In its original form, the iMac G3 had a gumdrop, ADM-3 or egg-shaped look, with a CRT monitor, mainly enclosed by a colored, translucent plastic case.

From its introduction, the computer has eschewed many entrenched legacy technologies, notably becoming an early adopter of the USB port, and removing floppy disk and later optical disc drives.

The design team made the new computer colorful and translucent, built around a cathode-ray tube display wrapped in a curved plastic case.

[2] The iMac ultimately sold more than six million units, being revised multiple times and appearing in 13 different colors and patterns.

"[3] A commercial, dubbed "Simplicity Shootout", pitted seven-year-old Johann Thomas and his border collie Brodie, with an iMac, against Adam Taggart, a Stanford University MBA student, with an HP Pavilion 8250, in a race to set up their computers.

As the prices of flat screen liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) began to fall, Apple conceived of an update to the iMac.

Inspired by a sunflower, the iMac G4 put the computer in a semi-hemispherical base, with the display sitting above it on a stainless steel arm.

[citation needed] Ever-increasing screen sizes led Apple to make the iMac G5 a more conservative design, with the components of the computer attached to the back of the display and raised above the resting surface with an aluminum foot.

Apple announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference that it would be switching the Macintosh to the x86 architecture and Intel's line of Core processors.

Previously, Macintosh users had to seek out certain hardware, such as keyboards and mice specifically tailored for the "old world" Mac's unique ADB interface and printers and modems with MiniDIN-8 serial ports.

After the iMac, Apple continued to remove older peripheral interfaces and floppy drives from the rest of its product line.

The latter part of the decade saw Apple using anodized aluminum; glass; and white, black, and clear polycarbonate plastics among its build materials.

Today many PCs are more design-conscious than before the iMac's introduction, with multi-shaded design schemes being common, and some desktops and laptops available in colorful, decorative patterns.

[9] Apple's later introduction of the iPod, iBook G3 (Dual USB), and iMac G4 (all featuring snowy-white plastic), inspired similar designs in other companies' consumer electronics products.

[20] Some third party suppliers such as Other World Computing provide upgrade kits that include specialized tools for working on iMacs.

made it difficult for the end-user to replace the hard disk or optical drive, and Apple's warranty explicitly forbids upgrading the socketed CPU.

While conceding the possibility of a mini-tower cannibalizing sales from the Mac Pro, Frakes argues there is enough frustration with iMac's limitations to make such a proposition worthwhile.