Five Best Tech Articles From Early May Twenty Years Ago
- Steve Jobs introduces Original iMac.
- Stephen Glass's "Hack Heaven" story.
- AT&T and its Digital One Rate plan.
- The article on junk emails.
- A major security breach in My Excite.Â
Today we will be talking about the most interesting topics that were covered about famous tech articles in early May, twenty years ago.
The birth of iMac
In May 1998, a lot of people were praising the design of the new iMac. Tech journalists were competing who would make a better description of such a unique machine. Andrew Gore and Anita Epler from MacWorld wrote, "It demands to be noticed, sporting a fresh, ultramodern design that is at the same time very familiar". Other were cautious while predicting the sales numbers. "It’s classic Steve Jobs — a gamble. But it looks like a good bet to me.", wrote Charles Piller from the Los Angeles Times.
Hack Heaven story
Before everyone found out that Stephen Glass is no more than a fiction writer who used to put a lot of fake details into his viral stories, everyone was caught up in the story of a 15-year-old hacker, a fake electronics corporation called Jukt Micronics and other details.
Digital One Rate cellphone plan
One of the major stories at the time was the announcement of AT&T to implement their flat-rate mobile phone plan called Digital One Rate. This significant move was meant to replace car phones, second lines, and your home telephone set. It would cost $89 per month and you could get 600 minutes of talk-time. Walt Mossberg, a tech journalist, tested it out and wrote that the system isn't working very well, and has a lot of dead spots.
A spammer's life
The story called "The American Way of Spam" by Amy Harmon talks about the time when spamming wasn't that usual on the Internet. There were no tools for users to defend themselves from the junk mail, and you were forced to read it all.
The security breach in web portal My Excite
After a major security flaw on the My Excite, which ended in users' search details being revealed in public like news preferences, educational history, and similar, the CNET used the opportunity to talk about the pitfalls of online data collection. As we can notice, this topic is popular until this very day.