Ode to the iMac.
In the beginning it was beige
I am just old enough to remember a time when computers were large beige boxes that slept under a table in living rooms - or if you were really swanky, in the “computer room”. When I was very young these strange boxes excited me to no end, the strange noises they would make and the strange worlds they could take me to. The first PC I experienced was made by now-defunct manufactures Time, and although it belonged to the family I felt a strong affinity towards it with it’s CRT monitor, external speakers and Lexmark printer that none of us could get to work - not that we could use it with the extortionate price of ink anyway.
My love for big beige Windows machines was cut short when I was around 11 years old. One day while at a friend's house we decided to surf the web. We walked into the front room and I expected to be met with the familiar bellowing fans and loud disc drives like I had at home. This was not what I found however; in place of the usual utilitarian lump was a strange looking flatscreen, clad in brilliant aluminum skin sitting silently on the table. My friend logged in and I was confronted by a sleek operating system like I had never seen before. In place of the start menu was a collection of skeuomorphic icons, all beckoning me towards a different way of computing.
After bouncing around on the web my friend asked if I’d like to play Halo 2 on the big TV adjacent to the computer desk. I declined and asked if I could spend a little more time on this strange, silent behemoth that towered over me. After only ten minutes my whole life was flipped on its head. This aluminum alien made me feel like I could achieve anything and although its exterior was stoic it’s operating system was soft, yielding and supportive. Prompting me to dive deeper and “think different”. From that day on, every time I’d visit my friend I would ask to play on his computer, which his mum told me was called an iMac, and it was made by a strange and eccentric company called Apple.
I left the village I grew up in when I was 13 years old and moved to England. We still had a family PC but after being introduced to music and skateboarding my affinity for computers dwindled and after my parents changed from desktop to laptops, my access to computers all but stopped, apart from visiting the library to use their wheezing, dusty Dell machines. It wouldn’t be until I got to college that I would again be reunited with my muse.
I studied graphic design and we all had access to our own iMac in the class. I would usually stay late into the evening extensively clicking away on Adobe programs and blasting music. Although my classmates had left for the day and my teacher would be attending meetings I never felt alone. There was a strange companionship I felt when I was using an iMac.
I worked a myriad of “unskilled” jobs when I was a teenager but due to smoking cigarettes, partying and buying audio equipment, owning my own iMac seemed like a distant dream only achievable by people from more affluent towns than mine. Using the last payment from my student loan I managed to get a 13” MacBook Pro allowing me to continue to create in the same warm and mothering environment I had become accustomed to in college, yet I still yearned for my own iMac.
Let there be obsolescence:
Fast forward to 2023 and I am now a freelance designer living with my partner, my cat and my 2020 M1 MacBook Pro with its tangle of dongles, external monitors and a cheap but comfortable Ikea desk. I found myself thinking back to my time perched in front of machines I could not afford. By this time I had fully traversed the mysteries of Apple and its philosophies only deepening my affinity for those cookie hippies from California.
Thanks to my craft and the incessant marching forward of tech I found myself in a situation where I could pick up an iMac for less than £100. With money in my pocket and a need for some retail therapy, I walked the streets of Newcastle, window shopping. There in the window of CEX I saw a familiar face. Sat amongst PS5s and iPhone 13s was a lonely iMac looking out to me like the runt of the litter at a cat and dog shelter. Without thinking, I walked to the counter and completed a 14 year long journey for the humble price of £75. As I don’t drive, I had to carry my new child 1.2 miles home. Although the cold aluminum hurt my hands and its weight slowed me down I was ecstatic and eagerly placed it down on my desk to be met with the ephemeral startup chime.
On the first day they created HDDs:
After about two weeks of hacking up my iMac to have custom app icons, cursors and even dual booting Linux Mint to play games, I was over the moon and started my days in front of this grand metal and glass portal to my childhood. That was, until one day, as I sat eagerly watching the start-up screen, I heard the dreaded click of death from deep inside the belly of the beast. To say I was upset at the passing of my iMac would be an understatement, but thanks again to the pace of tech I knew I could get all of the bits I needed to bring my friend back to life.
With the help of a fellow Mac man, I gathered up everything I would need to bring the iMac back to life and make it better than it ever was. SSD, 16GB of ram and a CPU upgrade to an i5 all sat eagerly on my coffee table as we partook in the joys of MARCHintosh.
Taking apart this seamless creature was an eye opening experience, pulling back the veil on something that I always considered magic. Following many iFix tutorials and doing our best to organize the plethora of odd sized screws, and a couple of hours on the operating table we sewed my old friend back up and plugged them in. The clicking death rattle of the old spinning rust we had replaced was gone, but in its place was the sound of fans screaming out from within. A couple of seconds passed and all we had was a black screen and no chime. After a few more hours of troubleshooting and forum diving it became apparent that we couldn’t get it back to life having somehow broken the GPU.
The iMac and its donor machine sat more silent than usual in my front room - a reminder of the fragility that comes with age. I thought my iMac journey was over, mostly due to the fact that a new GPU cost more than the whole machine had cost me in the first place.
The second coming:
As MARCHintosh dragged on and the metal carcass in my living room reminded me of my inability to resurrect my iMac, I was missing the brief holistic moment that came with finally owning such an important machine. That was until I was walking through Newcastle once again with some money in my pocket and I spotted yet another familiar face in a window, this time boasting better specs and at an even cheaper price of £59.99. I entered the shop and asked if I could have the iMac in the window. I got it home and loaded it up with the RAM from my old machine and I’ve been iMac-ing ever since. Finally after the ups and downs of MARCHintosh I have my dream machine once again. Completing a more than a decade long theme in my life.
Here's to the crazy ones:
It could be easy to write my experience off as an expertly calculated exercise in effective marketing but I believe behind all the planned obsolescence, right to repair scandals and social cache modern apple devices have accrued, there still exists a rebellious and liberating message of poetry. I owe a lot to the humble iMac and its ability to make me feel as if I am using a creative tool, a “bicycle for the mind”. Even though the OS is outdated and it is slowly losing the ability to surf the web I hold this iMac very close to my heart. Something that was once so alien and futuristic is now familiar and comforting and is a reminder to the fact that as we age nothing can stay the same, but also the fact that we get to be the architects of our own reality. So before I waffle on any longer I’d like to say thank you to the iMacs of my past and present and thank you to all the people that dared to bring art and beauty to a device that most see as an appliance.
Acknowledgements:
Callan Smith and his mum for letting us play on her shiny new iMac as kids.
Jonny Ives, Steve Jobs and everyone else at Apple for realizing these amazing machines.
Dr Paul Harvey for teaching me how to use Adobe and how to design.
Dylan Mckee for being my resident Mac-master.
CEX and Geekys in Newcastle for stocking these old machines.
And finally my partner Xya for putting up with the slowly growing pile of old and dead apple products accumulating in our living room.