Ah, the 3.5-inch floppy drive... that long-entrenched yet much-maligned storage device that graces almost every modern desktop computer in existence-- with the exception of the iMac. Never mind that the floppy drive is old, slow, unreliable, and very low-capacity; apparently some people would rather drive meat thermometers into both their ears than buy a computer without a floppy. And just as the lack of a floppy drive is probably the single most common reason that a potential customer eventually passes on buying an iMac, the delay in USB floppy drives hitting the shelves has been one of the top reasons that some people are returning their iMacs to the stores from whence they came. After being told that USB floppy units like Imation's SuperDisk drive would be available within a couple of weeks of the iMac's ship date, some buyers grew impatient when the goods never showed up to the party.

Well, fret not-- according to NoBeige, the Imation SuperDisk drive is the first floppy-compatible drive for the iMac to hit the scene. Their sources report that Cyberian Outpost received a shipment of 400 of the devices on Friday, so we imagine that other catalog retailers and retail stores will be stocking up soon. We also expect at least one or two "standard" floppy drives (that read only 800 KB and 1.4 MB floppy disks and not the higher-capacity 120 MB SuperDisks) to ship for the iMac before the end of the year, probably costing significantly less than Imation's device. If you can wait a couple of more months, you may be able to buy a USB floppy drive for only $60 or $70.

Incidentally, the only time we ever use floppies in the AtAT studios is when we have to access data that some PC-user has sent us on a DOS diskette. But we admit that in many situations, using a floppy disk to tote word processing documents between home and work or school is about a gazillion times faster and easier than connecting to the net and uploading it to a server for later retrieval. That's why we fully plan to slap a SuperDisk on out own iMac as soon as those things show up at the local Microcenter. But it's not so strange that the iMac lacks a floppy drive; after all, it's Steve Jobs' pet project, and he apparently hates those things. He never wanted the original Mac to include a 3.5" floppy drive, but he was outvoted. And when he shipped the first NeXT computer, it had no floppy to be seen. Wonder why he hates them so much?