The enduring iMac G3 was introduced by Steve Jobs virtually 26 years in the past, on Might 6, 1998. For its time, the iMac was thought-about a revolution in industrial design with its all-in-one building in translucent plastic. It additionally ditched applied sciences like serial ports and floppy disk readers in favor of CD and USB. However do you know that there was an iMac G3 with a touchscreen? Effectively, form of.
Touchscreen iMac G3
No, Apple formally by no means launched a model of the iMac G3 with a touchscreen. And so far as we all know, Apple engineers have by no means labored on such a mission internally. However Elo Contact Options, an organization specializing in point-of-sale terminals and likewise an Apple Worth Added Reseller, used to switch and promote iMac G3s with a touchscreen.
These iMacs had been bought as interactive kiosk machines, in order that’s why that they had a touchscreen. However we’re not speaking about trendy touchscreen expertise. As a substitute, the iMac G3 bought by Elo had a system that used acoustic sound waves to find out the place the person touched the show.
Apparently, the expertise was additionally able to measuring contact strain years earlier than 3D Contact. The modification was seamless for customers, because it didn’t add any layers on prime of the iMac’s authentic CRT panel. Every of those modified iMacs price $1,599 on the time they usually weren’t precisely straightforward to search out.
Final month, YouTuber Michael MJD (by way of IGN) acquired his palms on certainly one of ELO’s customized iMac G3 prototypes, and fortunate for us, it’s nonetheless absolutely useful. Michael shared a video exhibiting the iMac G3 in motion, and it’s spectacular to see that the touchscreen labored fairly effectively for one thing from 1999.
The machine got here with a modified model of Mac OS 8.6 with the suitable drivers to allow the touchscreen. Customers may faucet, double-tap, and even drag components on the display utilizing their finger. You possibly can see it in motion beneath:
Wrap up
Once more, regardless that this iMac G3 contact display isn’t official from Apple, it’s nonetheless fascinating to see such an outdated pc with such expertise – particularly since there are nonetheless no touchscreen Macs, though rumors recommend that this might change in a number of years.
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