How the iMac Saved Apple
I never wanted or bought one, but the original iMac was pretty interesting in hindsight.- The colors screamed "I use a computer but am not a computer person".  Back then, culturally, being a computer person was not as accepted as it is now.- The slightly translucent plastic allowed you to see a little bit of the innards, but not so clearly.  This gave the computer case some depth and complexity that you would never otherwise get in "cheap" molded plastic.- The iMac was underpowered even at introduction.  But it showed that computers had already reached the point at which they have more processing power than needed to accomplish almost anything you needed a computer for.- The stacking of the internal components and the location of the vents allowed the computer to be fanless yet have sufficient cooling.  Convection created by the heat of the CRT generated airflow to cool the CPU.