The iMac: truly revolutionary). And just […]

The iMac: Truly Revolutionary

June 1998: How quickly we forget how revolutionary personal computers are! The first PCs were kits for electronic hobbyists. The Apple 1 came as a kit; users had to add their own keyboard, case, and power supply. The real revolution came in 1977 with the TRS-80, the Commodore PET, and the Apple II – computers […]

An Expansion Slot in the iMac?

June 1998: I received an interesting email from Mark Sutherland the other day. He swore he’d seen a picture of the iMac with a VGA port. I quickly grabbed Macworld and looked closely at the pictures (no longer online). No sign of a monitor port. Just audio, USB, ethernet, and modem ports. I asked Mark […]

Fixing iMac

May 1998: The iMac has one flaw: no removable media drive. That’s right, there’s no standard floppy drive, nor is there a SCSI port for adding a Zip drive, optical drive, CD-ROM burner, or other removable media drive.