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Farewell to the Floppy (5/6/98)
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All in all, the iMac has some very interesting omissions from its spec sheet. Since it's a super-cheap consumer machine, we suppose that leaving out the PCI slots isn't all that incongruous, though it seriously affects the iMac's viability as a game machine, as it can't be upgraded with a 3D acceleration card. The missing ADB and SCSI bother us even more, as does the conspicuous absence of standard modem/printer serial ports, which have been replaced with USB; we sincerely hope that Apple is bribing and/or threatening major peripherals manufacturers all over the world to produce USB peripherals with Mac drivers, because otherwise there will be nothing to add on to the iMac for backup purposes, etc.
And when we say nothing, we mean nothing. The last omission is the strangest of all; it appears that the iMac is the first Mac ever to lack a floppy drive. (A MacAddict article confirms this.) That could be problematic for many reasons: parents can't bring home work from the office, the kids can't bring homework in to school, some software still only ships on floppies, etc. It wouldn't really have occurred to us offhand, but after considering things for a bit, the lack of a floppy drive could seriously affect the viability of the iMac as a "full-fledged consumer Mac."
Apple's often on the bleeding edge with this kind of decision. The floppy drive is definitely old technology-- although the media is cheap, floppy disks are slow, low-capacity, and quite unreliable. Heck, even AOL seems to be sending out CD-ROMs instead of floppies these days. We don't particularly mind seeing the floppy go, though we would feel a lot more at ease knowing that Apple had something else in mind. Kind of fitting, isn't it? We believe that the Mac was the first computer to standardize the 3.5" floppy disk. And now it appears that the Mac is also going to be the first computer to ditch it. We just hope that Apple knows what it's doing.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/6/98 episode: May 6, 1998: Say hello to the iMac, who'll be joining the cast this August, filling the long-vacant role of "low-cost consumer Macintosh." Meanwhile, try not to stare, but it's hard not to notice that the iMac is missing some, er, "crucial parts;" to distract yourself, take a gander at the lovely and talented new Powerbooks that just joined the lineup, or amuse yourself with the upwardly-mobile antics of Apple's stock price...
Other scenes from that episode: 679: iMac, uMac, We All Mac... (5/6/98) Well! Quite an exciting day, eh? We never imagined that Apple would make an announcement that would totally overshadow the introduction of the new Wall Street Powerbooks. We're speaking, of course, of the iMac, the goofy-looking new consumer Macintosh due this August, whose color scheme reminds us a little too much of Aqua-Fresh toothpaste... 681: Our Cup Runneth Over (5/6/98) Of course, though it's easy to forget, the iMac wasn't the only thing that happened today. There was, as expected, the formal rollout of the new Powerbook G3's, formerly known as Wall Street and Main Street, available for order at the Apple Store and at fine Apple-authorized dealers near you...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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