iMac G3 IDG / AppleĪfter Steve Jobs’ return as CEO, Apple’s futuristic and design-conscious concept, dubbed the iMac G3, brought the company back from financial hardship. Apple finally nixed it in the late 1990s and simplified its products by offering a desktop and laptop for both the professional market (Power Macintosh G3 and PowerBook) and for consumers (iMac and iBook). The Performa line was also criticized for its lack of power and hardware design.

The marketing tactic backfired, however, as the large number of models (in addition to those for business) competed with one another, and created customer confusion.

Although not a new model, the Performa was a rebranding of then-existing Mac models, including the Classic, Quadra, Centris, LC, and Power Macintosh, and was meant for everyday users. The Mac’s OS, known as System 1.0, introduced the Finder that is still used today.Īpple's Performa sold mainly through authorized retailers in department stores throughout the mid-1990s. It used a Motorola 68000 microprocessor, 128KB of RAM and a 400KB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive. Apple’s Macintosh 128K aimed to fundamentally change how consumers viewed computers and make them more affordable, personal and commonplace. The original Macintosh went on sale two days after Apple's critically acclaimed 1984 ad aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII.

Here, we take a look at the Mac’s evolution throughout the past three decades, with a focus on the rapid changes of the last decade or so, especially as the iMac grew and evolved beyond its original gumdrop design into the 11.5mm-thin, 6-color flat panel machine it is now. (And it's been more than 20 years since the first iMac was unveiled.) From just 128KB of memory in the first Mac (to as much as 16GB in the 2021 iMac 24), Apple has continually redefined its products from design and aesthetics to functionality and productivity. It's been more than 30 years since the arrival of Apple’s Macintosh computer - the Mac - which has evolved substantially, especially over the past decade.

Mac cpu info generations