Alien computer in my house

A Mac store.

I've always been a PC man, shunning Macintosh computers like any reasonable person. Back in the old days, Macs were a sucker's buy - fit only for the computer illiterate. Every Mac purchase was an endorsement of Steve Job's insane choice to

e architecture of his machines closed.

Software developers were hamstrung. And consumers buying software, peripherals, and upgrades, if they could find them, ended up paying top dollar. It was undemocratic and limiting, unlike IBM clones, where the field was wide open to everyone. And with the advent of Microsoft's Windows, Apple's sole claim to a friendly graphical interface was eliminated. I even had a little poster. "Macintosh - computer choice of the Amish". I later took it down, not because my opinion of Apple products improved, but because I thought it was a rather unkind cut to the Amish.

I had come to the Mostly Mac store in London on a mission. I was going to find the secret behind the computer that put Apple back in the consumer computer market.

Apple has always been a major player in the computer industry, but in recent years it seemed to have lost the home-user market to IBM clone machines. It still retained a solid base in some niche markets, especially in graphically-concentrated industries like publishing, graphic design, etc., but was missing out on the massive home-user sector. 

As I entered Mostly Mac, I half expected an alarm to go off announcing the entry of an enemy agent. Instead, I was cheerily greeted by a friendly-looking guy behind the counter. 

I looked through the front glass panel of the counter to make sure he wasn't holding a gun.

"Lar. . .Larry Hill?" I stammered. "I have an appointment with Larry Hill." "I'll get him for you," the counter man said. 

Soon a personable looking fellow emerged from the back and extended his hand. I shook it, figuring if he made any fast moves, I could down him with a sharp twist of the arm and an uppercut.

"You must be Bob," he said in welcome, "Why don't we go back to my office."

I was unsure at first if I should, but I had told a lot of people back at the office where I was going, and was sure that if I didn't show up again, somebody would call Bill Gates to come and rescue me.(He's small, but he's wiry.) 

Following Larry past a line of glassed offices, I noticed gleaming iMacs on every desk. I started to sweat. They actually used them to do real work. 

Apple launched the iMac in on Saturday, August 15, 1998. In the first six weeks, it sold 278,000 units in North America and Europe. According to Apple statistics, three of every 10 iMac buyers were new computer users. About 12.5 per cent were former PC owners. Apple was able to report its first profitable year in recent history.

It was a powerful outing for a company which a year earlier had almost been written off by some experts. Although Macintosh was first with a graphical user interface back in the 1980s, letting users run computers by clicking on icons rather that typing in mysterious commands at the C:/ prompt, some bad financial, marketing and inventory problems plagued the company. Now, all of a sudden, Apple execs were looking at black ink and stock prices for AAPL were rising fast while inventory levels dropped. 

But more importantly, Apple was digging heavily into the new-user market and not just building on its installed base. 

The first iMac, now called the iMac Classic, is a strange-looking machine - kind of like something the Jetsons would use to warm coffee. Its sleek, tear-drop case and translucent blue cover with an integrated 15-inch monitor is definitely a cool 21rst century design. Inside it sports Motorola's 233 MHz Power PC G3 processor, a 56 k modem, 32 MB of RAM, a four GB hard drive, a 24x CD-ROM and two built-in stereo speakers. 

It comes with an Ethernet card for networking and cable modems. It also has a 512K of high-speed "secondary cache" memory, which boosts performance. The iMac is a all-USB (Universal Serial Bus) unit, offering an easy-to- use way of connecting of a lot of peripherals to the computer. And in Canada, it can be bought for about $1,599.

Later, Apple came out with an upgraded iMac, most noticeable for its multi-coloured translucent cover. Customers now have a fruit salad choice of strawberry, lime, tangerine, grape or blueberry covers on their machine. The processor was upgraded to a 266 MHz PowerPC G3, and the computer was given a six gigabyte IDE hard disk. The video system is run with an ATI Rage Pro Turbo accelerated 2D/3D graphics controller with 6 MB of video memory. The extras put the price up to about $1,899. 

One of the sweetest attributes of the iMac, and one that Apple pounded away at in its $100 million ad campaign, is that you simply plug it in and suddenly, you're computing. You don't need a neighbourhood computer guru to get connected to the Internet or a doctorate in computer science to type a letter. Instead of a huge manual, all users need is the following instructions. "Plug in the power cord, plug in the modem. Attach the keyboard and mouse, and go, go, go!"

"It's a toaster," I said to Larry. "It's just a computer appliance, like the microwave or the fridge. That's what all the Wintel boys are saying." 

"I don't have a problem with that at all," he said smiling. "The whole unit is there. It's absolutely Internet-ready."

And there it was. The iMac vision. A computer for Everyman - an information gathering and processing appliance, colour co-ordinated with your home. The iMac is a computer specifically geared for the home user.

"It's changed our focus," said Larry. "Now we have two ways to go," he added, meaning that Mac dealers could now invade the home market as well as the high-end industrial sector.

It's a brilliant idea - one that has been in the works for a while from IBM, Apple and networking computer pundit Larry Ellison. It's the idea that computers are no longer standalone machines but best used in connection with other computers. There's no need for people to buy programs at the local computer store. Just download them from the Internet (at a price of course) and use them until you don't need them anymore. 

Bill Gates is not impressed by this vision."The interesting thing is that our estimation of who are our most serious competitors has been changing the last years," Microsoft's CEO told German computer magazine c't. "Today's competitors are Palm, Symbian, JavaOS, Linux, and Solaris." According to Bill, IBM, Apple Computer, and Larry Ellison's concept of the network computer are no longer relevant, the magazine reported. 

So how does the iMac stand up on it's own. Larry, in a fit of trust, let me have one of the iMac Classics to test drive. When I brought it home, my eight-year-old son, who has been properly raised in the Wintel tradition, took one look at the Apple logo on the box, and quite properly ran out of the room as if he had just seen a demon from the fiery domain. 

"Tell me when it's set up," he said. Five minutes later, it was. And when he saw it, all he said was "Cool".

For an eight-year-old, the young tad is pretty sophisticated when it comes to computers. He sat down in front of the machine while I pulled out some Mac programs I had handy in my collection - some graphically intense games sure to push the machine to its limits. And he started to play.

And play.

And play.

After an hour, I assumed that he was impressed.

Graphics on the 15-inch screen were spectacular and it's speed was impressive. But he had some specific misgivings. "They should put a light in it to make it glow," he said. "That would make it really cool."

"And they should fix the mouse," he said, referring to the strange circular pointing device, which I had to agree was perhaps the iMac's worst feature.

"They should make it easier to put in CD's." The iMac's CD drive has to be pulled out, and pushed in, rather than automatically inserting and removing disks. "And they should put a sound control dial on the front of the computer," he added, referring to the iMac's software-based volume control. 

He finally suggested that the machine should have more of those "G things", meaning that the hard drive size should be expanded. I noted that in the newer iMac, the size had been increased. "Good," he said.

We both also shared a concern that Apple, in it's bid to make an Internet computer, had not included a floppy drive in the system. I don't care what anyone says. The floppy is not yet dead. There are still lots of uses for it. Although users can purchase an external floppy drive, the unit has a $250 price tag.

Finally, I was not sure about the wisdom of making the iMac a USB machine. Although USB is definitely the way of the future, and it's nice to see Apple move away from proprietary connectors, there are still not enough devices available on the market that make use of the technology. 

The best thing about the iMac is that it comes with Apple's new operating system, System 8.5, which despite a few initial bugs, maintains the Apple tradition of stability - a dream for any Windows user. System 8.5 also features a cool new way of searching on the Web. Using a tool called Sherlock, a user can employ a natural-language search. That means a cyber-surfer can simply type in a question like "How big is the world?" and the tool searches several search engines to come up with the answer.

As a standalone computer, the iMac is impressive, but still limited. There's little room to upgrade the machine, and while the processor is powerful, there are equally powerful processors in the Wintel world at comparable prices.

But it's still the coolest looking computer on the market.