Things that make us smile: how the iMac story leaked in 1998 from a most unusual source

Business Insider spotted a fun Quora thread on how Apple keeps secrets – and sometimes how it doesn’t. We were amused by former Mac User editor Adam Banks breaking the story of the first iMac back in 1998 from a most unusual source …

I was editing MacUser (UK) in 1998 when rumours surfaced that Apple was working on a completely new kind of Mac. By a series of flukes, we became the first magazine to print what turned out to be a pretty accurate description of the machine a couple of months ahead of its launch as the iMac. We got the details from someone who worked at a third party site where Apple had seeded a test unit.  Probably safe by now to mention what the site was. It was the Pentagon. Compared to the real secrets they were keeping, when it came to some plastic PC they’d been asked not to talk about, I suspect nobody gave a shit.

“The device that saved Apple” was probably a bigger deal than the Pentagon employee could have ever imagined.