Blue Dalmatian & Flower Power
These Apple wallpapers are a blast from the (psychedelic) past.
Listening to the 25th anniversary of the iMac section of the Vergecast over the weekend, Nilay shared an apocryphal story of Steve Jobs' fury surrounding the debut of the Flower Power and Blue Dalmatian iMacs at MacWorld Toyko in 2001. As told by Nilay, after debuting the iMacs and walking off stage, Jobs shouted, "It should have been F***ing ready," referring to the delay of a flat panel iMac, which debuted later in January 2022.
The Flower Power iMac G3. Image Credit: Apple
The Blue Dalmatian and Flower Power iMacs were some of the last iMacs sold before being replaced with the iconic sunflower-inspired iMac G4. According to 512 Pixels, the cases were said to have taken 18 months to develop because their designs were specially moulded into the plastic rather than simply being a decal applied to the computer's shell. Apple’s so extra!
As for specs, these models featured a 500 or 600 MHz PowerPC G3 processor, 10, 20, or 40 GB Hard Disk Drives, 64 or 128 MB (not a typo) of SDRAM, a 8x4x24x CD-RW (I’m now nervous some of you might not know what that acronym means), and weighed just shy of 35 pounds.
The Blue Dalmatian iMac G3. Image Credit: Apple
The computers were aggressively psychedelic, but they only continued a motif that began with the original iMac released in 1998, that of a truly personal computer that felt inviting and approachable. The Blue Dalmatian iMac, in particular, holds a special place in my heart because it was the first Apple product I ever used. Located in my Junior High shop classroom, I used that iMac constantly to create stop-motion films with the various props crafted in shop class.
Short story long, the podcast got me thinking once again about these two unique iMacs and their coordinating wallpapers, so I went ahead and upscaled Apple’s wallpapers for our modern-day devices (though I wouldn't be surprised to hear someone say they're still using one of these Macs as their daily driver). Pay mind that they were originally released in 1024 × 768, so the might lose a bit of sharpness the larger the display they’re applied to. Enjoy!
