Mac (computer)
The Macintosh, more generally called the Mac for short, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured and marketed by Apple Computer. Named after the McIntosh apple, the original Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984. The Macintosh was the first popular personal computer that used the now-standard graphical user interface with windows on a desktop and mouse control instead of the then-standard command line interface. Today, the Macintosh is the only family of computers available from Apple, and ranges from the "budget" Mac mini desktop to the midrange server Xserve. Macintosh systems are mainly targeted towards the home consumer, education, and creative professional markets; however, the Xserve G5 has enabled Apple to gain exposure to the enterprise market as well.
Macintosh computers originally used Mac OS as the operating system. However, from 1999 onward, Apple introduced the new Unix-based Mac OS X, finally stopping Mac OS development in 2002. The current version of Mac OS X is Mac OS X v10.4 'Tiger', and all Macs besides the Xserve (which uses Mac OS X Server) are sold with it pre-installed. To complement the Macintosh, Apple also has developed a series of digital media applications (collectively the iLife suite), two applications geared towards productivity (the iWork suite), and a range of software aimed at the creative professional market including Final Cut Pro, Shake, and Aperture.
Current product line
| Name | Type | Market | Description |
| Mac mini | Desktop | Consumer | The Mac mini is the cheapest Macintosh currently in production, and the only consumer Macintosh desktop that does not ship with a monitor. It uses a standard G4 processor. |
| iMac | Desktop | Consumer | The iMac is Apple's current flagship consumer desktop computer; the current models use a G5 processor, similar to the processors found in the higher end models of Macintoshes. |
| eMac | Desktop | Education | The eMac is a low-end desktop model originally intended for the educational market. It was sold freely to all markets from June 4th, 2004 [1] to October 12th, 2005 [2], but is now once again restricted to educational institutions only. It features a built-in CRT screen, and a G4 processor. |
| PowerMac | Desktop | Professional | The PowerMac is Apple's most expensive, high end workstation computer. The top of the line model currently features two dual-core G5 processors. |
| iBook | Portable | Consumer | The iBook is the Apple consumer portable. It uses a G4 processor at a lower clock rate than the more powerful PowerBook line. |
| PowerBook | Portable | Professional | The PowerBook is a high end portable workstation computer marketed towards creative professionals, and, as of today, still uses a G4 due to issues with power consumption on G5 processors. |
| Xserve | Server | Enterprise | The Xserve G5 is an enterprise-grade 1U rackmount server, specifically marketed towards mission critical data centers and enterprise client services. |
History
1979 - 1984: Development and introduction
Left to right: George Crow, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson, Jerry Mannock
The Macintosh project started in early 1979 with Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. In September 1979, Raskin was given permission to start hiring for the project and was, in particular, looking for an engineer that could put together a prototype. Bill Atkinson, a member of the Lisa team, which was developing a similar but higher-end computer, introduced him to Burrell Smith, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year. Over the years, Raskin hired a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh hardware and software; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith the team included Chris Espinosa, Joanna Hoffman, George Crow, Jerry Manock, Susan Kare, and Andy Hertzfeld.
Smith's first Macintosh board design was built to Raskin's specifications; it had 64K of RAM, used the Motorola 6809E microprocessor, and had the capacity to support a 256x256 B&W white bitmap display. Bud Tribble, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisa's graphical programs on the Macintosh and asked Smith if he could incorporate the Lisa's Motorola 68000 microprocessor into the Macintosh while still keeping the production cost down. By December 1980, Smith had succeeded in designing a board that not only utilized the 68000, but made it faster from 5 MHz to 8 MHz; it also had the capacity to support a 384x256 bitmap display. Smith's design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, and because of this the board was much cheaper[3]. The final Mac design was self-contained, and had far more programming code in ROM than other computers; it had a non-expandable 128 kilobytes of RAM.
The innovative design caught the attention of Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, he began focusing his attentions on the project. Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and the final Macintosh design is said to be closer to Jobs' ideas than Raskin's[4]. After hearing about the pioneering graphical user interface technology being developed at Xerox PARC, Steve Jobs negotiated a visit to see the Xerox Alto computer and Smalltalk development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were clearly influenced by the one designed at Xerox. Jobs also commissioned industrial designer Harmut Esslinger to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the Snow White design language, which came too late for the earliest Macintoshes but was implemented in most other mid- to late-80s Apple computers[5]. However, Jobs' leadership at the Macintosh project was short lived; after an internal power struggle with Apple's new CEO John Sculley, Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985 and went on to found NeXT, a computer company.
The Macintosh was hinted at on January 22, 1984, with the now-famous 1984 Superbowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott. It was officially introduced and went on sale on January 24, 1984, for a retail price of $2,495.00, bundled with two useful programs designed to show off its interface: MacWrite and MacPaint. Although the Mac garnered an immediate enthusiastic following, it was too radical for some. Because the machine was entirely designed around the GUI, existing text-mode and command-driven programs had to be redesigned and rewritten, a challenging undertaking that many software developers shied away from, which initially led to a lack of software for the new system. Many users, accustomed to the arcane world of command lines, labeled the Mac a "toy computer".
1985 - 1989: The desktop publishing era
In 1985, the combination of the Mac and its graphical user interface with Aldus Pagemaker, a desktop publishing program, and Apple's LaserWriter printer enabled a low-cost solution for designing and previewing printed material, an activity that came to be known as desktop publishing. However, the limitations of the first Mac soon became clear: It had very little memory, even compared to other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily; it lacked a hard drive or any means to attach one easily. Although by 1985 the Mac's base memory had increased to 512 KB, and it was possible, albeit inconvenient, to expand the memory of a 128 KB Mac, Apple realized that the Mac needed to be improved. The result was the Macintosh Plus, released in 1986. It offered one megabyte of RAM, expandable to four, and a then-revolutionary SCSI parallel interface, allowing up to seven peripherals, such as hard drives and scanners, to be attached to the machine. Its floppy drive was increased to 800 kilobyte capacity. The Plus was an immediate success and remained in production for four years.
Other issues remained, particularly low processor speed and limited graphics ability, which had hobbled the Mac's ability to make inroads into the business computing market. Updated Motorola CPUs made a faster machine possible, and in 1987, Apple took advantage of the new Motorola technology, and introduced the Macintosh II, which utilized a 16-MHz Motorola 68020 processor. It had an open architecture with several expansion slots, and it supported color graphics. Along with the Mac II, the Macintosh SE was released, the first compact Mac with an expansion slot. The SE shared some of the II's aesthetics, such as its new ergonomic mouse and keyboard.
With the new Motorola 68030 processor came the Macintosh IIx in 1988, which also sported some internal improvements including an onboard memory management unit. It was followed in 1989 by a more compact version with fewer slots (the Macintosh IIcx) and a version of the Mac SE powered by the 16-MHz 68030 (the Macintosh SE/30). Later that year, the Macintosh IIci, running at 25 MHz, was the first Mac to be "32-bit clean". Apple also introduced the Macintosh Portable, a 16MHz 68000 machine with an active matrix flat panel display. The following year, the 40 MHz Macintosh IIfx, costing $13,000, was unveiled. Apart from its fast processor, it had significant internal architectural improvements including faster memory and a pair of dedicated I/O (input/output) coprocessors.
1990 - 1998: Growth and then decline
The release of Microsoft Windows 3.0, widely seen as the first version of Windows to actually challenge the Mac, was released in May 1990, and it created an usable and cheaper alternative to the Macintosh platform. Apple's response was a range of inexpensive Macs introduced on October 1990. The Macintosh Classic, essentially a cheaper version of the Macintosh SE, sold for a price of $999, making it the cheapest Mac until the release of the Mac mini. The 68020-powered Macintosh LC in its distinctive "pizza box" case was available for $1800, offered color graphics, and a low-cost 512×384-pixel monitor was launched to accompany it. The Macintosh IIsi, essentially a 20-MHz IIci with only one expansion slot, cost $2500. All three machines sold very well, although Apple's profit margin was considerably lower than on earlier machines.
1991 saw the much-anticipated release of System 7, a 32-bit rewrite of the Macintosh operating system that improved its handling of color graphics, memory addressing, networking, and multitasking, and introduced virtual memory. Later that year, Apple introduced the Macintosh Quadra 700 and 900, the first Macs to employ the faster Motorola 68040 processor. They were joined by improved versions of the previous year's hits, the Macintosh Classic II and Macintosh LC II, which was upgraded to utilize a 16 MHz 68030.
At the same time, the first three models in Apple's enduring PowerBook range were introduced — the PowerBook 100, a miniaturized Macintosh Portable built by Sony; the 16-MHz 68030 PowerBook 140; and the 25-MHz 68030 PowerBook 170. They were the first portable computers with the keyboard behind a palm-rest, and with a built-in pointing device (a trackball) in front of the keyboard.
In 1992 Apple started to sell low-end Macs called Performa through non-traditional dealers. At Apple dealers, a mid-range version of the Quadra series called the Macintosh Centris was offered, only to be quickly renamed Quadra when buyers became confused by the range of Classics, LCs, IIs, Quadras, Performas, and Centrises. As well as releasing several new Macintosh products, Apple also unveiled the miniaturized PowerBook Duo range. It was intended to be docked to a base station for desktop-like functionality while at the workplace. The last PowerBook Duo was dropped from the Apple product line in early 1997.
The next evolutionary step in Macintosh CPUs was a switch to the RISC PowerPC architecture developed by the AIM alliance of Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola from 1991 onward The Power Macintosh line proved to be incredibly successful, with over one million units sold by late-1994, three months before Apple's one-year goal. The same year, Apple also released the second-generation PowerBook models, the PowerBook 500 series, which introduced the then-novel trackpad.
By 1995, Microsoft and Intel were threatening Apple's market by introducing Windows 95 and the Pentium processor. Both products enhanced the multimedia capability of the PC significantly, and quickly began to erode the Mac's market share. In response, Apple started the Macintosh clone program in order to regain its foothold in the desktop computer market. This program lasted until August 1997 when negotiations between Apple and the clone makers to extend the licensing agreement broke down.
1999 - Present: New beginnings
In 1998, a year after Steve Jobs had returned to the company, Apple introduced a new all-in-one Macintosh similar to the original Macintosh 128K: the iMac, a new design that did away with most Apple standard connections like SCSI and ADB in favor of two USB ports. While technically not very impressive, it featured an innovative new design - its translucent plastic case, originally Bondi blue and white, and later many other colors, is considered a industrial design hallmark of the late-90s. The iMac proved to be phenomenally successful, with 800,000 units sold in 1998, making the company an annual profit of $309 million - Apple's first profitable year since Michael Spindler took the position of CEO of the company in 1995. The Power Macintosh was redesigned along similar lines, and continues to evolve to this day.
From 1999 onwards, Apple introduced a new operating system called Mac OS X Server to replace the aging Mac OS, with a innovative and well-designed GUI (very arguable, especially among long-time Mac users), and powerful Unix underpinnings. Mac OS X was based on NeXTSTEP, the operating system developed by Steve Jobs' post-Apple company NeXT. It was not released to the public until 2001 with the Mac OS X public beta.
In the summer of 1999, Apple introduced the iBook, a new consumer level portable Macintosh that was designed to be similar in appearance to the iMac introduced a year earlier. Six weeks after the iBook's unveiling, more than 140,000 orders had been placed, and by October the computer was as much a sales hit as the iMac. Apple continued to add new products to their lineup and on January 11, 2005, Apple announced the Mac mini with a price of US$499. This was the first Macintosh ever released for less than $500.
In recent years Apple has seen a significant boost in sales of Macintoshes largely due to the success of the iPod. The iPod digital music players have brought awareness to the Macintosh line which hasn't been seen since after its original release in 1984. From 2001 to 2005 Macintosh sales increased continuously on an annual basis, caused by the iPod "Halo Ring" effect. On October 11, 2005 Apple released their fourth quarter results, reporting shipment of 1,236,000 Macintoshes - a 48% increase from the same quarter the previous year[6]. New Apple computers, such as the iMac G5 with Front Row have been increasing this marketshare through innovation like Apple does.
Model timeline
| Timeline of Mac model families |
|---|
 |
Source: Glen Sanford, Apple History, apple-history.com
Hardware
The current product family of Macintoshes uses PowerPC processors, co-developed by Apple, IBM, and Motorola, and currently produced by IBM and Freescale, a former division of Motorola. All Macintosh models ship with 512 MB RAM as standard, and as of October 12, 2005 the iMac G5 ships with the Apple Mighty Mouse, a two button mouse produced by Apple. Current Macintosh computers use the ATI Radeon or nVidia GeForce series chips for graphics, and include either a Combo Drive, a DVD player and CD burner all in one, or the Superdrive, a dual function DVD and CD burner. Macintoshes include two standard data transfer ports: USB, standardized in 1998 with the iMac, and FireWire, a less popular standard developed by Apple to support higher-performance devices.
Processor architecture
The original MC68000 was a 16/32-bit (32-bit internal) CISC processor that ran at 8 MHz in desktop systems, although the Macintosh Portable and PowerBook 100 both used a 16Mhz version. The Macintosh II featured a full 32-bit Motorola 68020 processor, but the Macintoshes at the time only supported 24-bit memory addressing, and so they only used a fraction of the chip's memory addressing capabilities. Macs with this limitation were referred to as '32-bit dirty'. The successor Macintosh IIx introduced the Motorola 68030 processor, which added an Memory Management Unit. The 68030 did not have a built in floating point unit, thus '030 based Macintoshes incorporated a separate unit - either the 68881 or 68882. Lower cost models did without, although they incorporated an FPU socket, should the user decide to add one as an option. The first '32-bit clean' Macintosh which could use 32-bit memory addressing was the IIci. Later, Apple released the Macintosh IIfx, which not only contained a 40 MHz 68030, but also two MOS Technology 6502 processors (the primary CPU in the older Apple II line) as auxiliary controllers. In 1991, Apple released the first computers containing the Motorola 68040 processor, which contained the floating point unit in the main processor. Again, lower cost models were FPU-less, being based on the cut-down Motorola 68LC040 instead.
Since 1994, Apple has been using the PowerPC line of processors, starting with the PowerPC 601, which were later upgraded to the 603 and 604. In 1997, Apple introduced their first computer based on the significantly upgraded PowerPC G3 processor; and followed it with the PowerPC G4 in 1999. The latest generation of processor in use is the 64-bit PowerPC G5, introduced in 2003. During the transition to the PowerPC, Apple wrote a 68030-to-PowerPC translation routine that booted very early in the OS loading. The first version of the OS to ship with the earliest PowerPC systems was estimated to be running 95% emulated. Later versions of the operating system increased the percentage of PowerPC native code, until OS X brought it to 100% native.
On June 6, 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the company would begin transitioning the Macintosh line from PowerPC to Intel microprocessors, with the transition expected to be complete by the end of 2007, and demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a computer powered by an Intel Pentium 4 CPU. Intel-powered Macs will be able to run Macintosh software compiled for PowerPC processors using a dynamic translation system known as Rosetta. The reason for this switch was problems with the power consumption of the IBM G5 processors, coupled with IBM's inability to deliver on the promised roadmap. Apple is expected to transition to Intel Pentium M processors in its Powerbook and iBook lines first (probably in June 2006), with the desktop lines following towards the second half of 2007. This future Macintosh architecture is informally called "Mactel", a reference to the Microsoft Windows-Intel colloquialism Wintel. During and for a time after the transition, developers are encouraged to compile and distribute universal binaries, which will run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs.
Expandability and connectivity
The earliest form of Macintosh expandability was the Processor Direct Slot (PDS), present from the SE onwards. It was basically a shortcut to the CPU socket, not a bus - which also meant that parts for the PDS slot were tied to a specific Macintosh model, with the notable exception of the LC PDS slot, which was standardized across the entire LC line. The PDS slot could be used for processor upgrades, the Apple IIe Card, or video cards. The last line of Macintoshes to have PDS slots was the first generation of the PowerMacs. The first Macintosh to feature a bus for expansion was the Macintosh II in the form of six NuBus (a parallel 32-bit bus) slots. The NuBus was abandoned in favor of PCI in the second generation Power Macintoshes, and the G4 added an AGP slot for video cards. The latest G5s use PCI Express for graphics and expansion. For memory, Apple has used standard SIMMs (30- and 72-pin) and later DIMMs, with the notable exception of the Macintosh IIfx, which used special and very rare 64-pin SIMMs. Currently, the top-of-the-line G5 PowerMacs use 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM DIMMs.
The earliest Macintoshes used a special proprietary serial port for external floppy or hard drives, until SCSI was introduced with the Macintosh Plus. SCSI remained the Macintosh drive connection of choice until the PowerMac G3, when cheaper EIDE drives became standard. Current PowerMacs use SATA for internal hard drives, EIDE for internal optical drives and FireWire for external drives. For peripherals, the Apple Desktop Bus was introduced with the Macintosh II. It was the standard input connector until the Universal Serial Bus was introduced with the iMac. The last Macintosh to have ADB was the blue and white PowerMac G3. Other legacy Macintosh peripheral connectors include the serial GeoPort and the AAUI port for networking. For external video signals, Apple used a DB-15 connector on all models prior to the blue and white G3, which uses a VGA connector, which was in turn dropped in favor of the Apple Display Connector with the PowerMac G4. On the most recent Macintoshes, Apple has used a standard or dual-link DVI connector.
Software
Operating system
The Macintosh operating system was originally known as the System Software or more simply System. With the release of System 7.6, the official name became Mac OS. From 2001 onward, the "classic" Mac OS was phased out in favor of the new, Unix-based Mac OS X. Apple had offered another UNIX system, A/UX, for their Macintosh servers earlier, but without much success. The Mac OS operating system is generally considered one of the Macintosh platform's main selling points, and its releases are heavily touted by Apple with large special events, and release day events. Apple has generally chosen to stick with some loose user interface elements in all of its releases, and many similarities can be seen between the legacy Mac OS 9 and the modern Mac OS X. Non-Apple operating systems for today's Macintoshes include Linux and free BSD variants.
Mac OS, or "System" as it was originally known, was the first widely-used operating system with a graphical interface. In fact, no versions of the "classic" Mac OS featured a command line. It was originally a single-tasking OS, but optional cooperative multitasking was introduced in System 5. The next major upgrade was System 7 in 1991, which featured a new, full color design as well as built-in multitasking, AppleScript, and more user configuration options. Mac OS continued to evolve up to version 9.2.2, but its dated architecture (such as using cooperative multitasking instead of the more modern preemptive multitasking) made a replacement necessary.
In March 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X, a modern and more secure Unix-based successor (using Darwin, XNU and Mach as foundations). Mac OS X is directly derived from NeXTSTEP, the operating system developed by Steve Jobs' company NeXT before it was bought by Apple. Older Mac OS programs can still run under Mac OS X in a special virtual machine called Classic, but this will no longer be possible when Apple switches from the PowerPC architecture to Intel processors in 2007. Even though Mac OS X was never certified as an UNIX implementation by The Open Group, it is the most common Unix-based desktop operating system of today. Mac OS X is currently at version 10.4 (released on April 29 2005), codenamed Tiger. The next version, Mac OS X v10.5, codenamed "Leopard", is scheduled to be released at the end of 2006.
Software history
Since its introduction the Macintosh has been criticized for the lack of software available for its operating system. In 1984, it was apparent that the IBM PC had a wider range of software available, because it used the most popular operating system of the time, MS-DOS. Apple struggled to encourage software developers to port software titles to the Macintosh, however Bill Gates at Microsoft realized that the GUI would become an industry-standard, and that his software would sell in large quantity if it was available for the Macintosh. In 1984 Microsoft Word and Microsoft MultiPlan were available, and were a large selling point for the Mac. However, it lacked games and business software. In 1985, Lotus introduced Lotus Jazz after the success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC, although it was largely a flop.
In 1987 Apple spun off their software business as Claris. They were given the code and rights to several programs that had been written within Apple, notably MacWrite, MacPaint and MacProject. In the late 1980s Claris released a number of revamped software titles, the result was the "Pro" series including MacPaint Pro, MacDraw Pro, MacWrite Pro and FileMaker Pro. In order to provide a complete office suite they also purchased the rights to the Informix WingZ spreadsheet on the Mac, re-branding it as Claris Resolve, and added the new presentation program Claris Impact. By the early 1990s Claris programs were shipping with the majority of consumer level Macintoshes, and were extremely popular. In 1991 Claris released ClarisWorks, which soon became their second best-selling program.
Today, all Macintosh computers come prepackaged with a suite of consumer level applications called 'iLife.' The first iLife application was iMovie, which was released in 1999 for use on the iMac DV. Next in line came iTunes, a digital jukebox designed to work with Apple's iPod digital music player, and on January 7th, 2002, Apple released iPhoto, an easy-to-use, consumer grade digital photo organizer. Finally, in 2004, Apple marketed the aforementioned applications, as well as iDVD and GarageBand, into a US$49 suite called iLife. Today, every Macintosh computer comes pre-installed with the iLife suite. The suite is intended to make the Mac extremely versatile out of the box by providing several consumer media applications. The most popular tool in the suite is iTunes, which now has a Windows version available as well, and has spawned the most popular online music store, iTunes Music Store.
Since the introduction of the Macintosh 128K in 1984, Apple has struggled to gain significant personal computer market share. The original Mac lacked software, resulting in disappointing sales in 1985 when consumers realized the IBM PC had more software available. In 1985 Microsoft introduced the Windows GUI environment for the IBM PC. This ultimately ended with a lawsuit between Apple and Microsoft, in which Apple claimed rights to the graphical user interface; it resulted in a lost case for Apple, and Microsoft was given permission to continue selling their own graphical operating system. By 1985 only 500,000 Macintoshes had been sold. Originally Jobs had predicted five million would be sold within two years; sales eventually crossed the two million mark in 1988, and three years later the install base finally reached 5 million. By 1997 the Macintosh had over 20 million users[7]. As late 2003 Apple had 2.06% of the desktop share in the United States, which had increased to 2.88% by Q4 2004[8]. The actual installed base of Macintosh computers is extremely hard to determine, with numbers ranging from a conservative 3%[9] to a very optimistic 16%[10].
Advertising
Ever since the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984 with the 1984 commercial Apple has been recognized for its efforts towards effective advertising and marketing for the Macintosh. A "Macintosh Introduction" 20-page brochure was included with various magazines in December 1983, often remembered because Bill Gates was featured on page 15.[11]. In November that year, Apple spent more than US $2.5 million on all 39 advertising pages in a post-election special edition of Newsweek[12]. Connected to it was the "Test Drive a Macintosh" promotion; potential buyers with a credit card could trial a Macintosh for 24 hours and return it to a dealer afterwards. It began to look like a success with 200,000 participants, and Advertising Age magazine named as one of the 10 best promotions of 1984. However, dealers disliked the promotion and supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many computers were returned in such a bad shape that they could no longer be sold.
In 1985, the "Lemmings" commercial aired at the Superbowl in 1985; Apple went as far as to create a newspaper advertisement stating "If you go to the bathroom during the fourth quarter, you'll be sorry". It was a large failure and did not capture nearly as much attention as the 1984 commercial did. Many more brochures for new models like the Macintosh Plus and the Performa followed. In the 1990s, Apple started the "What's on your Powerbook?" campaign, with print ads and television commercials featuring persons describing how the PowerBook helps them in their businesses and every-day lives. These included Frances Lear, Tama Janowitz, Michael O'Brien, Todd Rundgren, Art Monk, Martina Navratilova and Brian Durkin. In 1995 Apple responded to the introduction of Windows 95 with both several print ads and a television commercial demonstrating its disadvantages and lack of innovation. In 1997 the Think Different campaign introduced Apple's new slogan and in 2002, the Switch campaign followed.
Today, Apple focuses much of its advertising efforts around heavily hyped 'special events', and keynotes at conferences like the Apple Expo, and the MacWorld Expo. The events typically draw a large gathering of media representatives and spectators. In the past, special events have been used to unveil the Power Mac G5, the redesigned iMac, and many other Macintosh products.
Effects on the technology industry
Apple has introduced a number of innovations in direct relation to the Macintosh 128k that were later adopted by the rest of industry as a standard for the design of computers. Possibly Apple's number one effect on the industry was the first large-scale use of a graphical user interface in operating system software. Today, almost every mainstream operating system relies on a graphical user interface, and many operating systems still echo the design of the original Macintosh graphical user interface, such as the use of the "double click", "drag and drop", and the mouse used for them. The Macintosh 128k also introduced software which allowed WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) text and graphics editing, alongside significant technical improvements such a long file names permitting whitespace and not requiring a file extension, 3.5" floppy disk drives as a standard component, 8-bit mono audio including built-in speakers, and an output jack as a standard feature.
The Macintosh platform has introduced many innovations and ideas that had significant effects on the computer industry, especially in the area of communications standards. One of the first was the Macintosh Plus, which successfully introduced the SCSI interface in 1986. The Macintosh IIsi and the Macintosh LC introduced standard audio in and out ports in 1990 — today these ports are standard on the large majority of computers. Beginning with the iMac in 1998, Apple made the Universal Serial Bus a standard and introduced FireWire, a high speed data transfer bus now popular in media-editing computers. Apple also innovated in the area of networking, with heavy marketing and early implementation of the existing standard IEEE 802.11b (AirPort) in the Macintosh portable lines in 1999. Additionally, the Macintosh platform introduced many of the storage devices that are now standard: In 1992, the Macintosh IIvx was the first computer to feature the CD-ROM drive as a standard feature. The iMac, debuting in 1998, was one of the first computers to have no floppy disk drive; today, almost no new computers come with one. Finally, the Power Macintosh G4 with its SuperDrive introduced the first easily affordable DVD-R drive in 2001.
Apple has also contributed heavily to the field of mobile computing, and many features of their mobile computers have become the norm. The PowerBook 100, 140, and 170 set the ergonomic standard for the placement of keyboard in 1991 by moving the keyboard behind a palm rest, rather than right at the bottom of the laptop. In 1991 the Powerbook 100 series featured the first built-in pointing device on a laptop: a trackball. The PowerBook Duo also introduced the idea of a dock/port replicate in 1992. One of the most important features ever added to the Macintosh PowerBook lineup was the first true touchpad as a pointing device on the PowerBook 500 in 1994; today, most laptops rely on it as their pointing device. More recently the PowerBook G4 became the first full-size laptop computer to feature a widescreen display, in 2003 it became the first laptop computer with a 17-inch display, and in 2004, it became the first laptop computer to provide dual-link DVI.
See also
- A/UX
- List of Macintosh models grouped by CPU
- List of Macintosh software
- Mac rumors community
- Macintosh User Groups in the UK
- .Mac
- Xserve RAID
Further reading
- Hertzfeld, Andy (2004), Revolution in the Valley, O'Reilly Books ISBN 0596007191
- Kahney , Leander (2004), The Cult of Mac, No Starch Press ISBN 1886411832
- Linzmayer, Owen (2004), Apple Confidential 2.0, No Starch Press ISBN 1593270100
- Kelby, Scott (2002), Macintosh... The Naked Truth, New Riders Press ISBN 0735712840
- Kawasaki, Guy (1989), The Macintosh Way, Scott Foresman Trade ISBN 0673461750
Notes
- ^ Apple Offers eMac to All, retrieved November 10, 2005
- ^ eMac gone for consumers, but available for schools, retrieved November 10, 2005
- ^ Andy Hertzfeld: Five different Macintoshes, retrieved November 9, 2005
- ^ Andy Hertzfeld: The father of the Macintosh, retrieved November 19, 2005
- ^ History of computer design: Snow White, retrieved November 9, 2005
- ^ Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results, retrieved November 9, 2005
- ^ Apple Developer News December 19, 1997, No. 87
- ^ Jim Dalrymple, Macworld (March 20, 2005): Apple desktop market share on the rise; will the Mac mini, iPod help?
- ^ pegasus3d.com: Analysis of Google's zeitgeist reports
- ^ Slashdot (June 2005): Mac Install-Base Shown to Be 16%
- ^ DigiBarn Ads: Original Apple Macintosh 18 Page Brochure (Dec 1983), retrieved November 26, 2005
- ^ GUIdebook: Macintosh ads and Curt's Media: The Apple 1984 commercial, both retrieved November 26, 2005
References
- MacTracker Macintosh model database, retrieved November 4, 2005
- folklore.org: Macintosh stories, retrieved November 9, 2005
- Guterl, Fred (December 1984): "Design case history: Apple's Macintosh". IEEE Spectrum. [13]
- Glen Sanford (2005): Apple History.
- Amit Singh (2005): A History of Apple's Operating Systems.
- Dan Knight (2005): Macintosh History: 1984.
- Linzmayer, Owen (2004): Apple Confidential 2.0, No Starch Press ISBN 1593270100
- Daring Fireball (24 July 2003): Market share