iMac G3 (Bondi Blue)

Unveiled August 15, 1998, the iMac G3 in its original Bondi Blue finish was nothing short of a cultural earthquake, the machine widely credited with saving Apple and announcing, unmistakably, that Steve Jobs' return had reshaped the company's entire design philosophy. Housed in a translucent, egg-shaped shell unlike anything else on the market, the iMac abandoned decades of beige computing convention in favor of bold color and organic curves designed by Jony Ive, whose partnership with Jobs would define Apple's aesthetic for the next two decades. Underneath that unforgettable shell sat a PowerPC G3 processor at 233MHz running Mac OS 8.1, delivering the same real-world performance edge over Intel's Pentium II that had already made the Beige G3 a benchmark darling, now wrapped in a consumer-friendly all-in-one package that required no assembly beyond plugging in a single power cord. Apple's decision to ship the iMac with USB as its only peripheral connector, dropping ADB, SCSI, and famously the floppy disk drive entirely, was hugely controversial at launch; critics and longtime Mac users alike questioned how anyone would transfer files or use their existing peripherals, and a small but vocal chorus predicted the machine would flop. Instead, the iMac became an instant sensation, selling explosively through the 1998 holiday season and single-handedly jump-starting mainstream USB adoption across the entire PC industry, since peripheral makers rushed to build USB devices for iMac's massive new audience. Its integrated 15-inch CRT display, handle for easy carrying, and unapologetically friendly design made computing feel approachable and even fun again, a stark departure from the intimidating beige towers that had dominated the previous decade. Reviewers were often split on the bold aesthetic itself, some publications gushed over its playful design while others called it a gimmick, but almost everyone agreed the underlying engineering and G3 performance were genuinely excellent, and the debate over its looks only fueled more publicity. The Bondi Blue iMac's runaway success gave Apple its first profitable year in a long time and proved decisively that Jobs' instincts for design-led computing could translate into real commercial results, not just critical buzz. Its legacy is difficult to overstate: it revived Apple as a company, reintroduced the world to bold industrial design in consumer electronics, killed the floppy disk far faster than it otherwise would have died, and set the stage for the fruit-colored iMacs, the Blue and White G3, and ultimately the entire modern Apple product philosophy that continues to this day.