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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/IMac G3/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 4 July 2024 [1].

IMac G3

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Nominator(s): Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:31, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Apple Computer was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and irrelevance. They were saved by a combination of ruthless cost-cutting by their new interim CEO, Steve Jobs, and a hit product—the iMac G3, which if you lived through the era helped usher in the colorful candy plastics era of consumer products, as well as reshaping the idea of what computers were supposed to look like. This article was reviewed at GAN by DFlhb and I look forward to acting on comments here to make this article on a major product in computer history shine further. Thanks in advance for your time reviewing! Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:31, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sodium

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Putting myself down for a review. I intend to take a look at a review in a bit. (by next weekish) Sohom (talk) 18:45, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • but the company still needed new hit products. This probably needs a slightly less optimistic framing
  • ... became the iMac, to be inexpensive and with easy Internet connectivity. "to be inexpensive" seems to be off grammar-wise.
  • I feel like the Background could do a better job of transitioning into the rest of the article, the last paragraph is a bit stilted and does not do a good job of introducing the next section.
  • Engineers adapted the abandoned Common Hardware Reference Platform specification to speed development. Is it abandoned now or was it abandoned then?
  • According to Jon Rubinstein, Jobs had always known about the CD tray. I feel like we are missing something here. Why had he not raised this before according Jon?
  • The jpeg artifacting of File:IMac_G3_color_carousel.gif is noticeable even at its small size. I'd suggest removing it or replacing it with a GIF with a higher resolution.
  • How well did iMac G3 do in the traditional office/enterprise computing space that was prevalent during this time? Do RS cover it?
  • Hiawatha Bray said the iMac was doomed and a severe misstep from Jobs a word or two about why Hiawatha Bray thought the way they did would be nice.
  • two FireWire ports What is a FireWire port, the article kinda assumes that the reader is familiar but it would be nice to fit a sentence somewhere about what it does. (I guess I'm revealing that I'm Gen Z)
  • Wikilink VGA
  • Wikilink CD-ROM in the Release section
  • Ditto for CD-RW
  • maintained Apple's position as a leader of the emerging digital audio and video sector. Less optimistic framing, also this isn't directly in the cited source AFAICS?
That's it for me. sohom@enwiki 23:10, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Sohom Datta, thanks for the review. I've tried to address all the above; Bray's comments particularly revolve around the lack of a floppy, so I tried rewording the first mention in the high-level comments and then elaborated later on when discussing the drawbacks. I've reworked the end of the background section to introduce the players a bit and then shift to the specific project, let me know if that works better. The Rubinstein bit gets to the fact that Jobs was mercurial and (as the article talks about somewhat) pretty much would change his mind on a whim. That might be a bit too much going into the weeds, so I'm fine with just simplifying that bit so there's not the back-and-forth and it's a little more straightforward. Only thing I didn't change is the carousel image: as you can see it's not a very lossy GIF at full resolution, the limitation seems to be Mediawiki's thumbnail rendering, and I don't think there's a way of fixing that unfortunately. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:26, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The changes look good me. I disagree wrt to the gif, however, that is not worth opposing over. Support sohom@enwiki 03:39, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Source review by Generalissima

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I'm in a productive mood today, let's get going on this.

  • Lede is uncited, and since there's nothing seemingly contentious here I'd say that hits WP:LEDECITE well.
  • Well, besides the infobox. That introductory price ($1,299) is neither referenced elsewhere in the article or cited for that matter. The price points of later models of the machine are given, but not the first. Should be pretty easy to fix this, however.
  • Everything in all body sections is cited. I don't see any potentially controversial or contentious claims that are uncited. Subjective claims are properly attributed.
  • Citation section is properly organized and titled.
  • Everything with pages has page numbers. The bibliography is also well formatted, and works are cited consistently with ISBNs and ISSNs as applicable.
  • Good mix of all sorts of sources here. I was a bit worried about Segall 2013 but it seems to only be used in an about-self context or for direct quotes so I think that's good here. I commend you on digging through 1990s and early 2000s computer magazines for a while; they have certainly been used well.

All in all, I think citing that price figure is the only thing left to do. Cheers. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 22:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Generalissima, thanks for looking. I went ahead and removed the price. The article covers the rough price range (and the more germane point it was cheaper) in the development, and then the lower base prices are discussed in the review, so I don't think you need the exact one (and doesn't seem to have coverage that makes the price so important it should be in the infobox.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 13:27, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support for source review. Good job with this. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 13:30, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Gog the Mild

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Recusing to review

  • References: article titles are a mix of sentence case and title case. They should be consistent. (How they appear in their originals is irrelevant.
  • Press and Cooper: is it possible to provide a page range?
  • "The iMac was Apple's first major product release under its CEO Steve Jobs". Does "its" add anything here? I assume that Apple had other CEOs.
  • "the company he had co-founded and then been ousted from". Perhaps dates for each of these? Which would tie in with the "after eleven years away" in the lead, which I can't find referenced in the main article.
  • Any chance of an image of the round mouse?
  • "4 GB"; "6GB" ?
  • "A more substantial revision to the iMac lineup came in 1999." When in 1999? I assume this was different to, and prior to "On October 5, 1999, Apple released a new series of iMacs"?
  • "so users could easily add additional RAM; and a slot for an AirPort wireless networking card". Why a semi colon rather than a comma?
  • "a better graphics chipset, and a larger hard drive." Better and larger than what?
  • "a larger hard drive"; "with more RAM". Similarly.
  • Some of the prose is a bit uninspired. Eg, two consecutive paragraphs start "On October 5, 1999, Apple released a new" and "On July 19, 2000, Apple released a new". Or, in one paragraph sentences starting "The new iMac line"; "The new models; "The new iMacs had"; "Three new models".
  • "500-, 600-. or 700 MHz processor" and similar cases. Why the hanging modifier when the following main modifier is not followed by a hyphen?

More to follow. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:28, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    • Hey Gog, thanks for the opening comments. I've taken a stab at all the above, and I believe addressed most of them. The "larger hard drive" and similar are attempts to make the prose less wordy and technical, they're just comparing the sizes of the hard drives or memory amounts to the previous models they replace. Beyond that, it's kind of just listing tech specs so I don't think there's much room for exciting prose. I'm fine with slimming it down even further, but previous reviews felt that just saying basically "they were faster and had more memory and hard drive space" was even more samey-sounding. I suppose the alternative is drastically summarizing it further and just leaving the specifics to the technical specification section entirely, if you think that's a better option? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 12:52, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "its original mouse and keyboard ... calling it an example of style over substance." Should that be 'calling them examples of ...'?
  • "were later replaced with the Apple Pro Mouse and Apple Pro Keyboard for the 2000-revision iMacs." I think that readers will realise that 2000 is later than the release date, in which case "later" can be deleted.
  • "museums including The Henry Ford". See MOS:INSTITUTIONS "The word the at the start of a name is uncapitalized in running text, regardless of the institution's own usage".
  • "nearly 20 percent were Microsoft Windows users who had switched to the Mac". Suggest deleting "had".
  • "The iMac continued to be a strong seller for Apple as it returned to profitability, with 3.7 million units sold by July 2000". The previous two sentences have already established the first part of this. Perhaps 'a strong seller for Apple after it return to profitability ...'?
  • "public's introduction to Jony Ive". May be worth a second link here, which is allowed these days.
  • "The iMac was so successful in the education market Apple created a G4-powered successor named the eMac." This seems to end abruptly. Possibly add something like '... designed for and promoted to the education sector' or similar?
  • "George Foreman Grills". Why the upper-case G for Grills?
  • Article titles still in title case, see Press; Segall; and Simmonds. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:16, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One comment above was missed. In is now in green. I am supporting anyway, lovely work. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:19, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Z1720

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No concerns with the prose. Additional comments below:

  • "It sold more than 5 million units in its lifetime." MOS:NUMERAL recommends that integers between zero and nine be written in words. Consider changing the 5 to five.
  • I might have missed it, but what is the G3 referring to? Lots of time was spent talking about how the model got the iMac name, but why/when was G3 added?
  • Checked the lede and the infobox, and everything seems to be cited in the article.

Please ping me when ready for additional comments. Z1720 (talk) 02:29, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Z1720, I've changed the numeral in the lead (I remembered to do it in the body but not there before, go figure.) The G3 processor is mentioned in the lead and later on. The "iMac G3" title was a retronym added to distinguish it from the iMac G4 when the latter released; I'm looking through sources now to see if I can find one that specifically calls out that change rather than just talking about them staying on sale side-by-side, and will update if possible. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 15:48, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please ping me once you have concluded your research into the G3 addition to the name, and I will take a look. Z1720 (talk) 20:24, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Z1720, went trawling. From what I can tell Apple never specifically called it the "iMac G3" themselves; it got shuffled to a subpage when it was sold alongside the newer G4 iMac, but wasn't specifically called that in any press release or anything I found from Apple. Went through Macworlds and press of the time and there was a point of "the new iMac/the old iMac" and "G3 iMac/iMac G3" formulations by the press and retailers to make it clearer; by now it's pretty much always referred to as the latter in retrospectives (e.g. the legacy sourcing covering this in the article.) At this point "iMac G3" is definitely a WP:COMMONNAME thing but if you think it's a little misleading to title it that in the lead I'm open to altering it. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:01, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it is misleading in the title: If it is called iMac G3 by the industry now, then that is the common name. However, I recommend that a sentence or note is added somewhere in the article body, explaining that, although it was released as the iMac, it is now referred to as the iMac G3 to distinguish it from other products. Since this is a relatively minor point, I'll support. Z1720 (talk) 16:18, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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Image source, licence, ALT and placement seem fine for me. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:08, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support from RoySmith

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Just a few random comments:

  • board of directors dismissed CEO Gil Amelio on July 9, 1997, and Jobs replaced him as interim CEO this is a little awkward; it sort of makes it sound like Amelio was also an interim CEO. Maybe something like "...Jobs replaced him, in an interim capacity"?
  • Jobs told staff Apple's problems stemmed from its poor products. maybe "Jobs told his staff that ...."
  • and was succeeded by 29-year-old Jony Ive, who inherited the award-winning design team could you make it clearer that Ive was already at Apple and just moved up, as opposed to be recruited to replace Brunner?
  • much lower than the $2,000 (equivalent to $3,700 in 2023) for entry-level models. -> "... for current entry-level models"
  • the Power Macintosh 8600, 9600, and Power Macintosh G3 tower computers had translucent green latches, and the LaserWriter 8500, eMate 300, and Studio Display incorporated translucent colored plastics there's a problem here in that most of those link to product articles with images that don't show any translucent parts. That's not strictly a problem with this article, but it leads to a discordant reader experience. Would it be possible to find images that show the translucent bits of these products?
  • Ive was especially proud of the round mouse Ive may have been proud, but the mouse was despised by just about everybody else. This is discussed at Hockey puck mouse. You don't need to go into a lot of detail, but it would disingenuous to not at least mention this.
    • Oh, never mind, I see you cover that further down.
  • The first release of the iMac G3 had ... an infrared port ... new models ... The IrDA port and mezzanine slot were removed. It may not be clear to readers that "IrDA" refers to the previously mentioned "infrared port".
  • It had the same processor and memory as the previous iMac but with a larger hard drive -> "... but a larger hard drive" (i.e. drop the "with")
  • had a 400 MHz and 450 MHz processor, respectively, and larger hard drives Not sure about this, but I think you want "processors" plural, like "hard drives". Likewise with These models shipped with ... a 500, 600, or 700 MHz processor in the next paragraph.

Overall, nice job. I haven't read this in enough detail to venture an official support, so just take these for what they're worth RoySmith (talk) 23:48, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey RoySmith, thanks for the comments. I believe I've addressed all the above; you're right that the other mentioned products don't have good images that show their translucency in their respective articles; product photos for those details might be hard to find but I'll see if there's some out there on Commons already or Flickr that could be added. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:01, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I took another pass...

  • unable to quickly distribute split infinitive
  • the iMac has Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports, which are faster and cheaper than Apple Desktop Bus and serial ports Possibly "which were faster"? The problem here is that for all three of these technologies (USB, ADB, serial), there's a wide range of possible speeds (well, maybe not for ADB), and the unit cost has varied greatly over time. So the cost/speed comparison is really only valid at some point in time in the past.
  • And still on the topic of USB, unsupported by any third-party Mac peripheral seems like an odd statement since the whole idea of USB was that devices weren't platform-specific.
    • The implication is that while Apple was switching to a common standard, it wasn't widely available, and it was essentially killing off the existing Mac peripheral market that did exist, even if it was tiny. Among the invested, ditching the old standards was pretty controversial.
  • using the three-dimensional (3D) modeling program Alias Wavefront to sculpt models see if you can rephrase to avoid repeating the word "model"
  • primitive 3D printers used to create physical mockups why were they using primitive ones? Apple's not one to cheap out on tooling so I'm assuming the answer is something like "the 3d printers that were available at the time were primitive by modern standards"
    • Yeah, the answer is by modern standards they're primitive. Is there a rephrase you want to make that clearer?
  • Jobs reconsidered the network computer concept as similar products struggled in the market could you give some examples of those products?
  • He was persuaded to recalibrate the project as a full-featured computer who persuaded him?
    • Source doesn't say; reworked.
  • with optical and hard drives "optical" and "hard" are not comparable concepts. Perhaps "optical and magnetic disks"?
  • In some places, you use "US$", in others just "$". Pick one.
  • You've got a few places where you pile on what I assume are extraneous references, i.e. WP:CLUMP. This paragraph is particularly bad: Positive reviews highlighted the computer's ease of use for setup and operation;[56][62][63] According to Morse, the iMac felt "almost human" and approachable for a non-tech consumer.[61] While publications including CNN and PC Week considered the iMac's performance fast,[56][58][62][64] others felt the machine was underpowered, and PC World's testing showed that the machine generally performed less well than Windows PC competitors.[65] While reviews noted that general consumers and new computer buyers would be well-served by the machine,[66] reviews were less sure that it could fit into an office environment, especially if it was not networked.[57][59][64][67]
    • Bundled the longer ref chains into ref bundles.
  • its cable was frequently considered too short, "frequently" seems like the wrong word here. Something like, "many reviewers considered..."?
  • The quarter the iMac shipped ==> "In the quarter..."
  • to making its first profit in three years in 1998 How much profit did they make?
  • The iMac's massive success helped buoy Apple ... and refreshed ... and positioned rephrase to eliminate the repetition of "and".
I found one more split infinitive and fixed that. As for primitive 3d printers, maybe something along the lines of (assuming the sourcing supports this) "They used CNC milling machines and took advantage of the newly emerging 3D printing technology to create physical mockups"? But there's no reason to hold up my support while you mull on the details of that. This is a really nice article; you cover an interesting portion of Apple's history in a compelling and easy to read format. Good job. Oh, yeah, you're missing a couple of WP:ALT texts (IMac wordmark (1998-2003).svg, Apple USB Mouse.JPG) RoySmith (talk) 20:47, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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