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One month on since the tenth anniversary of the 1998 launch of the iMac, today marks a decade since the UK arrival of the product.

Apple UK began shipping its then £999 product on September 5, 1998. "The new computer, designed to combine the excitement of the Internet with the simplicity of Macintosh, will be targeted at the consumer and education markets," the company then explained.

The machine was an instant success, it looked like no other computer before while matching people's expectations of what a computer could be more than anything else.

Speaking to the BBC, Apple designer Jonathan Ive's former design teacher, Neil Smith, observed: "It became iconic very quickly".

Partially because the company expended such a high degree of technological implementation and high-grade design, and partially because the company's 100 per cent focus on the product came at a time when the internet was exploding on the public consciousness - and this Mac could go online in seconds.

"They found a way to humanise the PC and to take it out of the grey anonymous box. It was a sympathetic bit of form making, and it became a symbol of a very different approach," Smith added.

The look and design of the iMac - and all the others which followed it - articulated the Apple brand and took the company forward to the launch of the iBook and - then - iPod.

The computer is recognised as the one key product launch which helped kick-start the company in its recovery of good fortune. Simple and self-contained, the iMac was a design-led expression of the strength of Apple's own brand.

Consumers lapped it up. The iMac grabbed 6.6 per cent of the market for retail PCs in January 1999, as it did in its first month of sale.

Apple's retail sales increased by 176 per cent between January 1998 and January 1999, when the iMac was the fourth best-selling desktop PC, sharing the top five table with machines from HP and Compaq.

In 1996-97, the media pronounced Apple all but dead. The company lost $878 million in 1997, but under the renewed guidance of Steve Jobs, it earned $414 million in 1998—its first profit in three years.

We published a US retrospective look at the iMac last month, which notes, "even with the iPhones, iPods, and iTunes dominating today’s news, we shouldn’t forget that Apple’s 21st century success can be traced directly back to iMac’s launch a decade ago."

The date comes as various reports suggest Apple plans to introduce a new model of the machine this month, with one website claiming to offer the actual prices of the products, which it claims will be lower than they are at present.

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