The original Apple "Bondi blue" iMac G3, introduced May 6, 1998, was the first computer to offer USB ports without offering "legacy" ports.[1] [2] USB 1.1 came out in September 1998 to help rectify the adoption problems that occurred with earlier iterations of USB, mostly those relating to hubs.[3]
The USB 2.0 specification was released in April 2000 and was standardized by the USB-IF at the end of 2001. Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lucent (now LSI Corporation since its merger with Lucent spinoff Agere Systems), Microsoft, NEC, and Philips jointly led the initiative to develop a higher data transfer rate, 480 Mbits/s, than the 1.1 specification of 12 Mbits/s.
The USB 3.0 specification was released on November 17, 2008 by the USB 3.0 Promoter Group. It has a transfer rate of up to 10 times faster than the USB 2.0 version and has been dubbed the SuperSpeed USB.
Equipment conforming with any version of the standard will also work with devices designed to any previous specification (known as backward compatibility).