This past Friday marked the iMac’s 10th anniversary. In a world of beige boxes (even Apple’s G3 tower at that point), the Bondi Blue plastic all-in-one beauty knocked the computing world on its collective ass. The replacement for the Performa’s price point (which was the first Apple computer I purchased with my own cash), the ‘98 iMac also eliminated ADB & SCSI, had a hockey puck-shaped mouse, and….good Lord, where was the floppy drive?

At the time of the first iMac’s release, I had moved to the east coast right out of SAIC. My initial job out of college was as the first web designer for Interface Monthly magazine, who’s offices were in the Old Port Technology Center area of Portland, Maine. It was there where I saw my first iMac. The company’s owner bought one as soon as it came out, setting it on the reception counter right by the front door. Everyone flocked to the computer upon its arrival like apes to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey: curious, excited, and not exactly sure what to make of it. Casual foot traffic coming from the ferry towards the shops inland would stop in their tracks in our doorway as they walked by, ogling the egg-shaped marvel.

Returning to Chicago about a year later, I bought my mom an iMac, leveraging the computer’s simplicity to soon after convert the whole family from PC users over to iMacs. She’s used that little Graphite bad boy up until about a month ago, finally upgrading to a new MacBook.

Beyond the eye-candy, the complete simplification of Apple’s product line by (then interim CEO) Steve Jobs was an absolutely huge shift for the company. The iMac itself was also a complete simplification in form and function, as a fun-to-use, all-in-one little dynamo. It ushered in the “i”-branded products which, following the iMac’s lead, were ingenious works of industrial design fueled by completely intuitive, usable software. Like my new iPhone 3G. Or my 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM. Well, that doesn’t have “i” in its title. Ok I just wanted to brag.