I was a diehard PC user way back then but even I wasn't shameless enough to claim the iMac had nothing to do with pushing USB forward.
So many peripherals were still PS/2 (for mice), parallel (eg Zip/Tape drives), or serial (soooooo many things especially bespoke, industrial, or specialized equipment).
Think about it: do all PCs have USB ports? Definitely not. Do all PCs have a serial port? 99% yes. You're a manufacturer making a non-top-100 product. Do you use the new-fangled USB or do you use a serial FIFO? Obviously you use serial. That maximizes your audience.
But the iMac changed the thinking: This new iMac thing is hot. Seems like Apple is on the rise again. If I want to sell to these customers (who are more affluent and known to buy more software/accessories) I don't have a choice: it must be USB. I know the majority of the PC install base doesn't have USB yet but most new PCs do so I can still reach a lot of the PC audience. So the next version of my product uses USB (or a USB-FIFO bridge). As more of the market switched to USB even existing PC users installed USB expansion cards.
Would USB have eventually gotten there? Yes. Would it have done so as quickly? I don't think so. The wide-open nature of the PC has always been both its boon and bane. See the many attempts to supplant x86 in the PC world, the several attempts to replace or expand ISA before PCI, etc.
"UNTIL RECENTLY , USB hardware was as scarce as hen's teeth . Now, after almost two years of foot-dragging, hardware companies are fina ll y delivering peripherals. We tested 18 of these new products"
Among the products there are keyboards, mouses, joysticks, cameras, scanners, speakers... you name it.
>Apple wasn't the first to market with USB (and Snell didn't claim it was), but Apple most certainly drove its mass-market adoption.
Sure they were scarcely used, support began with Windows 95 OSR 2 in Aug-97. And relatively new computers were only a fraction of the market. But the real market driver was the PC.