May all your days be Bondi and all your steps be numbered two or fewer! Yes, that's right, kids-- our use of the traditional International iMac Day greeting means that it's that time of year again. As all attentive Apple-watchers are keenly aware, and as Apple's Hot News page unnecessarily reminds us, it's the iMac's third birthday: the first models hit store shelves exactly three years ago today. (For those of you thoughtless cads who forgot to buy translucent plastic flowers for your faithful, doting iMacs, hurry-- there's still time.)

Three years; can you believe it? We here at AtAT still remember it like it was yesterday: piling into the AtATmobile and driving two hours out of state to snag three of the luscious blue-green space eggs on their very first day out of the gate. We could hardly believe it was really that long ago, except that we remember thinking that $85 for 32 MB of RAM was a really good deal at the time. (Chronologically comparative RAM prices: it's the technological equivalent of counting the rings in a tree trunk.) Anyway, our iMac is still in active duty, though our iBook sees more action because we can use it in front of the TV. But the iMac keeps chugging away, mostly as an email station and a Palm sync depot.

Sadly, we don't have any thrilling iMac-related tales of danger and adventure with which to regale you, or else we could fulfill Apple's request. See, the company is soliciting stories about how "this precocious three-year-old has changed the lives of its owners." While we'd love to weave a wondrous narrative of how we managed to liberate a repressed country from the iron grip of an evil despot while rescuing the princess and discovering cures for all known diseases-- all with the help of our iMac, mind you-- the reality is far less interesting. We plugged it in. It worked. Three years later, it still works. While commendable, that's not exactly movie-of-the-week material, there. (If you've got a better story involving your iMac, mail it in to birthday@apple.com; maybe you'll get famous.)

Meanwhile, birthdays aren't always a cause for celebration; as they stack up over the years, eventually they become portents of imminent doom. We imagine it's particularly rough for computers, since the life cycle of technology is something like (gulp) three years. But don't you dare call our Bondi Blue wonder past its prime! She still looks spry for her age-- 64 MB of RAM, 4 GB hard disk, 233 MHz G3, and Rage II graphics chip notwithstanding. That said, this latest birthday just underscores the fact that Apple really needs to get a new iMac out the door, and soon. Graceful aging aside, come its fourth birthday, the current iMac design is going to be Methuselah-grade ancient. Break out the Oil of Olay!