iMac G4, Ten Years Ago Already

The Exceptional iMac G4: Ten years later – Macworld

A decade after its debut, we remember what made this flexible Mac special

Steve Jobs in YouTube video showing off their new at that time G4 iMac!

Wasn’t this also the cute little Pixar icon that hopped across the screen and drove the letter i of the Logo into the ground replacing it? Nope, that was an adorable little animated white desk lamp. Pixar was spun off by Lucas Films in 1986 with funding by Apple, Inc cofounder, Steve Jobs (who became Pixar’s majority shareholder, and later sold to Walt Disney Company in 2006. That is such a precious thing to see that little animation on all Pixar films. Those Pixar animators can animate anything! And the YouTube video below actually shows why they use that adorable little animated white desk lamp animation for the Logo on all their productions. I love it! Very small video, little over 2 min long (good to know for those of us on capped bandwidth).

Why Pixar’s Logo includes a Lamp – YouTube

Adorable…

But I digress, back to the revolutionary, yep, revolutionary, G4 iMac.

Yes, it was revolutionary, ground breaking, exceptional for the day … 10 yrs ago in January 2002!

Apple also introduced iPhoto for the first time at the same time as the new iMac G4, as well as making the ground breaking move to from CRTs to flat screens. And writable DVDs (first optical “Super Drive” featuring writable DVDs — as you will remember the “Combo Drive” was CD/DVD but only the CD was writable, the DVD side was read only).

The new iMac G4 also shipped with AppleWorks 6 (an Office-like productivity suite), PCalc 2 (scientific calculator software), World Book Encyclopedia, and Otto Mattic (a 3D action game).

And it the first iMac to boot by default to OS X (10.1 Puma) instead of Mac OS 9.

It launch in January 2002, the iMac G4 came in three flavors: a low-end model for $1299 that included a 700MHz G4 PowerPC processor, 128MB RAM, a 40GB hard drive, and a CD-RW drive; a mid-range model for $1499 that upped the RAM to 256 MB and included a CD-RW/DVD-ROM “Combo Drive”; and a high-end model for $1799 that included an 800MHz G4 processor, 256MB RAM, a 60GB hard drive, and a CD-RW/DVD-R “Super Drive.”

Interesting to note that all this was happening just as the original iPod revolution was getting under way.

I first got to play with one of these little wonders in about 2005 I think it was when I worked on one for a client. It was an amazing little guy. The only thing I was not happy with was the inability at that time to make it do a right-click on the mouse (which was common among PCs at the time), but had to quickly learn you could use the control-click to get the “right-click” menu. But it was amazing what it could do for such a tiny half ball dome-shaped PC! I have to say it was actually the first Mac that I was truly impressed with.

It would be a few years before I got my first Mac, a much faster (1.4Ghz) G4 Mac Mini running Mac OS X Tiger (10.4). I never really got what it meant to hear people say ‘it just works’ until I got that Mac Mini. It really did just work, and was very intuitive. And this from someone coming from Windows and DOS computers before that. I was using Windows XP Pro on my other computers and I still loved Windows XP too but this, this was different. I fell in love with this tiny little box that hardly took up any room on my desk and could do so much.

And all that constant annoying vigilance on the Windows PC was gone! Just like with Linux, but it was so polished (which sadly for me is very important). Linux has gotten so much more polished now but back then, not so much. OK, so sure one still had to be careful and do maintenance, but gone was the true concern about all the bazillions of viruses, worms, Trojans, RATS, rootkits like it was on Windows … that were a thing of the past … at least for 6 yrs anyway. But even now, even though this year introduced the first ‘real’ threat to the Mac, it still isn’t the same as it is on Windows.

Yep, I love my Mac. I also love my Windows 7 as it is the very best Windows to date and comes as close to ‘it just works’ without being a Mac, and I love my Debian Squeeze running KDE for more reasons than I can say, but it’s mostly about being open and free; Open Source, Free as in Beer yes, but mostly because it’s Free as in Free Speech. You can do anything with Linux you can set your mind to. If you learn to code with it, you can freely create, modify, build up the code, and help the open source community progress in real tangible ways. Linux is the best of all worlds.

But, for its simplicity, polish, and beauty, and yes, even its innovation, which is so often ahead of the pack, I very much love my Mac. Now if I can get a new Mac someday that will run, Mac OS X Mountain Lion… And an iPod Touch that will run iOS 6… Yeah, I’m hooked on Mac too.

I will always run Windows for many reasons, most of which is that it is the main stay for my business and I will always run the Mac because I just love it for the reasons given above, but if both of those went away tomorrow, I would still have my Linux.

I guess I just love technology…I started out in computers before home computers were universal like they are today. I originally had a RadioShack Color Computer, then went to an 8088 running DOS, a 386SX running DOS and Windows 3.1.1 WFW, and then to 486 computers running Windows 95, Win98SE, eventually P4 running Windows XP and now AMD Dual Core Athlon 64 that can run Windows Vista (groan!), and Windows 7 and Debian Squeeze. And of course my newer Intel Mac Mini 2Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM that runs Snow Leopard, and can run OS X Lion, but will never run Mountain Lion, and an older 2nd Gen iPod Touch that I also love but has trouble with many new apps and upgraded apps now, and will never run IOS 5 or IOS 6.

Pick one? No way. I love them all! I do not want to part with any of them. But like everyone else, I do want to get faster machines and gadgets!

It is amazing to me that it’s been 10 yrs, 10 1/2 yrs now, since that first iMac G4 came out for PPC (Power PC) Macs. Approximately the same length of time that Windows XP has been running on PC computers. Amazing.

Scot’s Newsletter Forums Celebrating their 8th Year!

Scot’s Newsletter Forums Celebrating their 8th Year!

Hard to believe that it has been 8 years since Scot Finnie — who is now the Editor in Chief of Computerworld — started a little experimental forum, Scot’s Newsletter Forums! Eight years later, it is still going strong.

More in the article at Fran’s Computer Services Blog here.

Happy 8th Anniversary, Scot’s Newsletter Forums!!

Bruno … Remembering a dear friend

With great sadness, I finally was able to put together a small tribute piece about Bruno, one of the best people I know … who will be leaving us soon. Here’s a quote from the piece:

Bruno, what to say of one of the most dedicated, patient, and selfless people I have ever ‘met’ on the Internet, or maybe even in real life.

Bruno, in many ways, you remind me of my Dad (rest his soul), and my Jim — which is a very high compliment, IMHO. There is another great Open Source guy, Klok who was of a similar mind set as all of these men — you can find his story here: Klok Memorial.

For those reading this article, who may not know who Bruno is, Bruno is a wonderful man with seemingly limitless patience and dedication. He is from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. He has a family that he loves and that love him — and despite that, he was able to spend thousands and thousands of hours sharing his knowledge, or learning what he needed to convey to Linux Explorers day in and day out … to only God knows how many Linux Explorers (those who have never used Linux and desire to learn and explore Linux).

Read the rest here.

Bruno, you are loved by so many, and will be missed more than you know.

God speed to you, and may you have good days ahead, and ones as painless as possible. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family, and your friends.

Microsoft: Litigate on FAT, and you’ll be the next Unisys

Microsoft: Litigate on FAT, and you’ll be the next Unisys (ZDNet.com)

Remember “Burn All GIFs” from 1999? In 2009, the Open Source mantra of choice could very easily turn into “Destroy all FATs”

The ‘Burn Your GIFs” campaign of 1999 has a follow up and for just as insidious reasons!

Please, take a few minutes to check out this ZDNet.com article and read up on this insidious mess that Microsoft has been pulling on Linux builders and users behind their backs!

This is a major issue and one that needs to be dealt with swiftly by anyone who uses GNU Linux knowingly or unknowingly (such as through your GPS device or smart phone).

We really need to wake up on this issue. Device creators are trying to keep the cost of their devices down to the customer and this is how we and they get paid back!

I get so angry that companies will take advantage of GNU Linux and then bite the very hand that feeds them with double deals under the table with large bully proprietary companies.

It really, really ticks me off.

Remember a certain company that created a Linux Distribution a while back and then turned around and started suing left and right? Making claims that GNU Linux violated their patents?

SCO -vs- IBM (and by extension GNU Linux)

Thank you TomTom for NOT violating the GPL! Thank you also for bringing this dirty little dealing to light! I hope you are eventually vindicated for being true to the GPL and Linux which buttered your bread — unlike some other companies.

Creative Labs continues to give customers the bird…

All this mess about Creative Labs, Inc., their crappy Vista drivers with intentionally crippled drivers (that’s not me, that what they said!), threatening Daniel_K (also see Digg.com’s Creative Threatens modders) for fixing their drivers for the users so they can actually make use of the hardware they purchased with the features they purchased the sound card for, btw.

Originally, I would have thought if Creative had such bad programmers, that they would have contacted Daniel_K to hire him like some had suggested. And I totally disagree with those who say that Daniel_K was wrong for taking donations. Bandwidth for downloads is not cheap, and there are website costs etc. A simple shared-hosting service would not accommodate the needs of such a broad audience of users who would want to download these drivers. And why should he pay for that out of the goodness of his heart? He apparently did for awhile. Maybe it gives the appearance that he is making money on this, but if you really pay attention to what his out of pocket costs might be, it would be hard to blame him for at least trying to give folks a chance to help out with that through donations.

BTW: As noted elsewhere, Creative also sued A3D/Aureal/VORTEX back in 1998. They lost and Aureal won. But although Aureal won the battle, the war thrust them into bankruptcy and then Creative gobbled them up in a ‘fire sale.’

And if that wasn’t bad enough, in 2004, Creative Pressured id software regarding their EAX3D drivers (technology they got from A3D maybe??) and ‘agreement relating to Creative’s patented shadowing technique [also known as Carmack's Reverse in some coding circles] and id’s cutting-edge 3D graphics DOOM 3 engine.’

And don’t even get me started on their Lame/Non-Existent drivers for Vista and Linux. Or their flat out refusal to create an SDK that is reasonable so folks could actually create the drivers that Creative Labs can’t seem to do with their own hardware.

Back when I first started with computers, back in the DOS days; back when DOS games ruled, Creative Labs was wonderful! They set the standards that everyone else lived by. And they did it well. But they got cocky, extremely closed minded and closed proprietary crap, until the point that we have ended up with the crap we are dealing with today from Creative Labs.

If they had followed more in nVidia’s footsteps, they would have done things completely different, and their customers would generally love their hardware. (Now I am aware of the probems that nVidia currently has with Vista and I am sure they will fix it. Unlike Creative Labs.)

Gamers, tinkerers, hobbyists, computer technicians, etc. often make recommendations to others in their field and their clients, as well as friends and family. Creative has done a really bad and stupid thing by shutting out their greatest word of mouth adverting. I guess the only people that will be buying their products are people who buy ‘cheap’ systems and have absolutely no idea how to make them work or even know why their new computer doesn’t work right.

People have been getting more and more ticked off at Creative Labs for years for their, support, or lack thereof, and now they have really done the unforgivable.

Good bye Creative Labs, good bye to great memories of the sound card standards of the SoundBlaster card series, that helped gamers get some really great games running so much better in years past. Good bye and good riddance.

I can tell you Creative, I will be making sure that your sound chips are not in ANY motherboard, sound card or other audio/video cards that I buy. You do not exist for me any longer. You are a follower of the “Sue Happy Philosophy” in this country and you are dead to me.

If you have been sold a bill of goods by Creative Labs, paid good money for certain features in a sound card just to find out that those very features have been deliberately crippled in the newest operating system by Microsoft (Vista), and if you live in the United States of America, I would suggest you contact your State’s Attorney General’s office and see what they can do for you.

As I noted on my BambiCNI StumbUpon links, “Interesting path Creative has chosen for themselves.” Certainly not the path less traveled, the ethical path.

I think this posting by Durzel on 03-29-2008 07:58 AM (page 9) sums up my thoughts on the current situation quite nicely,

I don’t usually bother posting rants on forums because usually when people say “I will never buy from company X again!” it’s just a hollow threat. I also haven’t got any time for online petitions as they never achieve anything.

The above said – I’m not going to be buying another Creative sound card again.

I bought an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum a few years ago, along with a Cambridge Soundworks DTT3500 5.1 speaker system, both of these have served me well to date. I don’t believe in replacing hardware “just cos” when there is no justification for it.

When the X-Fi came out I was hugely disappointed to find out that Creative had effectively obsoleted the DTT3500 speakers by changing the protocol for the digital DIN port. There was apparently no logical reason for Creative to do this, and the net result simply was that the DTT3500 speaker set would not work with X-Fi cards, if I wanted 5.1+ sound I would have to buy a newer set of speakers (Gigaworks no doubt). This change annoyed a lot of DTT3500 owners as it seemed like Creative had changed the digital DIN output for no other reason than to deliberately obsolete the older speaker system and force users to upgrade.

Since I had no intention of paying £hundreds for a new speaker system when my DTT3500 set worked perfectly fine (not to mention that my Audigy card did everything I needed it to) I carried on using my Audigy card when I switched to Vista. Like most people I soon found out that the Creative Vista drivers were buggy, and it wasn’t long before Creative stopped providing Vista driver updates completely.

Then I found Daniel_K’s drivers, which fixed a whole host of problems for me and also provided features that were apparently impossible to provide on Audigy soundcards. Let’s not forget – Daniel_K isn’t even a Creative employee, he’s hasn’t got access to the source driver code, etc. The fact he was able to achieve what he did is hugely impressive.

I had assumed that Creative turned a blind eye to this, maybe they figured that they didn’t want to commit resources to developing drivers for older cards anymore. I can live with that, I wouldn’t expect Microsoft to be providing updates for XP in 2015. What doesn’t sit well with me is threads like this because they show categorically that the problem Creative has with Daniel_K is not that he is infringing copyright (which he isn’t), it’s that he is providing functionality that Creative has deliberately omitted from their Audigy Vista drivers, or has flat out lied about whether features were even possible on the Audigy cards.

This single thread proves that Creative just cares about their bottom line – they want people to upgrade their hardware simply because they want to milk more money from their consumers. They could provide the functionality Daniel_K has enabled in his modded drivers themselves, and probably more besides (since they have direct access to the source), but they choose not to because they don’t want users to be able to carry on using “old” hardware like Audigy cards.

I am disgusted by Creatives attitude to their consumer base. There is NOTHING wrong with my Audigy soundcard, and there is NOTHING wrong with my DTT3500 speaker system. I will be damned if I am going to pay Creative £hundreds to upgrade to whatever their current “supported” gen is simply because they refuse to provide functionality, or worse still – will only provide deliberately crippled or buggy drivers to older cards. This is a disgusting business practice.

Creative will never seen a penny from me again, and that’s not a hollow threat believe me.
Message Edited by Durzel on 03-29-2008 07:58 AM

You tell’m Durzel. There are so many comments of value in that forum topic!