15" CRT iMac Passes On--RIP.

Apple has dropped it from The Apple Store, making official it's passing as Apple's general consumer computer. However, the 15" CRT iMac is still available from the special Apple Store for Education.

We hailed it's introduction in 1998 when Steve Jobs announced the iMac in a special Apple Media Event broadcast to the Apple Market Centers around the country. We thought it looked really cool and dubbed it the incarnation of "elegant simplicity", an Apple descriptor that we coined in our 1998 editorial, The Good Fight 1998. We also wrote that some said it looked like a 1950's toaster from the front.

As an internet-ready, simple to set up computer ("Step 3. There is no step 3."), Apple sold millions of iMacs. It started the "i" naming trend at Apple and throughout the computer industry. Steve Jobs even called himself Apple's iCEO.

We bought one of the very first 233 MHz iMacs in beautiful bondi blue, a color named after a beach in Australia, to use as our daily desktop computer for mostly web surfing and email. We passed it off to our secretary sometime after the 333 MHz model came out. It was sitting out on her desk in an open cubicle and it was stolen one night within a week. Fortunately, the slot-loading models came out right after the theft and we passed off the 333 MHz model along with a Kensington lock and got a 400 MHz Special Edition.

We became so strongly attached to silent computing introduced by the fanless iMac models, that we traded a Power Mac 8500 and the iMac 400 SE for a silent G4 Cube which we still use today.

15" CRT iMac, you brought us elegant simplicity, the "i" and silent affordable computing. You said "hello again" but now we must say goodbye. RIP.