The Reaction After The 1998 IMAC Introduction - IMAC At 20

HOW THE MAC CLONES HELPED MAKE THE iMACLIVE, AND WHY MAC USERS DIDN’T ALL EMBRACEAPPLE’S NEWEST CREATION.

- Jason Snell

I was working at home when I got the message: The entire Macworld editorial staff needed to gather in a conference room in a couple of hours. Apple had announced something huge (go.macworld.com/apft) and we needed to react immediately.

STOP THE PRESSES!

It was May 1998 and I was working as a features editor at Macworld magazine— and in those days, magazines were superheroes and websites were their plucky sidekicks. Monthly magazines had a relatively leisurely schedule, but the day the iMac was announced (go.macworld. com/8way), Macworld was in the midst of “close”—the one week where we finalized every single page in the magazine, back to front, and transmitted them to our printing press in the Midwest.

We needed to get the iMac in that issue. Back in those days, far more people would get news about Apple from print media than the web. There would be a Newsweek exclusive the next week, and newspaper coverage, but it wouldn’t do for Macworld to go a month and a half without any word about this product that, editor-in-chief Andrew Gore was certain, would change the Mac forever. (He was the only member of the editorial staff to attend the iMac launch event, and he was right.)

If you look at the resulting issue of Macworld—I admit that I pulled mine out of storage this weekend—you’ll find that the four-page feature story on the iMac announcement is spread across one page number. (Andy’s EIC column about the event [go. macworld.com/dfgr] is on page 17, and his feature, co-written with reviews editor Anita Epler [go.macworld. com/imcm], is on pages 17A, 17B, 17C, and 17D.)