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Poll: Which retro iMac color would you choose for your iPhone?
With the rumor mill buzz about a plastic-shell iPhone 5C and gold-toned iPhones more frenzied than Wall Street on an average day, there's no way that Apple would merely stick to mundane neon green, eye-searing pink and bling-bling gold for the next iPhone. Now's a good time to evoke happy memories of Apple past by purchasing your next iPhone in one of these retro-iMac colors! Which one would you choose? %Poll-84224%
iMac G3 on a 1998 episode of Computer Chronicles
Computer Chronicles aired on PBS during the '80s and '90s and tracked the rise of the personal computer. Not surprisingly, Apple was often featured on the program. We've stumbled upon one episode that Apple users may find interesting. The 1998 episode kicks off with a look the new iMac G3, one of Apple's big comeback devices. It was launched under the leadership of Steve Jobs and was designed by Jonny Ive. Its rounded look and colorful design was a big leap from Apple's earlier beige and blocky machines. Apple's removal of the floppy drive in the iMac G3 also caused quite a stir. You can watch the full 30-minute episode in the YouTube video embedded below. It's filled with notable moments, including a look at OS 8.5 and the Power Macintosh G3. There's also a cameo by Dave Reynolds from MacAddict, too!
The floppy disk is dead (and Apple helped kill it)
It was 1998 and Apple had just released the iMac G3. It was a beautiful interesting computer: a sleek, all-in-one case, with something new called USB. One thing it didn't have was a floppy disk. At the time, many believed Apple was insane for leaving a floppy disk drive off the iMac, but did Steve Jobs care? Nope. The floppy was archaic technology to him. A CD-ROM drive was where it's at. Well, thirteen years later -- almost a decade after most people stopped using floppy disks, Sony, the inventor of the floppy disk, has officially announced that they are killing the 1.44MB storage device. As of next year, Sony will no longer manufacture the floppy disk. Most of my Word documents are larger than 1.44MB nowadays and I can't think of a single file I've created on my computer that I would need to transport to another computer, that would even fit on a floppy. Now that I think about it, I haven't actually used my Superdrive for reading or writing any optical media since I bought my MacBook Pro two years ago either. In another ten years, will optical media have gone of the way of the floppy? So, what have we learned? Steve was ridiculed for leaving the floppy off the iMac because he saw it as archaic. Now he gets to say "I told you so." If Steve does have the power to gaze into the tech future, Adobe should be worried about Flash going the way of the floppy, as Steve reportedly told the Wall Street Journal, dropping Flash is no different than the decision to drop the floppy drive from the iMac. Will he be right again? Only time will tell.
Visua Mobile's old Apples collection
A couple of months ago I wound up in Paris and received a surprising direct message via Twitter from a young employee at Visua Mobile. Having nothing better to do in the City of Light, I wound up at their offices. I'm often suspect when a "mobile" development company rings me about their iPhone stable. Just like my tea, I prefer my developers steeped in Apple. Well, Visua Mobile is certainly made up of Apple fans. Just check out the gallery of their offices to see what I mean. Visua's raison d'etre would be iPhone apps. To my astonishment, none have been runaway hits. They are beautifully designed and generally work well (some 3.0 bugs crept up). Visua gained some noteriety around their app, Fracture, that would make the iPhone screen appear broken when pressed. But they make a host of already-approved apps, including Celebrity, which features a special magazine cover just for TUAW fans. %Gallery-67744%
