Jason Snell:

It seems so quaint and obvious now, but in 1998 the iMac was, if not revolutionary, at least rebellious and radical. In an era of beige PCs, it was the color of the water off Australia’s Bondi Beach. In an era where the average computer was shaped like a pizza box or a minitower, tethered to a CRT monitor via a fat cable, the iMac was a clean self-contained unit.

Rhonda got an iMac DV SE at the CompUSA back in 1999 (I may have had something to do with it). It only came in one color–a smoky gray. It was a lot of fun to play games on; she played the Sims and I had a FireWire drive I’d bring over to her (now our) house and play Driver and some other games off of it. She has a green M1 now.

This isn’t a picture of the iMac we used, but it’s the same model.

Nearly three decades later, Apple owes everything to the iMac