Unreal Tournament on the first iMac

Samuel Buchmann

7-4-2026

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Pictures: Samuel Buchmann

With the iMac, Apple made computers cool around the turn of the millennium. Twenty-five years on, I press the start button once more in search of childhood memories.

It’s the year 2001. I’m sitting on the upper floor of a small townhouse in a Thurgau village. My classmate lives here. His father’s a math teacher and owns many Macs. It somehow goes well with his full beard and ’68 hippie vibe. Sometimes he lies on the sofa with his eyes closed and says he isn’t sleeping, but thinking.

Anyway, my buddy now has his own computer, too. A Mac, of course. To be exact, an indigo-blue iMac that he saved up for himself. The iMac looks completely unique compared to other computers – more colourful, more beautiful and cooler. But most importantly, Unreal Tournament is installed on it.

In Unreal Tournament, you can fire rockets at both bots and other players. Blood and body parts fly everywhere, wow! My friend and I are only 13 years old, but our parents aren’t too strict about the age recommendations for video games. After we’re done gaming, we play some real-life deathmatches in the attic using airsoft guns (page in German). Our mums don’t really like it, but we’re allowed to play if we wear ski goggles. Ah, the 2000s country life.

This article is part of our series celebrating Apple’s 50th anniversary. You can find the list of all articles here:

The first cool computer

The iMac was revolutionary back then. It was the first computer with a design that didn’t make you frown. With its transparent, stylish case, the all-in-one PC has a friendly and approachable look, perfect for users who don’t have much experience with computers. It’s suited for use in schools and living rooms. Unlike traditional PCs with an external monitor and separate speakers, the iMac doesn’t end up in a tangle of cables either. Setup takes less than ten minutes, a feature Apple highlights in a promotional video.

The downside of this simplicity is limited compatibility with older technology. For example, it lacks a floppy disk drive and a serial port. Instead, Jony Ive and Steve Jobs fully committed to CD-ROMs, USB and modern network connectivity: the «i» stands for Internet. The iMac is the first mass-market computer fully designed for this innovation. It features a built-in 56k modem and 10/100 Mbps Ethernet.

Apple’s radical departure from old standards drew criticism aimed at the iMac. As the New York Times writes: «A few customers may be able to work effectively without some way to transport data physically, by backing up files to a network server or to the Internet, but most of the consumers Apple is trying to appeal to live in a world where floppy disks are important.»

The performance is decent for 1,200 dollars, but nothing special. The first iMac features a Power G3 processor running at 233 megahertz (MHz) and 32 megabytes (MB) of random access memory (RAM). Using caching, the Mac can also simulate up to 36 MB of virtual RAM. This sentence gives me reverse déjà vu in 2026: the MacBook Neo’s still using swap memory to compensate for its limited RAM.

Upgrading the iMac’s nearly impossible, which soon becomes a problem, as hardware advances rapidly in the 2000s. The monitor’s good, but with a usable diagonal of 13.8 inches, it was already on the small side back then. To upgrade the CPU, the entire processor daughter card has to be replaced. According to Apple, the hard drive’s «not customer-installable.» Only the RAM can be easily upgraded.

The first iMac embodies much of what Apple is today

It’s the year 2026. I’m sitting in front of an iMac again – the second-generation Graphite model. It dates back to 1999. I bought it for this article for 200 francs on Ricardo. When I press the power button, that crackling sound from the CRT monitor takes me back 25 years. Then the familiar Mac chime sounds and the hard drive starts spinning.

To my great surprise, I still have no trouble finding my way around the old iMac. The previous owner installed Mac OS X version 10.1. Its menu structure and user interface look very similar to what they are today. First, I make the mouse move faster, turn up the volume on the speakers and make the screen brighter. The latter looks surprisingly good. I can choose between 1024 × 768 pixels at 75 Hz and 800 × 600 at 95 Hz. To me, a better frame rate feels more important than a higher resolution. At 75 Hz, I see the typical CRT flicker, but not at 95 Hz.

I’m also pleasantly surprised by the speakers. As early as 1999, Apple’s engineers were already getting a lot out of them. They aren’t particularly loud, but they sound well-balanced. This hallmark can still be found in Apple’s products today: the built-in speakers in the Studio Display and MacBook Pro are unmatched in their form factor.

The iMac’s core selling point was its simple setup. Admittedly, it can’t quite live up to that any more because of the outdated software. I get an internet connection right away when I plug in a network cable, but there’s not much I can do with it. The pre-installed Internet Explorer 5.1 isn’t supported by any modern websites. Google works with the iCab browser, which I found on retro website Macintosh Garden. That’s pretty much it, though. Even iCab has trouble handling current security certificates.

Unreal Tournament takes me back to 2001

Offline programs like iMovie and iTunes, on the other hand, work fine. For example, I can transfer music to an iPod. Playing chess works too. But after losing to the computer three times, I suddenly think chess is stupid. Instead, I’d rather go back to playing Unreal Tournament.

I no longer have the game CD. Instead, I look for an ISO file. I find a legal version on Macintosh Garden – thankfully, Unreal Tournament is now officially available for free. Now I just need to get the file onto my iMac. That’s easier said than done. The old computer doesn’t recognise any of my USB flash drives because the built-in USB 1.1 controller struggles with large drives. I can’t download anything either because of the browser issue, and shared folders don’t seem to be working.

The solution ultimately lies in accessing the files via FTP. This way, I can transfer the ISO file from my modern Mac to the old iMac. The rest is easier than you might think: my ISO file can be mounted as a virtual drive without any additional software. On Windows, I always needed to use Daemon Tools for this. A few minutes later, the arena shooter’s installed and launches without any problems. Cool!

However, the game doesn’t run particularly well. Its 350 MHz processor and the ATI Rage graphics card with 8 MB of SGRAM aren’t powerful enough to handle the graphics, which were considered good at the time. The game runs reasonably well on low settings, but it still stutters during action-packed scenes. This isn’t how I remember it. I guess my old school friend had a newer iMac with more powerful hardware back then.

Never mind. I ignore the FPS drops, start a game and fire rockets at bots. They explode just as violently as they did back in the day. And suddenly it’s 2001 again. I’m 13 years old and sitting next to my school friend on the upper floor of a small townhouse in a Thurgau village.

We talk more about the first iMacs in the latest episode of our German-language Take a Byte podcast:

Samuel Buchmann

Senior Editor

Samuel.Buchmann@digitecgalaxus.ch

My fingerprint often changes so drastically that my MacBook doesn't recognise it anymore. The reason? If I'm not clinging to a monitor or camera, I'm probably clinging to a rockface by the tips of my fingers.

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