Wow.  Ten years.  I remember it like it was only yesterday (which can sometimes be a problem, because the older I get I sometimes can’t actually remember what happened yesterday – but, where was I).  Anyway, ten years ago this week (Tuesday the 6^th, to be exact) at one of Apple’s now-trademark “special events”, CEO Steve Jobs took the stage in an auditorium near Apple’s Cupertino, California campus.  What he unveiled there changed the face (and shape) of personal computing forever - and, along with the rise of the Internet, most likely saved Apple Computer.

Have you ever wondered where all these “i” things came from?  You know – iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iThis, and iThat.  All the real (and pretender) iThings of today are descendants of what Jobs introduced on that stage a decade ago – the all-in-one iMac personal computer.

What does the “i” in iMac (and all of its iDescendants) stand for?  Jobs said when he introduced the iMac that the “i” represented five qualities and purposes: Internet, individual, instruct, inform, and inspire.  Let’s look briefly at each one.

Internet.  Duh.  The Internet was still pretty new in 1998, and the iMac was the fastest out-of-the-box-and-onto-the-internet experience around.  Remember that all other personal computers of the day were either towers or “pizza boxes”, connected to external displays, with complicated setup instructions and the horrifying experience of trying to get Windows to work and onto the Internet the first time (and why hasn’t THAT changed in the last ten years, I ask you?).

I mentioned earlier that the Internet contributed to saving Apple.  Here’s how.  Fortunately for all of us, and despite Microsoft’s best efforts to the contrary, the Internet, as it has expanded, has become “platform agnostic”.  What that means is the Internet doesn’t care what kind of computer or which operating system or whose web browser is used to access it (for the most part – you’ll still find pockets of myopic web developers who create sites “best viewed with IE7”).  Imagine an Internet constructed by and dominated by the company that brought us Microsoft Bob, Plays For Sure (which, by the way, Microsoft recently torpedoed, proving again the adage “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”), and “The Wow Starts Now”.  Ugh.  The Internet’s agnosticism and freedom from Microsoft’s vise-like grip allowed Apple to innovate, compete, and slice their own piece of the Internet pie.  But, let’s continue.

Individual.  PCs of the late-nineties era were, in a word, boring.  No.  BO-ring.  Boring, blasé, blah, beige boxes.  The first iMacs were described as “gumdrops” and “alien chicken eggs”, and sported a translucent colored case.  Colored computer cases!  What was the world coming to?  iMacs (both the original and today’s stunning models) yearn to be seen, to be on the desktop and not under it.

Instruct.  Millions of them ended up in classrooms.  ‘Nuff said.

Inform.  Easy access to the virtually unlimited resources of the Internet, the world’s largest library.

And finally, inspire.  The Windows-based PC world responded at the time with a slew of iMac “wannabes”.  There are still iMac wannabes today – the Dell XPS One and the Gateway One.  Can you believe neither Dell nor Gateway could come up with a more original name?  Oh, I get it.  One.  Like All-in-One.  The scary thing is they actually paid someone to come up with those names.

Since 1998 the iMac has seen many external and internal changes, from the “gumdrop” to the “luxo lamp” to the current gorgeous form factor, and from 233 MHz in 1998 to the most recent upgrade to 3.06 GHz.

Someone said the computer in Minority Report is the 2054 model iMac.  I read it on the Internet.  It must be true.