Latest news with #iMacG3
Digital Trends
11 hours ago
- Digital Trends
This might be the coolest way to charge an Apple Watch
If you love a touch of nostalgia and have an Apple Watch, then this new charger from Spigen may well appeal. Joining Spigen's C1 collection featuring accessories inspired by the design of classic Apple products, the Apple Watch Classic C1 charger sports the familiar look of Apple's iconic iMac G3, which shook up the PC market when it launched in 1998. Recommended Videos The $35 device is designed to house your Apple Watch charging puck, which fits snugly in the G3's 'display' after you've fed the wire through the back. It even features the computer's slightly slanted display angle for a comfortable view of the watch face. The charger comes in four different colors that match some of the options offered by the original iMac G3, namely Tangerine, Graphite, Ruby, and the original Bondi Blue. The Apple Watch Classic C1 charger is compatible with the Apple Watch Ultra (49mm), Apple Watch series 10/9/8/SE2/7/6/SE/5/4, AirPods 4 (ANC), and AirPods Pro 2, but just to be clear, the actual charging puck is not part of the package. Apple's iMac G3 arrived at a time when PCs came in one flavor — beige and boring. Indeed, its colorful design signaled that it was more than a computer. It was a promise that tech could be, well, joyful. The all-in-one iMac G3 proved popular with customers looking for something a little different, and its subsequent success played a pivotal role in Apple's resurgence after years of financial struggles. Recognizing its iconic status and keen to highlight its significance in design and technology history, the Smithsonian Institution added the iMac G3 to its collection. The computer sold more than six million units between 1998 and 2003, cementing the foundations of the iMac, which continues as a product line today — albeit with a starkly different look. And now it's inspired the design of an Apple Watch charger, too.
The Verge
17 hours ago
- The Verge
Charge your Apple Watch on this tiny iMac G3 replica
Previous additions to Spigen's Classic C1 series of Apple accessories include iPhone and AirPods cases inspired by the iMac G3's bright colors. Its new Apple Watch stand goes one step further and recreates the entire design of the iconic computer in miniature so it can fit on your bedside table and charge your smartwatch overnight. The Apple Watch Classic C1 Charger Stand is available now through Spigen's online store for $34.99 in tangerine, graphite, ruby, and the iMac G3's original bondi blue color option. That's cheap enough to be an impulse purchase, but it's important to note that the stand doesn't come with its own magnetic Apple Watch charger. You'll need to use your own by inserting the charging puck into a slot on the front of the stand and threading the rest of the USB cable through it and out the back. The base of the stand is covered in a non-slip silicone finish to prevent it from sliding off a table, and it's wrapped in a transparent colored plastic on the back. Spigen says the charging stand is compatible with Apple Watches going all the way back to the Series 4, both SE versions, and both Apple Watch Ultra 1 and 2.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
OpenAI's Ambitions Just Became Crystal Clear
Sam Altman is done with keyboards and screens. All that swiping and typing and scrolling—too much potential friction between you and ChatGPT. Earlier today, OpenAI announced its intentions to solve this apparent problem. The company is partnering with Jony Ive, the longtime head of design at Apple, who did pioneering work on products such as the iMac G3, the iPod, and, most famously, the iPhone. Together, Altman and Ive say they want to create hardware built specifically for AI software. Everyone, Altman suggested in a highly produced announcement video, could soon have access to a 'team of geniuses'—presumably, ChatGPT-style assistants—on a 'family of devices.' Such technology 'deserves something much better' than today's laptops, he argued. What that will look like, exactly, he didn't say, and OpenAI declined my request for comment. But the firm will pay roughly $5 billion to acquire Io, Ive's start-up, to figure that 'something much better' out as Ive takes on 'deep design and creative responsibilities' across OpenAI. (Emerson Collective, the majority owner of The Atlantic, is an investor in both Io and OpenAI. And OpenAI entered a corporate partnership with The Atlantic last year.) [Read: The great AI lock-in has begun] Moving into hardware could become OpenAI's most technologically disruptive, and financially lucrative, expansion to date. AI assistants are supposed to help with everything, so it's only natural to try to replace the phones and computers that people do everything on. If the company is successful, within a decade you might be reading (or listening to) a ChatGPT-generated news roundup on an OpenAI device instead of reading an article on your iPhone, or asking the device to file your taxes instead of logging in to TurboTax. In Altman's view, current devices offer only clunky ways to use AI products: You have to open an app or a website, upload the relevant information, continually prompt the AI bot, and then transfer any useful outputs elsewhere. In the promotional video, Ive agrees, suggesting that the era of personal computers and smartphones—a period that he helped define—needs a refresh: 'It's just common sense to at least think, surely, there's something beyond these legacy products,' he tells Altman. Although OpenAI and Io have not specified what they are building, a number of wearable AI pins, smartglasses, and other devices announced over the past year have suggested a vision of an AI assistant always attached to your body—an 'external brain,' as Altman called it today. These products have, so far, uniformly flopped. As just one example, Humane, the maker of a $700 AI 'pin' that attached to a user's clothing, shut down the poorly reviewed product less than a year after launch. Ive, in an interview today with Bloomberg, called these early AI gadgets 'very poor products.' And Apple and OpenAI have had their own share of uninspiring, or even embarrassing, product releases. Still, if any pair has a shot at designing a legitimately useful AI device, it is likely the man who unleashed ChatGPT partnering with someone who led the design of the Apple smartphones, tablets, and laptops that have defined decades of American life and technology. Certainly, a bespoke device would also rapidly accelerate OpenAI's commercial ambitions. The company, once a small research lab, is now valued at $300 billion and growing rapidly, and in March reported that half a billion people use ChatGPT each week. Already, OpenAI is angling to replace every major tech firm: ChatGPT is an internet search tool as powerful as Google, can help you shop online and remove the need to type into Amazon, can be your work software instead of the Microsoft Office suite. OpenAI is even reportedly building a social-media platform. For now, OpenAI relies on the smartphones and web browsers people use to access ChatGPT—products that are all made by business rivals. Altman is trying to cut out the middleman and condense digital life into a single, unified piece of hardware and software. The promise is this: Your whole life could be lived through such a device, turning OpenAI's products into a repository of uses and personal data that could be impossible to leave—just as, if everyone in your family has an iPhone, Macbook, and iCloud storage plan, switching to Android is deeply unpleasant and challenging. [Read: 'We're definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI'] Several other major tech firms are also trying to integrate generative AI into their legacy devices and software. Amazon has incorporated generative AI into the Alexa voice assistant, Google into its Android phones and search bar, and Apple into the iPhone. Meta has built an AI assistant into its apps and sells smartglasses. Products and platforms which disrupted work, social life, education, and more in the early 2000s are showing their age: Google has become crowded with search-optimized sites and AI-generated content that can make it harder for users to find good information; Amazon is filled with junk; Facebook is a cesspool; and the smartphone is commonly viewed as attention-sapping, if not outright brain-melting. Tech behemoths are jury-rigging AI features into their products to avoid being disrupted—but these rollouts, and Apple's in particular, have been disastrous, giving dangerous health advice, butchering news summaries, and generally crowding and slowing user experiences. Almost 20 years ago, when Apple introduced the iPhone, Steve Jobs said in a now-famous speech that 'every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.' Seeming to be in pursuit of similar magic, today's video announcing OpenAI's foray into hardware began with Altman saying, 'I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer.' But Jobs had an actual product to share and sell. Altman, for now, is marketing his imagination. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
22-05-2025
- Business
- Atlantic
OpenAI's Ambitions Just Became Crystal Clear
Sam Altman is done with keyboards and screens. All that swiping and typing and scrolling—too much potential friction between you and ChatGPT. Earlier today, OpenAI announced its intentions to solve this apparent problem. The company is partnering with Jony Ive, the longtime head of design at Apple, who did pioneering work on products such as the iMac G3, the iPod, and, most famously, the iPhone. Together, Altman and Ive say they want to create hardware built specifically for AI software. Everyone, Altman suggested in a highly produced announcement video, could soon have access to a 'team of geniuses'—presumably, ChatGPT-style assistants—on a 'family of devices.' Such technology 'deserves something much better' than today's laptops, he argued. What that will look like, exactly, he didn't say, and OpenAI declined my request for comment. But the firm will pay roughly $5 billion to acquire Io, Ive's start-up, to figure that 'something much better' out as Ive takes on 'deep design and creative responsibilities' across OpenAI. (Emerson Collective, the majority owner of The Atlantic, is an investor in both Io and OpenAI. And OpenAI entered a corporate partnership with The Atlantic last year.) Moving into hardware could become OpenAI's most technologically disruptive, and financially lucrative, expansion to date. AI assistants are supposed to help with everything, so it's only natural to try to replace the phones and computers that people do everything on. If the company is successful, within a decade you might be reading (or listening to) a ChatGPT-generated news roundup on an OpenAI device instead of reading an article on your iPhone, or asking the device to file your taxes instead of logging in to TurboTax. In Altman's view, current devices offer only clunky ways to use AI products: You have to open an app or a website, upload the relevant information, continually prompt the AI bot, and then transfer any useful outputs elsewhere. In the promotional video, Ive agrees, suggesting that the era of personal computers and smartphones—a period that he helped define—needs a refresh: 'It's just common sense to at least think, surely, there's something beyond these legacy products,' he tells Altman. Although OpenAI and Io have not specified what they are building, a number of wearable AI pins, smartglasses, and other devices announced over the past year have suggested a vision of an AI assistant always attached to your body—an 'external brain,' as Altman called it today. These products have, so far, uniformly flopped. As just one example, Humane, the maker of a $700 AI 'pin' that attached to a user's clothing, shut down the poorly reviewed product less than a year after launch. Ive, in an interview today with Bloomberg, called these early AI gadgets 'very poor products.' And Apple and OpenAI have had their own share of uninspiring, or even embarrassing, product releases. Still, if any pair has a shot at designing a legitimately useful AI device, it is likely the man who unleashed ChatGPT partnering with someone who led the design of the Apple smartphones, tablets, and laptops that have defined decades of American life and technology. Certainly, a bespoke device would also rapidly accelerate OpenAI's commercial ambitions. The company, once a small research lab, is now valued at $300 billion and growing rapidly, and in March reported that half a billion people use ChatGPT each week. Already, OpenAI is angling to replace every major tech firm: ChatGPT is an internet search tool as powerful as Google, can help you shop online and remove the need to type into Amazon, can be your work software instead of the Microsoft Office suite. OpenAI is even reportedly building a social-media platform. For now, OpenAI relies on the smartphones and web browsers people use to access ChatGPT—products that are all made by business rivals. Altman is trying to cut out the middleman and condense digital life into a single, unified piece of hardware and software. The promise is this: Your whole life could be lived through such a device, turning OpenAI's products into a repository of uses and personal data that could be impossible to leave—just as, if everyone in your family has an iPhone, Macbook, and iCloud storage plan, switching to Android is deeply unpleasant and challenging. Several other major tech firms are also trying to integrate generative AI into their legacy devices and software. Amazon has incorporated generative AI into the Alexa voice assistant, Google into its Android phones and search bar, and Apple into the iPhone. Meta has built an AI assistant into its apps and sells smartglasses. Products and platforms which disrupted work, social life, education, and more in the early 2000s are showing their age: Google has become crowded with search-optimized sites and AI-generated content that can make it harder for users to find good information; Amazon is filled with junk; Facebook is a cesspool; and the smartphone is commonly viewed as attention-sapping, if not outright brain-melting. Tech behemoths are jury-rigging AI features into their products to avoid being disrupted—but these rollouts, and Apple's in particular, have been disastrous, giving dangerous health advice, butchering news summaries, and generally crowding and slowing user experiences. Almost 20 years ago, when Apple introduced the iPhone, Steve Jobs said in a now-famous speech that 'every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.' Seeming to be in pursuit of similar magic, today's video announcing OpenAI's foray into hardware began with Altman saying, 'I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer.' But Jobs had an actual product to share and sell. Altman, for now, is marketing his imagination.
Daily Mail
03-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
I have a 2000 Apple iMac DV with original packaging - will it grow in value if I keep it? DAN HATFIELD replies
I have an Apple iMac computer that I bought in 2000. It also comes with a printer. It's all in working order. Is it worth much - and would it be better to hold onto it as a future collectible? Mike, via email. Dan Hatfield, This is Money resident expert valuer, replies: Launched in an optimistic decade - the time of Britney Spears, TV show Big Brother, and collective relief that the world didn't end with a Millennium bug - it's a piece of modern-day nostalgia. In the decade previous, technology leapt - and it gave us some iconic pieces of tech, including the first version of your computer, the iMac G3 in 1998. It had me thinking about how staggeringly far we've come since the turn of the millennium, with modern computers now being around 1,000 times more powerful than yours - and that's no exaggeration. It's quite amazing, really, we often think of the year 2000 as 'not that long ago', and yet a quarter of a century has passed so in tech terms it's been light years. For most of human history, progress moved at a snail's pace, measured in lifetimes, not years. Stone tools lasted millennia, the wheel took centuries to catch on, and writing systems evolved over generations. Advancement was historically, glacial. Then came the 20th century, a time of electricity, flight, nuclear energy, and the birth of computing. We didn't just pick up speed, we hit warp drive. We are living through a technological revolution so vast it makes the Industrial Revolution look quaint. Computers are now shaping how we live, think, communicate and even what it means to be human. And machines like your iMac? They're part of that story. Small in size, maybe but part of a seismic societal shift. Now, let's talk about the brand who created your item, Apple. Founded in 1976 in a California garage by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, the company had its ups and downs. By the mid 90s, Apple was struggling. They had unfocused product lines and a dwindling market share. Then in 1997, Steve Jobs returned to the company he'd been ousted from 12 years earlier. His comeback was nothing short of legendary. He cut the clutter, refocused the brand, and in 1998 launched the iMac G3, a computer that threw out the beige box and ushered in a new age of cool, colourful, consumer-friendly tech. This wasn't just about performance it was about personality. Technology was no longer just practical, it was aspirational. Apple wasn't just making computers but was reshaping our relationship with them. Your model, although from the year 2000, is part of that very lineage. The iMac DV (short for Digital Video) was launched at the very dawn of the new millennium, arriving in late 1999. It built on the success of the earlier iMac G3 but added FireWire ports and better performance for users wanting to dive into digital video editing, something previously reserved for professionals. This machine helped to put creativity into the hands of the everyday user. Now, I'm not going to get too technical, the history of tech is about as far as a self-proclaimed luddite can stretch. But what I do know is that the iMac DV was a huge success, paving the way for Apple's meteoric rise - and when I say meteoric, I mean it. As of 2025, Apple is one of the most valuable companies on the planet, with a market capitalisation of over £3trillion. Now, I might be rubbish with tech, but I'm decent with money, and even I can't wrap my head around how many zeroes that involves! Today, nostalgia for the iMac is strong. It's the grandparent of over 2billion Apple devices currently in use. Apple isn't just a tech company but moreover a cultural phenomenon and early machines like yours, from its comeback years, are increasingly collectable. The original Bondi Blue iMac G3s are especially sought after, fetching £300 to £500, depending on colour and condition. You're quid's in If you've got the original box and accessories as this all adds to the value. While yours isn't the first iMac, it's the DV version that soon followed which is still a lovely bit of Apple history. Most people through the packaging and manuals as soon as the computer hits their desk, so it's great that you still have these as this further adds value. What could also add value is the colour of yours as the sage green model is particularly desirable within the collector community. Given its excellent condition, I'd expect you to fetch around £300. If you were to sell it online, you'd likely see offers beginning around £200 but don't be tempted to bite too early, definitely hold out for an offer that starts with a 3, not a 2. Given how many of these machines were mass produced, I think the price is pretty impressive. But, as technology continues to evolve at breakneck speed and nostalgia for the early days of computing becomes more historic, I wouldn't be surprised if these iMacs start fetching close to £1,000 in the next 15 to 20 years. So, there you have it, a little machine with a big legacy. A computer that once whirred to life in Y2K, and now sits as a cherished time capsule of a simpler digital age. And if that doesn't make you want to dance to a bit of NSYNC and fire up MSN Messenger, I don't know what will. Send in your Modern Treasures Dan Hatfield is This Morning's money-making expert and resident pawnbroker. He is an international specialist in antiques, jewellery, diamonds and collectibles. Dan's first non-fiction book, Money Maker: Unlock Your Money Making Potential (£16.99, published by Hodder Catalyst) is available now. This is Money's Modern Treasures column is after your items and collections for valuations. Please send in as much information as possible, including photographs, to: editor@ with the email subject line: Modern Treasures We're after post-War items only please and we may contact you for further information. Dan will do his best to reply to your message in his bi-weekly column, but he won't be able to answer everyone or correspond privately with readers. Nothing in his replies constitutes regulated financial advice. Published questions are sometimes edited for brevity or other reasons. As with anything, if you are looking to sell items and collections, it is wise to get a second and third opinion - not just rely on Dan's suggestions.
