OCTOBER 2001

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• Mac OS 9.2.1: all the facts • Expert Microsoft email tips • Pro scanners lab-tested • Mac OS X networking guide • 24x CD-RW • DVD-R drive • HP Designjet 10/20/50ps read me first Simon Jary Why the iMac’s third anniversary editor-in-chief is such a big deal to all of us, and, of course, to Apple.

Happy Birthday to i

n all the hollow hullabaloo about see-through, G4 flat- Consumers – and soppy sods, such as designers – are screen , many impatient commentators pointed attracted to things with personality, and the iMac’s screen out that Apple’s once-innovative consumer desktop face really got their emotions going. I computer is now three years old. In computer years, an The name ‘Mac’ even makes you think of a character age of three makes the iMac something like the Queen rather than a dumb machine. Microsoft’s operating system Mother – gawd bless it! In the face of strong criticism that a makes me think of plastic buskets and soapy squeegees. The younger, less-wrinkled version is required (a hip only Windows that ever provoked any emotion in me are replacement, if you like), Apple has turned its gaze away glazed in Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. And they’re stained. from the media “experts” and put out the trestle tables Apple often gets it right on computer shapes. The pizza- and bunting to celebrate its oldie’s anniversary. box LC was a classic, and even the rather soulless Power Mac Apple has created a special section on its Web 6100 had a certain long elegance to it. The iMac followed site to carry a selection of the 700 birthday 1984’s Mac shape, with that face and a top carrying handle. greetings it received from around the world. Quite The only other inanimate box that got me excited was soon why anyone would take the time of day to send forgotten after I’d got it home and taken the shoes out. Apple a letter about their computer – unless it A few PC manufacturers attempted to copy the iMac’s wasn’t working – got me thinking. Are these cute shape, but tried so hard to emulate the exact lines that the same people who – at the age of 40 – still Apple had to march them to court on charges of plagiarism. write Father Christmas letters, or who reach The fact that none even bothered too much on copying the under their pillow for small change after a iMac’s coloured plastics is simply staggering. Yes, a few PC tooth extraction? Or is the iMac something makers clipped a bit of blue or pink plastic to the front of so special that sending a birthday card is their beige PCs – but none went any further and produced simply the polite thing to do? something genuinely different to the beige PC standard. I don’t remember seeing birthday Beige is a colour designed to disappear from consciousness celebrations for the Dell Dimension, the as soon as it passes the eye’s busy rods and cones. In its Compaq Deskpro or the NEC Direction. A recent three years, the iMac came in fruity flavours, rainbow hues online Macworld Reader poll (www.macworld.co.uk/polls) and rich gemstone tints. showed the depth of feeling that many people still held for The iMac is celebrated because of all these things, and the Sage-coloured 450MHz DV+ model of iMac. If no one also because it single-handedly saved Apple’s PR arse all popped a cork for the anniversary of the Dell Dimension those years ago. Of course, it’s also a pretty good personal family, what hope a party for a specific model of any computer that works straight out of the box, doesn’t require ‘The only other Windows PC? Did anyone anywhere – no matter how much any add-on cards, hides ugly cables away from view, and time or spare cake they had that day – blow out a candle