Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Apple iMac over the years

Remember the origin of the iMac? Remember the drive and the objective behind its production? Well, let us take a trip down memory lane to reminisce and enjoy the growth of the OG Macintosh to the iMac we know and love today; as we go over Apple’s iMac over the years.

Macintosh 128k

The Macintosh 128k was announced to the press in October 1983 and was formally introduced in January 1984. It featured a 9-inch monochrome display, an 8Mhz 68000 processor, and 128k RAM with a 400k disk drive—enough to run their MacWrite and MacPaint.

iMac G3

Following suit is the iMac G3 that saved Apple. Introduced in 1998, the iMac G3 sported a 15-inch CRT display, 333MHz PowerPC 750 processor, 32MB of RAM, and a 6GB EIDE hard drive.

The iMac started the “i” revolution, which stood for, internet, individual, instruct, inform and inspire. What followed was a fruity, retro variety of the iMac G3 with its colors of lime, strawberry, blueberry, grape, and tangerine—tasty.

iMac G4

The iMac G4 swoops in after 4 years, replacing the aging G3. Its new 15-inch display mounted to an adjustable arm features an 800 MHz PowerPC 7445 processor with the AltiVec processing unit, 256MB of RAM, and a 60GB Ultra ATA/66 hard drive. Additionally, it had a tray-loading “SuperDrive” and NVIDIA GeForce2 MX graphics with 32MB of DDR SDRAM.

As it was advertised to have the flexibility of a desk lamp, the iMac G4 also gained the nickname “iLamp,” just like Luxo Jr in Pixar.

iMac G5

The iMac G5 was introduced with two other variants, which include the G5/1.6 17-inch and the G5/1.8-20inch. They all share similar specs but differ in their DVD-R, screen size, and resolution.

The iMac G5 featured a 1.8GHz PowerPC 970 processor, 256 MB of 400 MHz PC3200 DDR SDRAM, a 160GB Serial ATA hard drive, and a vertically mounted 4X DVD-R/CD-RW.

iMac Intel Plastic

Keeping the style and design of the G5, the iMac Intel Plastic was the smallest workstation of Apple in 2006. It featured an Intel Core 2 Duo, a PC2-5300 DDR 2 SDRAM, and a 160/250GB hard drive.

iMac Aluminum

Is it familiar? The iMac Aluminum models shipped from 2007 until 2012. It features either a 20 or 24-inch LCD screen, an Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo processor, a PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM, and holds either a 250/320 GB hard drive.

A high-end build-to-order model was also available, with a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme processor and a 500GB hard drive.

iMac Slim

The iMac model gets slimmer with this late 2012 model. It features a 22 nm Quad Core 2.7 GHz Intel I5-3330S processor with four independent processor cores on a single chip, 8GB of 1600 MHz DDR 3 SDRAM, and a 1TB hard drive. Its GPU is an NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M with 512MB of dedicated GDDR5 memory.

The late 2012 iMac model includes an aluminum wireless keyboard and the choice of either a Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad.

iMac Retina

Hitting 2015 is a 26-inch 5120 x 2880 LED IPS display— iMac Retina. This iMac features a 22nm Quad-Core 3.3 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of 1600 Mhz DDR 3 SDRAM installed in pairs, and a 1TB hard drive. This time, it sports an AMD Radeon R9 M290 graphics processor with 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory.

iMac M1

Finally, we reach the present. On April 20, Apple released their new iMac 24″ that comes with an M1 chip and an assortment of colors. It features a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display, an 8-core Apple M1 chip, up to 16GB of unified memory, and either 256GB and 512GB SSD.

It’s nice to see the splash of color making its comeback after 21 years—from the previous G3 model.

There is nothing like the present, but it is also exciting to think about what Apple has in store for the future of its iMac line and all its other products. Is it something that gives tribute to its past? Or is something groundbreaking once more? We just have to wait and see.

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