[Commodus]

With hints that the classic iMac may be discontinued very soon, I thought I'd start a poll to help rekindle memories and create a fitting tribute to the original gumdrop iMac. Please choose whichever general model of iMac you first picked up (whether you were new to Macs or not), and after that feel free to post things such as specs, photos, or memories of what it was like.

[Ricky]

My very first Mac is the little iMac DV Special Edition sitting in my living room. When I bought it at Sears, I was so excited to get it home and take it out of the box. I had been traveling to my university (30 minutes from my house) to use their Apple machines, but they didn't have any iMacs. It was a weird looking G3 all in one machine, and it was beige. Nevertheless, it will always be my favorite even though I have a Cube now. I'll never sell it either.

[iDaver]

My first was a bondi Rev B. It was used as a server for the POS system at my store, replacing a Performa 476. At the time, a G3, any G3 was screaming fast and it was a huge improvement, speeding up processing and printing of every sale. It's still in use, as a sales terminal instead, having been replaced in its humble server position by a beige G3 266 tower.

[juanvaldes]

I've never owned a iMac but my dad got a Rev D (blue) as part of a Palm OS developers deal. Funny thing was it was supposed to be a rev B but apple kept pushing us (and the rest of the developers I assume) back since we were promo but the result was we got a better imac!

[OzTiBook]

Mine is the very first, the rev.a. Still gets used today - it seves my TiBook its net connection.

[Jerman]

My first Mac was a DV 450. Got it last year for building a pc for someone, and slowly migrated over. (Actually pretty quickly considering it took me a month to get up to speed and continue web design on it) I absolutely love it, and plan to keep it around for awhile, even after I eventually upgrade to something faster....

[scottiB]

Tangerine/266; it's used primarily for surfing, but my GF still uses Quark on it for some of her freelance gigs.

[BrunoBruin]

I bought a Blue Dalmatian iMac after they were discontinued; I loved the patterned cases, and I thought the white speaker covers, etc. improved the design. But I sold it to buy a new PowerBook. I actually had several people ask about buying it; everyone who saw it thought it was cool.

[xyber233]

I am still using my rev. b bondi iMac. What a great computer. I've upgraded the processor to 466mhz, hard drive to 20gb, RAM to 256mb, and added a voodoo2. It performs very well in os 9 but I think its time for me to look for a new computer that can run X .

[inkfinger]

I'm using a DVse 400 that will be 2 years old in September. It's my first Mac & the best computer I've ever owned.

As great as the newer machines are, I won't be replacing this one in a hurry!

[Chimpmaster]

The flat panel g4 imac is my first imac, but I do also own an indigo ibook which I very much but in the same genre as the classic imacs.

I loved the blueberry and strawberry colours - they were awesome. As machines, the 2000 model was the first I seriously considered buying but opted for the indigo ibook instead.

Im very happy with my fp imac though, what a great machine!

[Seb G]

Mine is a lime DV 400 1999 model. It's still my main machine, and I suspect will be for at least another year. Just got implanted a 60 GB hard drive two days ago, and it is much quieter now (upped it to 320 MB last October).

It's my 3rd Mac (after a PB520c and 3400c). I had planned to get a b&w G3 tower but when I had saved the money Apple had released the G4 towers and the iMac DV, and I just decided to get the cheaper computer and spent some of the remaining money on a digital camera. Good choice, it's an unforgettable computer.

[Justin W. Williams]

I am still waiting for my first classic iMac. I plan to get my sister one for her tenth birthday this December though.

[shmerek]

My first and only computer ever was (is) a bondi rev b. Being a poor student I don't know when I will get to replace it. The monitor is dead so I am running an external one and pretty soon I am going to chuck the whole thing is a pc case a la the <a href="http://applefritter.com/hacks/ibox/index.html" target="_blank">ibox</a>

[Commodus]

Thanks for all the responses, keep it up! As of now (July 14th) it looks like the original Bondi Blues are "winning" with the 1999 slot-loaders in a decent second. No matter what, though, you've got to give credit to the people who started off on Blue Dalmatian or Flower Power - they're not afraid to go with what they like (or at least tolerate) rather than what's safe.

[MilkmanDan]

My parents bought a rev a iMac the month it came out. Bondi and fast, with a strange thing called USB, and no disk drive to move over our old files. But now I am gone, and its short life as a gameing (very slow gameing) platform are over. It now runs AOL on a cable modem, pleaseing my parents who don't even know what the term "frag" means. I now have a 466 G4 (probably upgrading after the expo), but still miss its happy little look, loud CD drive and fan, and the fact that it inly had 4 GIGs of space.
<img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />

[anarkisst]

Yeah, I had the very first iMac Bondi Blue (Revision A) in August of 1998. It was my very first Apple computer I owned. Loved it. I had always used Windows PCs and never realized the ease and simplicity of the Mac OS compared to Windows OS's. I finally bought a new iMac last year (iMac Graphite SE) and will hopefully never, ever have a need for a Windows PC again...

<img src="http://www.macwelt.de/_news/200201/bilder/imacbondi.gif" alt=" - " />

My mother has the Bondi Blue iMac now...

[Brien]

i'd like to say that I've owned an iMac before, but sadly i cannot. Oh well, farewell, little friend. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />

[CIA]

My first iMac was a Rev. A Bondi, I just bought it 3 weeks ago! A friend of my switched to the dark side and I ended up buying her Rev A from her. Brought it home, dumped 256megs of Ram into it, and now it runs like a champ! The video board is on it's way out, the screen gets fuzzy from time to time, but overall it's a great web-surfing/iTunes machine. Definitely no Final Cut Pro on it though!

[Schmidlapper]

I tried to get an iMac when they first came out but got turned down by Apple credit (then recent divorce). So I kept an eye on the iMac and when the flower power one came out, I again tried to get one, but they wanted a ridicules interest rate for the loan. So I again went without. About two months ago I saw a 1999 Blueberry DV 400 w/320 Meg for sale on Ebay for a decent price, so I said the hell with it and bought it. I hardly touch my PC any more. Even though its a 2100 Mhz AMD speed demon with all the bells and whistles. I finally got my little Mac and I love it. The kids get the big computer. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />

[Indigo Boy]

Commodus: Nice poll and thread topic.

My first (and only) iMac is a summer 2000 iMac DV 400..... the one that had the strange wavy line issue when a menu was held down. When I upgraded the OS from 9.0.4 to (I think it was) 9.1, the wavy lines mysteriously and permanently disappeared. I have thoroughly enjoyed this machine. Hard to believe I've had this computer nearly two years now! I would love to get a new wide-screen iMac but will probably wait a while. I paid $999.00 for this iMac, I think, so it's hard to think about spending twice as much on the new one! (Of course, my 1995 Performa 603 75 Mhz machine cost me around $2,300.00, and it was a bit of a dog..... ;-) )

[Agent69]

On Jan 30 1999, I got ran over on my motorcycle by a car while I was at a dead stop. When I later received some settlement money because of the accident, I got into a car, drove to CompUSA, and bought a new Revision C Strawberry iMac (266Mhz G3). The only mod ever performed on it was an upgrade to 192MB of RAM.

I later gave it to my wife when I purchased a G4 Cube.

[Patrick]

Yup, one of the originals for me. Glad to see Bondi winning in the poll. Bought mine in October '98. Not the first Mac I owned, but the first bought with my own $$. I'm thinking I should probably upgrade soon, but this thing just looks so damn good compared to the new ones�

[Superchicken]

iMac Rev D all the way baby!
hehe

Fred (my iMac, and yes he's named after the voice he uses) is my ownly Mac ever. he is envied and beloved by family and friends... acctually my mom blames him for me not being an active part of the family... or something, my sister hates that I havn't hooked my digital cammera or anything up to our family's gastly compaq, but my dad likes him My PC loving friends make fun of him, until I ask them to do any of the stuff I've done on him with their boxes, and they all shut up.
On a message board I administrate my iMac has his own persona, "Fred The Killer iMac" although so far he's only killed a bird that flew into a window.... hey it used windows <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" />
uh, the main mods that have been done to him, 128 megs of RAM installed by me and my dad two Christmasses ago, then this year 256 more that because of a firm ware problem is only running at 128, a 60 gigabyte hard drive, and a OC Supertones Visor I bought at a concert, and the "Cadet" (the Supertones and Cadet are two of my fave bands, I'm acctually doing Cadet's website, both are on the same label.. which is acctually the biggest Christian music label).
Uhhhhh, Fred currently has my old Blueberry keyboard acting like a sticky hub conneccting my printer... and well it should be connecting my zip drive, but the control key sticks on it from when I spilt juice on it.
I use an apple pro keyboard and optical mouse... I've also got a set of four speakers hooked in through an amp that allow my entire room to be imersed in my music, encoded via iTunes from my CDs... of course

[Commodus]

Don't feel bad about upgrading, Patrick - you can always keep your Bondi Blue, and the new iMac is still a very stylish machine (especially if you like something that doesn't swallow up desk space).

[Ca$h68]

Mine's best:

1st generation iMac hybrid
Rev A motherboard, rev D lime green shell and CRT, grape lower rear apple, 600mhz G3 Harmoni with firewire (awwww jyeaaaaahhh), 192 megs ram (need more), 8 meg microconversions gamewizard, 46 gig maxtor HD, and custom graphics.

Booyah.

- Ca$h

[Ca$h68]

Future mods include internal CDR (16x), resoldering the mezz slot onto hte rev D board, electro luminscent cable lighting up the rear, and more ram and bigger faster HD.

Woo woo.

I need a new keyboard though.

- Ca$h

[JamesB]

My Bondi Blue 233 has run virtually 24 hrs a day since 1998, running FMP Server. I stopped upgrading the OS at 8.6. In 4 years I can count crashes on 1 hand. It has probably been my least troublesome mac ever. It helps when you only run 1 app, but that's still great. I had a RAM chip go bad but that's it. I bought 7 more classic iMacs, 333 to 500 MHz for my office and family members, none as appealing as the bondi. I just ordered a refurbished FP iMac from smalldog for the superdrive. It might grow on me, but I hate the desk lamp style.

Long live the bondi blues!

[Jasoco]

I can't hold it in. The Millennium was NOT the year 2000. So therefore, the 2000 iMac's were NOT Millennium iMacs.

There, now that's off my chest...

My first iMac was the iMac DV+ 450 in September 2000. Ruby red color. Melissa was her name.

See some pics here...
<a href="http://www.jasoco.com/cgi-bin/lair.pl?lair=2" target="_blank">http://www.jasoco.com/cgi-bin/lair.pl?lair=2</a>

[Commodus]

Oh, I know that 2000 wasn't the start of the millennium, but it was a bit difficult to think of a special name to give 2000-model iMacs! That's not to diminish the significance of any of them being your first iMac, of course.

[Ca$h68]

Here's how it works people. There are 1st generation imacs (rev A-D), 2nd generation iMacs (crap so I dont care what the revisions were) and 3rd generation iMacs. PERIOD.

- Ca$h

[losta]

My first iMac was probably my 10th or so Mac. It is a DV SE that I still have but am selling very soon. I bought it in November 1999 when the local Microcenter was having a 20% of all Apple Stuff sale for one day.

There was a line of about 50 or 60 people waiting to get in. I took pictures. There was a group of students from Pratt in Brooklyn that rented a UHaul van and were loading it up with about 6 or 8 Macs.

My Apple history(21 years): Apple II+, Mac Plus, Mac SE, Color Mac II, Mac IIci, 840AV, 8500, Powerbook 5300, iMac DV SE, iBook

<small>[ 07-30-2002, 10:32 PM: Message edited by: losta ]</small>

[Commodus]

Thanks again for all the responses. So far, it looks like there's an identifiable trend: gobs of people leaped at the initial iMac (undoubtedly because of how unique it was in the computer world), and the improvements to the iMac in the first couple of years really helped keep sales up. Once 2001 hit, though, it was pretty obvious that the design was no longer the absolute darling of the lineup (the intro of the dual-USB iBook being one major factor).

The flat-panel iMac is a great success - but it's clear that a good chunk of buyers are many of the people who already had an older iMac.

[Superchicken]

I think right now it's mainly people arn't buying computers. AND most people on MacNN are long time mac geeks

So of course the majority will have a FP iMac if they can afford it!

Personally I'm plannin on a iBook and iMac by the end of next July
Once steve anounces them in the keynote I'm dialing gona write down the specs, and then run down to one of the local apple retailers ask em if they'll give me a better price than the apple store and if not... well then I'm gona go with apple

[cenutrio]

I got my rev. A bondi iMac in Augost 98 and later loaded it with 256 MB RAM and 6 MB video. Runs OS 9.2 like a champ! Still, I�m considering to move to 10.2 for surfing, email, iTunes, word, etc, what do you think?

[Superchicken]

Deffinately with Jaguar around the bend, after the next iMac I'd upgrade to something that'll run Jaguar well and be very happy