Technology

This came out when I was still in elementary school. I remember at the time the computer guru people were like, "It's not a real computer, it doesn't even have a 3 1/2" floppy drive. How can it be a computer without a floppy disk?" And people bought into that sentiment because Apple of the 90s was a company with no new ideas that was almost dead.

From an LA Times article, "Wait, did I really say “no floppy”? I did. This is probably the biggest gamble. Third-party vendors will no doubt develop a floppy that will attach via one of the iMac’s universal serial bus ports for connecting peripheral devices. (USB is a successor to a range of ports used previously on PCs and Macs.) My guess is that Apple is wrong about home users--most will still want a floppy (or zip drive) and will have to buy an add-on."

I thought it was kind of neat to not have a floppy because even in those days 1.44MB was pathetically small and there were competing standards for a floppy replacement around 100-120MB range.

I think the biggest influence, besides killing off floppy drive was that this also killed beige PCs. Everybody shit on Apple for their new design but then in a few years they were all putting different colors on their cases and nobody had beige computers anymore.

I never got to use one until almost a decade later, in undergrad, where they were still in use at the kiosks for free internet in the student center. That's where I finally learned to despise the puck mouse.