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Apple’s New Spring Line Of iMac Fashions
In March, 1999, a 3rd Avenue window of Bloomingdale’s Upper Eastside Manhattan flagship department store in New York City featured a spring iMac display, with all five of the then-current iMac flavor-colors -- Strawberry, Blueberry, Grape, Lime and Tangerine iMacs -- displayed with color-coordinated women’s fashions. 
In the summer of 1998, when the original Bondi Blue iMac made its debut, Bloomingdale’s creative director Michael Fisher asked an acquaintance at Apple, “When are you guys going to be making iMacs in different colors?” Informed that Apple had no plans at the time to make different colored iMacs, Fisher chose not to hear that. “Let me know when you make the iMacs in different colors,” he replied. “I need them.” And indeed they did come along six months later. 
Bloomingdale’s iMac display reportedly attracted droves of window shoppers, especially at night. The 3rd Avenue window was located across the street from movie theaters, with the whole street is bathed in soft colored light at night. 
A Mac user from way back, Michael Fisher also had a Lime iMac in his office, a Power Mac G3 at home, and a PowerBook at his beach house. A few months later, Bloomies did a similar window dressing display featuring the original clamshell iBook, and that fall the iMac was again featured in Bloomingdale’s Modern Home Office theme and Where will you be in 2000 window displays. 
In 2000, Apple changed the iMac fashion motif from bright candy colors to more subdued (and IMHO more attractive and tasteful) earth tones (plus Ruby, which is a gem tone), including my all-time favorites -- Snow and Sage. Salon’s Janelle Brown wrote about “The iMac fashion headache,” having just gotten here living space coordinated with the iMac flavor colors....
Apple then turned around committed a bizarre fashion faux pas later that same year by replacing the pretty earth tone iMacs with the hideous Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian wallpaper motif iMacs, which looked like a projection of somebody’s acid flashback from the ‘60s. 
These had a mercifully short market tenure that was terminated by the return of a pared down selection of iMac colors. 
So, it is not without historical precedent that Apple chose to evoke a fashionesque theme with its release this week of what it heralded as its new line of “Spring iMacs.” However, one is constrained to observe that by emphasizing the style angle (and iMacs, as always, do have plenty of style), Apple is making a virtue of necessity, in that a modest speed bump to 800 MHz and 1GHz respectively for the slimmed down two-model lineup is not likely to get anyone’s pulse racing when there’s a 4 GHz Pentium waiting in the wings. As The Register’s Andrew Orlowski’s commented somewhat bluntly about the upgraded iMacs: 
And he’s right. These new iMacs should be powerful enough for the real computing needs of the overwhelming majority of people who would consider owning a “consumer” desktop computer. However, the perception is there in the minds of consumers conditioned by hype to compare clock speed numbers that with middle of the road Pentiums in the 2.4 GHz range, 800 MHz - 1 GHz sounds pretty poky. And lest we forget, Apple is historically guilty of promoting the megahertz myth. Remember those “snail” and “toasted bunny suit” ads in the late ‘90s? It’s human nature, I guess. There is an old nautical truism that whenever two boats are in sight of each other, it’s a race. And right now, Apple is outclassed across the board. 
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not personally complaining about Apple’s clock speed situation. I find my 700 MHz iBook plenty speedy for my purposes, and for me a 1 GHz G4 would represent largely superfluous processor power. There is a lot more to an enjoyable and satisfying computer user experience than clock speed, and the flat panel iMac is an awfully nice computer that just got incrementally nicer for spring. 
The top of the line 17-inch model, now priced at $1,799, gets a 1-GHz processor (up from 800 MHz), a 133 MHz system bus, and comes with a 4x SuperDrive, GeForce4 graphics, 256 MB of DDR memory, internal support for optional high-speed 54Mbps AirPort Extreme 802.11g wireless networking, optional internal Bluetooth for wireless connectivity, Apple Pro speakers and an 80GB hard drive. FireWire 800 and an L3 cache remain exclusive to the Power Macs and 17 “ PowerBook for now. 
The entry-level 15-inch iMac inherits the former high-end machine’s 800-MHz processor, which its price has been reduced to $1299. It comes with a Combo drive, GeForce2 graphics, a 60GB hard drive, 256 MB of RAM and Apple speakers, but no Bluetooth or AirPort Extreme support. Both models have two FireWire 400 and five USB ports as before, as well as the usual slate of iApps (now including iLife), AppleWorks, and other bundled software. 
While there have been no substantial internal engineering changes in the new iMacs that would seem to mandate OS X only booting, the iMac Specs page now lists only Mac OS X v10.2 under “System Software.” If they really won’t boot directly into OS 9, it would appear that Apple has deliberately disabled that capability, most likely with a firmware block. The Specs page for the also upgraded eMacs still indicates that they will boot OS 9. 
Speaking of the eMac, there are few changes other than adjusted price points. The base 700 MHz eMac now sells for $999 -- a price drop of $100, and the SuperDrive-equipped 800 MHz model $1,299 -- reduced by $200, both representing pretty impressive values for G4 powered computers. There is also still a CRT-based 600 MHz G3 Snow iMac for $799 equipped with plain vanilla CD-ROM drives. In summary, like the Power Mac upgrades and price drops announced last month, these Spring iMacs add value, some features, and a bit more processor power. As a fashion statement in desktop computers, there’s nothing like these machines, which are, if anything, more chic today than the candy-color and earth tone iMacs displayed in Bloomingdale’s windows back in 1999 - 2000. Viewers of the ultra-stylistic undercover cop fantasy Fastlane get to see an iMac sitting on Lt. Billie Chambers desk in the “candy store” each week surrounded by exotic automobiles and other cool icons of conspicuous consumption. I thought Miami Vice was a lot better example of this genre, but that was another era, and it’s nice to see the iMac included as the computer equivalent of Ferraris and Aston Martins, even if it’s fallen behind in the clock speed race. There’s a lot more to cool than clock speed.
Specs and Prices The 17-inch widescreen flat-panel iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,799, includes: The 15-inch flat panel iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,299, includes: The 17-inch flat CRT eMac, for a suggested retail price of $999 includes: The 17-inch flat CRT eMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,299 includes:
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