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The Apple Macintosh revolutionized the entire computer industry by the year of 1984. Steve Jobs and his ingenious Macintosh team arranged for the computer to be used by the normal “person in the street” – and not only by experts.
The Macintosh (mainly Mac since 1998) is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Inc. (originally as Apple Computer, Inc.) since January 1984.
The original Macintosh is the first successful mass-market all-in-one desktop personal computer to have featured a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse. Apple sold the Macintosh alongside its popular Apple II, Apple IIGS, Apple III, and Apple Lisa families of computers until the other models were discontinued in the 1990s.
Early Macintosh models were relatively expensive, hindering competitiveness in a market dominated by the much cheaper Commodore 64 for consumers, as well as the IBM Personal Computer and its accompanying clone market for businesses,although they were less expensive than the Xerox Alto and other computers with graphical user interfaces that predated the Mac, except Atari ST. Macintosh systems were successful in education and desktop publishing, making Apple the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade. In the early 1990s, Apple introduced the Macintosh LC II and Color Classic which were price-competitive with Wintel machines at the time.
However, the introduction of Windows 3.1 and Intel’s Pentium processor, which beat the Motorola 68040 used in then-current Macintoshes in most benchmarks, gradually took market share from Apple, and by the end of 1994 Apple was relegated to third place as Compaq became the top PC manufacturer. Even after the transition to the superior PowerPC-based Power Macintosh line in the mid-1990s, the falling prices of commodity PC components, poor inventory management with the Macintosh Performa, and the release of Windows 95 contributed to continued decline of the Macintosh user base.
Upon his return to the company, Steve Jobs led Apple to consolidate the complex line of nearly twenty Macintosh models in mid-1997 (including models made for specific regions) down to four in mid-1999: the Power Macintosh G3, iMac G3, 14.1″ PowerBook G3, and 12″ iBook. All four products were critically and commercially successful due to their high performance, competitive prices, and aesthetic designs, and helped return Apple to profitability.
Around this time, Apple phased out the Macintosh name in favor of “Mac”, a nickname that had been in common use since the development of the first model. After their transition to Intel processors in 2006, the complete lineup was Intel-based. This changed in 2020 when the M1 chip was introduced to the MacBook Air, entry level MacBook Pro and Mac Mini.
Its current lineup includes four desktops (the all-in-one iMac and the desktop Mac Mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro), and two notebooks (the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro). Its Xserve server was discontinued in 2011 in favor of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro.
Apple has developed a series of Macintosh operating systems. The first versions initially had no name but came to be known as the “Macintosh System Software” in 1988, “Mac OS” in 1997 with the release of Mac OS 7.6, and retrospectively called “Classic Mac OS”. Apple produced a Unix-based operating system for the Macintosh called A/UX from 1988 to 1995, which closely resembled contemporary versions of the Macintosh system software. Apple does not license macOS for use on non-Apple computers, however, System 7 was licensed to various companies through Apple’s Macintosh clone program from 1995 to 1997. Only one company, UMAX Technologies, was legally licensed to ship clones running Mac OS 8.
In 2001, Apple released Mac OS X, a modern Unix-based operating system which was later rebranded to simply OS X in 2012, and then macOS in 2016. Its final version was macOS Catalina, as Apple went on to release macOS Big Sur in 2020. The current version is macOS Monterey, first released on June 7, 2021. Intel-based Macs can run third party operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, and Microsoft Windows without modification to the operating system with the aid of Boot Camp or third-party software, as opposed PowerPC and Apple Silicon Macs where a special built version of the operating system (such as Adélie Linux or Asahi Linux for PowerPC and Apple Silicon respectively). Volunteer communities have customized Intel-based macOS to run illicitly on non-Apple computers.
The Macintosh family of computers has used a variety of different CPU architectures since its introduction. Originally they used the Motorola 68000 series of microprocessors. In the mid-1990s they transitioned to PowerPC processors, and again in the mid-2000s they began to use 32- and 64-bit Intel x86 processors. Apple began transitioning CPU architectures to its own ARM based Apple silicon for use in the Macintosh beginning in 2020.
The Macintosh project began in 1979 when Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. He wanted to name the computer after his favorite type of apple, the McIntosh(/ˈmækɪnˌtɒʃ/ MAK-in-tosh), but the spelling was changed to “Macintosh” for legal reasons as the original was the same spelling as that used by McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., an audio equipment manufacturer. Steve Jobs requested that McIntosh Laboratory give Apple a release for the newly spelled name, thus allowing Apple to use it. The request was denied, forcing Apple to eventually buy the rights to use this name.A 1984 Byte magazine article suggested Apple changed the spelling only after “early users” misspelled “McIntosh”. However, Jef Raskin had adopted the “Macintosh” spelling by 1981,when the Macintosh computer was still a single prototype machine in the lab.
In 1978 Apple began to organize the Apple Lisa project, aiming to build a next-generation machine similar to an advanced Apple II or the yet-to-be-introduced IBM PC. In 1979 Steve Jobs learned of the advanced work on graphical user interfaces (GUI) taking place at Xerox PARC. He arranged for Apple engineers to be allowed to visit PARC to see the systems in action. The Apple Lisa project was immediately redirected to use a GUI, which at that time was well beyond the state of the art for microprocessor abilities; the Xerox Alto required a custom processor that spanned several circuit boards in a case which was the size of a small refrigerator. Things had changed dramatically with the introduction of the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 in 1979, which offered at least an order of magnitude better performance than existing designs and made a software GUI machine a practical possibility. The basic layout of the Lisa was largely complete by 1982, at which point Jobs’s continual suggestions for improvements led to him being kicked off the project.
At the same time that the Lisa was becoming a GUI machine in 1979, Jef Raskin began the Macintosh project. The design at that time was for a low-cost, easy-to-use machine for the average consumer. Instead of a GUI, it intended to use a text-based user interface that allowed several programs to be running and easily switched between, and special command keys on the keyboard that accessed standardized commands in the programs. Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project in September 1979,and he immediately asked his long-time colleague, Brian Howard, to join him.His initial team would eventually consist of himself, Howard, Joanna Hoffman, Burrell Smith, and Bud Tribble.The rest of the original Mac team would include Bill Atkinson, Bob Belleville, Steve Capps, George Crow, Donn Denman, Chris Espinosa, Andy Hertzfeld, Bruce Horn, Susan Kare, Larry Kenyon, and Caroline Rose with Steve Jobs leading the project.In a 2013 interview, Steve Wozniak insinuated that he had been leading the initial design and development phase of the Macintosh project until 1981 when he experienced a traumatic airplane crash and temporarily left the company, at which point Jobs took over. In that same interview, Wozniak said that the original Macintosh “failed” under Jobs and that it was not until Jobs left that it became a success. He attributed the eventual success of the Macintosh to people like John Sculley “who worked to build a Macintosh market when the Apple II went away”.
Smith’s first Macintosh board was built to Raskin’s design specifications: it had 64 kilobytes (kB) of random-access memory (RAM), used the 8-bit Motorola 6809E microprocessor, and could support a 256×256-pixel black and white raster graphics (bitmap) display. Bud Tribble, a member of the Mac team, was interested in running the Apple Lisa’s graphical programs on the Macintosh and asked Smith whether he could incorporate Lisa’s 68000 microprocessor into the Mac while still keeping the production cost down. By December 1980, Smith had succeeded in designing a board that not only used the 68000 but increased its speed from Lisa’s 5 MHz to 8 MHz; this board also had the capacity to support a 384×256-pixel display. Smith’s design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which made the production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. The final Mac design was self-contained and had the complete QuickDraw picture language and interpreter in 64 KB of ROM – far more than most other computers which typically had around 4 to 8 KB of ROM; it had 128 kB of RAM, in the form of sixteen 64-kilobit (kb) RAM chips soldered to the logicboard. Although there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 kB by means of soldering sixteen IC sockets to accept 256 kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final product’s screen was a 9-inch (23 cm), 512×342 pixel monochrome display, exceeding the size of the planned screen.
Burrell’s innovative design, combining the low production cost of an Apple II with the computing power of Lisa’s Motorola 68000 CPU, began to receive Jobs’s attentions.InfoWorld in September 1981 reported on the existence of the secret Lisa and “McIntosh” projects at Apple. Stating that they and another computer “are all scheduled to be ready for release within a year”, it described McIntosh as a portable computer with the 68000 and 128KB memory, and possibly battery-powered.Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, Jobs began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin left the team in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs. After development had completed, team member Andy Hertzfeld said that the final Macintosh design is closer to Jobs’s ideas than Raskin’s.When Jobs was forced out of the Lisa team in 1982, he devoted his entire attention to the Macintosh.
Jobs commissioned industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the “Snow White” design language; although it came too late for the earliest Macs, it was implemented in most other mid- to late-1980s Apple computers.
In 1982 Regis McKenna was brought in to shape the marketing and launch of the Macintosh.
the Regis McKenna team grew to include Jane Anderson, Katie Cadigan and Andy Cunningham,who eventually led the Apple account for the agency.Cunningham and Anderson were the primary authors of the Macintosh launch plan. The launch of the Macintosh pioneered many different tactics that are used today in launching technology products, including the “multiple exclusive,” event marketing (credited to John Sculley, who brought the concept over from Pepsi), creating a mystique about a product and giving an inside look into a product’s creation
After the Lisa’s announcement, John Dvorak discussed rumors of a mysterious “MacIntosh” project at Apple in February 1983. The company announced the Macintosh 128K—manufactured at an Apple factory in Fremont, California—in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. The Macintosh was introduced by a US$1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial, “1984”.[10]: 113 It aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, and is now considered a “watershed event”and a “masterpiece”.McKenna called the ad “more successful than the Mac itself.”1984” used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by a Picasso-style picture of the computer on her white tank top) as a means of saving humanity from the “conformity” of IBM’s attempts to dominate the computer industry. The ad alludes to George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised “Big Brother.”
Two days after “1984” aired, the Macintosh went on sale, and came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface: MacWrite and MacPaint. It was first demonstrated by Steve Jobs in the first of his famous Mac keynote speeches, and though the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, some labeled it a mere “toy.” Because the operating system was designed largely for the GUI, existing text-mode and command-driven applications had to be redesigned and the programming code rewritten. This was a time-consuming task that many software developers chose not to undertake, and could be regarded as a reason for an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984, Microsoft’s MultiPlan migrated over from MS-DOS, with Microsoft Word following in January 1985. In 1985 Lotus Software introduced Lotus Jazz for the Macintosh platform after the success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC, although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced the Macintosh Office suite the same year with the “Lemmings” ad. Infamous for insulting its own potential customers, the ad was not successful.
Apple spent $2.5 million purchasing all 39 advertising pages in a special, post-election issue of Newsweek, and ran a “Test Drive a Macintosh” promotion, in which potential buyers with a credit card could take home a Macintosh for 24 hours and return it to a dealer afterwards. While 200,000 people participated, dealers disliked the promotion, the supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many were returned in such a bad condition that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from $1,995 to $2,495 (equivalent to $6,300 in 2021).The computer sold well, nonetheless, reportedly outselling the IBM PCjr which also began shipping early that year; one dealer reported a backlog of more than 600 orders. By April 1984 the company sold 50,000 Macintoshes, and hoped for 70,000 by early May and almost 250,000 by the end of the year.
The Macintosh 128K, originally released as the Apple Macintosh, is the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case consisted of a 9 in (23 cm) CRT monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. It played a pivotal role in establishing desktop publishing as a general office function. A handle built into the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had an initial selling price of US$2,495 (equivalent to $6,508 in 2021). The Macintosh was introduced by the now-famous US$370,000 (equivalent to $965,000 in 2021) television commercial directed by Ridley Scott, “1984”, which aired on CBS during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984.[6] Sales of the Macintosh were strong from its initial release on January 24, 1984, and reached 70,000 units on May 3, 1984. Upon the release of its successor, the Macintosh 512K, it was rebranded as the Macintosh 128K. The computer’s model number was M0001.
The Macintosh (mainly Mac since 1998) is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Inc. (originally as Apple Computer, Inc.) since January 1984.
The heart of the computer was a Motorola 68000 microprocessor running at 7.8336 MHz, connected to 128 KB RAM shared by the processor and the display controller. The boot procedure and some operating system routines were contained in an additional 64 KB ROM chip. Apple did not offer RAM upgrades. Unlike the Apple II, no source code listings of the Macintosh system ROMs were offered.
The RAM in the Macintosh consisted of sixteen 64k×1 DRAMs. The 68000 and video controller took turns accessing DRAM every four CPU cycles during display of the frame buffer, while the 68000 had unrestricted access to DRAM during vertical and horizontal blanking intervals. Such an arrangement reduced the overall performance of the CPU as much as 35% for most code as the display logic often blocked the CPU’s access to RAM. Despite the nominally high clock rate, this caused the computer to run slower than several of its competitors and resulted in an effective clock rate of 6 MHz.
The built-in display was a one-bit, black-and-white, 9 in/23 cm CRT with a fixed resolution of 512 × 342 pixels, using the Apple standard of 72 ppi (pixels per inch), a standard that was quickly abandoned once higher resolution screens became available.Expansion and networking were achieved using two non-standard RS-422 DE-9 serial ports named “printer” and “modem”, which did not support hardware handshaking. An external floppy disk drive could be added using a proprietary connector (19-pin D-sub). The keyboard and mouse used simple proprietary protocols, allowing some third-party upgrades. The original keyboard had no arrow keys, numeric keypad or function keys. This was an intentional decision by Apple, as these keys were common on older platforms and it was thought that the addition of these keys would encourage software developers to simply port their existing applications to the Mac, rather than design new ones around the GUI paradigm. Later, Apple made a numeric keypad available for the Macintosh 128K. The keyboard sold with the newer Macintosh Plus model included the numeric keypad and arrow keys, but still no function keys. As with the Apple Lisa before it, the mouse had a single button. Standard headphones could also be connected to a monaural jack. Apple also offered their 300 and 1200 baud modems originally released for the Apple II line. Initially, the only printer available was the Apple ImageWriter, a dot matrix printer which was designed to produce 144 dpi WYSIWYG output from the Mac’s 72 dpi screen. Eventually, the LaserWriter and other printers were capable of being connected using AppleTalk, Apple’s built-in networking system.
The Macintosh contained a single 400 KB, single-sided 3+1⁄2-inch floppy disk drive, dedicating no space to other internal mechanical storage. The Mac OS was disk-based from the beginning, as RAM had to be conserved, but this “Startup Disk” could still be temporarily ejected. (Ejecting the root filesystem remained an unusual feature of the classic Mac OS until System 7.) One floppy disk was sufficient to store the System Software, an application and the data files created with the application. The 400 KB drive capacity was larger than the PC XT’s 360 KB 5.25-inch drive, however, more sophisticated work environments of the time required separate disks for documents and the system installation. Due to the memory constraints (128 KB) of the original Macintosh, and the fact that the floppies could hold only 400 KB, users had to frequently swap disks in and out of the floppy drive, which caused external floppy drives to be utilized more frequently. The Macintosh External Disk Drive (mechanically identical to the internal one, piggybacking on the same controller) was a popular add-on that cost US$495. Third-party hard drives were considerably more expensive and usually connected to the slower serial port (as specified by Apple), although a few manufacturers chose to utilize the faster non-standard floppy port. The 128K can only use the original Macintosh File System released in 1984 for storage.
The unit did not include a fan, relying instead on convective heat transfer, which made it quiet while in operation. Steve Jobs insisted that the Macintosh ship without a fan, which persisted until the introduction of the Macintosh SE in 1987. Jobs believed that computers equipped with fans tend to distract the user from completing work.Unfortunately, this was allegedly a source of many common, costly component failures in the first four Macintosh models. This was enough of a problem to prompt the introduction of several third-party, external cooling fan solutions such as the MacFan, the Mac N Frost, the Fanny Mac and the Kensington System Saver. These units fitted inside the Macintosh’s carrying-handle slot and produced a forced draft through the computer’s existing ventilation holes.
The Macintosh shipped with the very first System and Finder application, known to the public as “System 1.0” (formally known as System 0.97 and Finder 1.0). The original Macintosh saw three upgrades to both before it was discontinued. Apple recommends System 2.0 and Finder 4.2, with System 3.2 and Finder 5.3 as the maximum. System 4.0 officially dropped support for the Macintosh 128K because it was distributed on 800 KB floppy disks, which could not be used by the 128K.
The applications MacPaint and MacWrite were bundled with the Mac. Other programs available included MacProject, MacTerminal and Microsoft Word. Programming languages available at the time included MacBASIC, MacPascal and the Macintosh 68000 Development System.The Macintosh also came with a manual and a unique guided tour cassette tape which worked together with the guided tour diskette as a tutorial for both the Macintosh itself and the bundled applications, since most new Macintosh users had never used a mouse before, much less manipulated a graphical user interface.
The computer was released in January 1984 as simply the Apple Macintosh. Following the release of the Macintosh 512K in September, which expanded the memory from 128 KB to 512 KB, the original Macintosh was re-branded Macintosh 128K and nicknamed the “thin Mac”. The new 512K model was nicknamed the “fat Mac”. While functionally the same, as closed systems, the Macintosh and Macintosh 128K were technically two different computers, with the re-badged 128K containing a completely redesigned logic board to easily accommodate both 128 KB and 512 KB RAM configurations during manufacturing. Though the RAM was still permanently soldered to the logic board, the new design allowed for easier (though unsanctioned) third-party upgrades to 512 KB. In addition, most of the newer models contained the 1984 revision B of the ROM to accommodate changes in the 400 KB floppy disk drive.System software contains support for an unreleased Macintosh 256K.
The increased RAM of the 512K was vitally important for the Macintosh as it finally allowed for more powerful software applications, such as the then-popular Microsoft Multiplan. However, Apple continued to market the 128K for over a year as an entry-level computer, the mid-level 512K and high-end Lisa (and claiming that it could be easily expanded should the user ever need more RAM).
Jobs stated that because “customization really is mostly software now … most of the options in other computers are in Mac”, unlike the Apple II the Macintosh 128K did not need slots, which he described as costly and requiring larger size and more power. It was not officially upgradable by the user and only Apple service centers were permitted to open the case. There were third parties that did offer RAM upgrades and even memory and CPU upgrades, allowing the original 128 kB Macintosh to be expanded to a 4 MB 32-bit data path, 68020 CPU (16 MHz), 68881 FPU (16 MHz), 68851 MMU (16 MHz) with an external SCSI port (with a ribbon cable out the clock battery door, internal SCSI hard drive (20 MB Rodime) and a piezo-electric fan for cooling. This upgrade was featured on a Macworld magazine cover titled “Faster than a Vax” in August 1986. All accessories were external, such as the MacCharlie that added IBM PC compatibility. There was no provision for adding internal storage, more RAM or any upgrade cards; however, some of the Macintosh engineers objected to Jobs’s ideas and secretly developed workarounds for them. As an example, the Macintosh was supposed to have only 17 address lines on the motherboard, enough to support 128 KB of system RAM, but the design team added two address lines without Jobs’s knowledge, making it possible to expand the computer to 512 KB, although the actual act of upgrading system RAM was difficult and required piggybacking additional RAM chips atop the onboard 4164 chips. In September 1984, after months of complaints over the Mac’s inadequate RAM, Apple released an official 512 KB machine. Although this had always been planned from the beginning, Steve Jobs maintained if the user desired more RAM than the Mac 128 provided, he should simply pay extra money for a Mac 512 rather than upgrade the computer himself. When the Mac 512 was released, Apple rebranded the original model as “Macintosh 128k” and modified the motherboard to allow easier RAM upgrades. Improving on the hard-wired RAM thus required a motherboard replacement (which was priced similarly to a new computer), or a third-party chip replacement upgrade, which was not only expensive but would void Apple’s warranty. The difficulty of fitting software into its limited free memory, coupled with the new interface and event driven programming model, discouraged software vendors from supporting it, leaving the 128K with a relatively small software library. Whereas the Macintosh Plus, and to a lesser extent the Macintosh 512K, are compatible with much later software, the 128K is limited to specially crafted programs. A stock Mac 128K with the original 64K ROM is incompatible with either Apple’s external 800 KB drive with HFS or Apple’s Hard Disk 20. A Mac 128K that has been upgraded with the newer 128 KB ROM (called a Macintosh 128Ke) can use internal and external 800 KB drives with HFS, as well as the HD20. Both can print on an AppleShare network, but neither can do file sharing because of their limited RAM.
By early 1985 much Macintosh software required 512K of memory. Apple sold an official memory upgrade for the Macintosh 128K, which included a motherboard replacement effectively making it a Macintosh 512K, for the price of US$995.Additionally, Apple offered an 800 KB floppy disk drive kit, including updated 128K ROMs. Finally, a Mac 128K could be upgraded to a Macintosh Plus by swapping the logic board as well as the case back (to accommodate the slightly different port configuration) and optionally adding the Macintosh Plus extended keyboard. Any of the kits could be purchased alone or together at any time, for a partial or full upgrade for the Macintosh 128K. All upgrades were required to be performed by professional Apple technicians, who reportedly refused to work on any Macintosh upgraded to 512K without Apple’s official upgrade, which at US$700 was much more expensive than about US$300 for third-party versions.
The original Macintosh was unusual in that it included the signatures of the Macintosh Division as of early 1982 molded on the inside of the case. The names were Peggy Alexio, Colette Askeland, Bill Atkinson, Steve Balog, Bob Belleville, Mike Boich, Bill Bull, Matt Carter, Berry Cash, Debi Coleman, George Crow, Donn Denman, Christopher Espinosa, Bill Fernandez, Martin Haeberli, Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, Rod Holt, Bruce Horn, Hap Horn, Brian Howard, Steve Jobs, Larry Kenyon, Patti King, Daniel Kottke, Angeline Lo, Ivan Mach, Jerrold Manock, Mary Ellen McCammon, Vicki Milledge, Mike Murray, Ron Nicholson Jr., Terry Oyama, Benjamin Pang, Jef Raskin, Ed Riddle, Brian Robertson, Dave Roots, Patricia Sharp, Burrell Smith, Bryan Stearns, Lynn Takahashi, Guy “Bud” Tribble, Randy Wigginton, Linda Wilkin, Steve Wozniak, Pamela Wyman and Laszlo Zidek.
The Macintosh 128/512K models also included Easter eggs in the OS ROM. If the user went to the system debugger and typed G 4188A4, a graphic reading “Stolen from Apple Computers” would appear in the upper left corner of the screen. This was designed to prevent unauthorized cloning of the Macintosh after numerous Apple II clones appeared, many of which simply stole Apple’s copyrighted system ROMs. Steve Jobs allegedly planned that if a Macintosh clone appeared on the market and a court case happened, he could access this Easter egg on the computer to prove that it was using pirated Macintosh ROMs. The Macintosh SE later augmented this Easter Egg with a slideshow of 4 photos of the Apple design team when G 41D89A was entered.
Erik Sandberg-Diment of The New York Times in January 1984 stated that Macintosh “presages a revolution in personal computing”. Although preferring larger screens and calling the lack of color a “mistake”, he praised the “refreshingly crisp and clear” display and lack of fan noise.While unsure whether it would become “a second standard to Big Blue”, Ronald Rosenberg of The Boston Globe wrote in February of “a euphoria that Macintosh will change how America computes. Anyone that tries the pint-size machine gets hooked by its features”.The computer was indeed so compelling to buyers that one dealer in March described it as “the first $2,500 impulse item”.
Gregg Williams of BYTE in February found the hardware and software design (which it predicted would be “imitated but not copied”) impressive, but criticized the lack of a standard second disk drive. He predicted that the computer would popularize the 3½ in floppy disk drive standard, that the Macintosh would improve Apple’s reputation, and that it “will delay IBM’s domination of the personal computer market.” Williams concluded that the Macintosh was “the most important development in computers in the last five years. [It] brings us one step closer to the ideal of computer as appliance.”[19] In the May 1984 issue Williams added, “Initial reaction to the Macintosh has been strongly, but not overpoweringly, favorable. A few traditional computer users see the mouse, the windows, and the desktop metaphor as silly, useless frills, and others are outraged at the lack of color graphics, but most users are impressed by the machine and its capabilities. Still, some people have expressed concern about the relatively small 128K-byte RAM size, the lack of any computer language sent as part of the basic unit, and the inconvenience of the single disk drive.”
Jerry Pournelle, also of BYTE, added that “The Macintosh is a bargain only if you can get it at the heavily discounted price offered to faculty and students of the favored 24 universities in the Macintosh consortium.” He noted, however, that the Macintosh attracted people “who previously hated computers… There is, apparently, something about mice and pull-down menus and icons that appeal to people previously intimidated by A> and the like”.
Most Apple II sales had once been to companies, but the IBM PC caused small businesses, schools, and some homes to become Apple’s main customers. Jobs stated during the Macintosh’s introduction “we expect Macintosh to become the third industry standard”, after Apple II and IBM PC. Macintosh at first outsold every other computer; it was so compelling that one dealer described it as “the first $2,500 impulse item”.The computer nonetheless did not meet expectations during the first year, especially among business customers. Only about ten applications including MacWrite and MacPaint were widely available,although many non-Apple software developers participated in the introduction and Apple promised that 79 companies including Lotus, Digital Research, and Ashton-Tate were creating products for the new computer. After one year for each computer, the Macintosh had less than one-quarter of the PC’s software selection—including one word processor, two databases, and one spreadsheet—although Apple had sold 280,000 Macintoshes compared to IBM’s first-year sales of fewer than 100,000 PCs. MacWrite’s inclusion with the Macintosh discouraged developers from creating other word processing software
Although Macintosh excited software developers—Doug Carlston said that Broderbund programmers fought over their Macintosh while PCjr was “in some closet”—they were required to learn how to write software that used the graphic user interface, and early in the computer’s history needed a Lisa 2 or Unix system to write Macintosh software. Infocom had developed the only third-party games for the Mac’s launch by replacing the buggy early operating system with the company’s own minimal bootable game platform. Despite standardizing on Pascal for software development Apple did not release a native-code Pascal compiler. Until third-party Pascal compilers appeared, developers had to write software in other languages while still learning enough Pascal to understand Inside Macintosh.
The Macintosh 128K, originally released as the Apple Macintosh, is the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case consisted of a 9 in (23 cm) CRT monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. A handle built into the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. This was synonymous with the release of the iconic 1984 TV Advertisement by Apple. This model and the 512k released in September of the same year had signatures of the core team embossed inside the hard plastic cover and soon became collector pieces.
In 1985 the combination of the Mac, Apple’s LaserWriter printer, and Mac-specific software like Boston Software’s MacPublisher and Aldus PageMaker enabled users to design, preview, and print page layouts complete with text and graphics—an activity to become known as desktop publishing. Initially, desktop publishing was unique to the Macintosh, but eventually became available for other platforms. Later, applications such as Macromedia FreeHand, QuarkXPress, and Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator strengthened the Mac’s position as a graphics computer and helped to expand the emerging desktop publishing market.
The Macintosh’s minimal memory became apparent, even compared with other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily. It also lacked a hard disk drive or the means to easily attach one. Many small companies sprang up to address the memory issue. Suggestions revolved around either upgrading the memory to 512 KB or removing the computer’s 16 memory chips and replacing them with larger-capacity chips, a tedious and difficult operation. In October 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh 512K, with quadruple the memory of the original, at a price of US$3,195. It also offered an upgrade for 128k Macs that involved replacing the logic board.
Apple released the Macintosh Plus on January 10, 1986, for a price of US$2,600. It offered one megabyte of RAM, easily expandable to four megabytes by the use of socketed RAM boards. It also featured a 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 an 800 kB capacity. The Mac Plus was an immediate success and remained in production, unchanged, until October 15, 1990; on sale for just over four years and ten months, it was the longest-lived Macintosh in Apple’s history until the 2nd generation Mac Pro that was introduced on December 19, 2013, surpassed this record on September 18, 2018. In September 1986 Apple introduced the Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop, or MPW, an application that allowed software developers to create software for Macintosh on Macintosh, rather than cross compiling from a Lisa. In August 1987, Apple unveiled HyperCard and MultiFinder, which added cooperative multitasking to the operating system. Apple began bundling both with every Macintosh.
Updated Motorola CPUs made a faster machine possible, and in 1987 Apple took advantage of the new Motorola technology and introduced the Macintosh II at $5500, powered by a 16 MHz Motorola 68020 processor.The primary improvement in the Macintosh II was Color QuickDraw in ROM, a color version of the graphics language which was the heart of the machine. Among the many innovations in Color QuickDraw were the ability to handle any display size, any color depth, and multiple monitors. The Macintosh II marked the start of a new direction for the Macintosh, as now for the first time it had an open architecture with several NuBus expansion slots, support for color graphics and external monitors, and a modular design similar to that of the IBM PC. It had an internal hard drive and a power supply with a fan, which was initially fairly loud. One third-party developer sold a device to regulate fan speed based on a heat sensor, but it voided the warranty. Later Macintosh computers had quieter power supplies and hard drives.
The Macintosh SE was released at the same time as the Macintosh II for $2900 (or $3900 with hard drive), as the first compact Mac with a 20 MB internal hard drive and an expansion slot. The SE’s expansion slot was located inside the case along with the CRT, potentially exposing an upgrader to high voltage. For this reason, Apple recommended users bring their SE to an authorized Apple dealer to have upgrades performed.The SE also updated Jerry Manock and Terry Oyama’s original design and shared the Macintosh II’s Snow White design language, as well as the new Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) mouse and keyboard that had first appeared on the Apple IIGS some months earlier.
In 1987 Apple spun off its software business as Claris. It was given the code and rights to several applications, most notably MacWrite, MacPaint, and MacProject. In the late 1980s, Claris released a number of revamped software titles; the result was the “Pro” series, including MacDraw Pro, MacWrite Pro, and FileMaker Pro. To provide a complete office suite, Claris purchased the rights to the Informix Wingz spreadsheet program on the Mac, renaming it Claris Resolve, and added the new presentation software Claris Impact. By the early 1990s, Claris applications 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 application. When Claris was reincorporated back into Apple in 1998, ClarisWorks was renamed AppleWorks beginning with version 5.0.
In 1988 Apple sued Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on the grounds that they infringed Apple’s copyrighted GUI, citing (among other things) the use of rectangular, overlapping, and resizable windows. After four years, the case was decided against Apple, as were later appeals. Apple’s actions were criticized by some in the software community, including the Free Software Foundation (FSF), who felt Apple was trying to monopolize on GUIs in general, and boycotted GNU software for the Macintosh platform for seven years.
With the new Motorola 68030 processor came the Macintosh IIx in 1988, which had benefited from internal improvements, including an on-board MMU.It was followed in 1989 by the Macintosh IIcx, a more compact version with fewer slots 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.” This allowed it to natively support more than 8 MB of RAM, unlike its predecessors, which had “32-bit dirty” ROMs (8 of the 32 bits available for addressing were used for OS-level flags). System 7 was the first Macintosh operating system to support 32-bit addressing. The following year, the Macintosh IIfx, starting at US$9,900, was unveiled. Apart from its fast 40 MHz 68030 processor, it had significant internal architectural improvements, including faster memory and two Apple II CPUs (6502s) dedicated to input/output (I/O) processing.
The third version of Microsoft Windows, Windows 3.0, was released in May 1990. Although still a graphical wrapper that relied upon MS-DOS, 3.0 was the first iteration of Windows which had a feature set and performance comparable to the much more expensive Macintosh platform. While the Macintosh was still mainly regarded as superior to Windows at the time, by this point, Windows “was good enough for the average user”. It also did not help matters that during the previous year Jean-Louis Gassée had steadfastly refused to lower the profit margins on Mac computers. Finally, there was a component shortage that rocked the exponentially-expanding PC industry in 1989, forcing Apple USA head Allan Loren to cut prices, which dropped Apple’s margins.
In response, Apple introduced a range of relatively inexpensive Macs in October 1990. The Macintosh Classic, essentially a less expensive version of the Macintosh SE, was the least expensive Mac offered until early 2001.The 68020-powered Macintosh LC, in its distinctive “pizza box” case, offered color graphics and was accompanied by a new, low-cost 512×384 pixel monitor.The Macintosh IIsi was essentially a 20 MHz IIci with only one expansion slot. All three machines sold well, although Apple’s profit margin on them was considerably lower than that on earlier models.
Apple improved Macintosh computers by introducing models equipped with newly available processors from the 68k lineup. The Macintosh Classic II and Macintosh LC II, which used a 16 MHz 68030 CPU, were joined in 1991 by the Macintosh Quadra 700 and 900,the first Macs to employ the faster Motorola 68040 processor.
Apple released its first portable computer, the Macintosh Portable in 1989. Although due to considerable design issues, it was soon replaced in 1991 with the first of the PowerBook line: the PowerBook 100, a miniaturized portable; 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 a built-in pointing device (a trackball) in front of the keyboard. The 1993 PowerBook 165c was Apple’s first portable computer to feature a color screen, displaying 256 colors with 640 × 400-pixel resolution.The second generation of PowerBooks, the 68040-equipped 500 series, introduced trackpads, integrated stereo speakers, and built-in Ethernet to the laptop form factor in 1994.
As for Mac OS, System 7 introduced a form of virtual memory, improved the performance of color graphics, and gained standard co-operative multitasking. Also during this time, the Macintosh began to shed the “Snow White” design language, along with the expensive consulting fees they were paying to Frog design. Apple instead brought the design work in-house by establishing the Apple Industrial Design Group, which took on responsibility for crafting a new look for all Apple products.
Intel had tried unsuccessfully to push Apple to migrate the Macintosh platform to Intel chips. Apple concluded that Intel’s complex instruction set computer (CISC) architecture ultimately would be unable to compete against reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processors. Though the Motorola 68040 offered the same features as the Intel 80486 and could on a clock-for-clock basis significantly outperform the Intel chip, the 486 can be clocked significantly faster without suffering from overheating problems, especially the clock-doubled i486DX2 which runs the CPU logic at twice the external bus speed, giving such equipped IBM compatible systems a significant performance lead over their Macintosh equivalents. Apple’s product design and engineering did not help matters as they restricted the use of the ‘040 to their expensive Quadras for a time while the 486 was readily available to OEMs as well as enthusiasts who put together their own machines. In late 1991, as the higher-end Macintosh desktop lineup transitioned to the ‘040, Apple was unable to offer the ‘040 in their top-of-the-line PowerBooks until early 1994 with the PowerBook 500 series, several years after the first 486-powered IBM compatible laptops hit the market which cost Apple considerable sales. In 1993 Intel rolled out the Pentium processors as the successor to the 486, but the Motorola 68050 was never released, leaving the Macintosh platform one CPU generation behind. In 1994 Apple abandoned Motorola CPUs for the RISC PowerPC architecture developed by the AIM alliance of Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola.The Power Macintosh line, the first to use the new chips, proved to be highly successful, with over a million PowerPC units sold in nine months. However, in the long run, spurning Intel for the PowerPC was a mistake as the commoditization of Intel-architecture chips meant Apple could not compete on price against “the Dells of the world”.
Notwithstanding these technical and commercial successes on the Macintosh, the falling costs of components made IBM PC compatibles cheaper and accelerated their adoption, over Macintosh systems that remained fairly expensive. A successful price war initiated by Compaq vaulted them from third place to first among PC manufacturers in 1994, overtaking a struggling IBM and relegating Apple to third place.
Furthermore, Apple had created too many similar models that confused potential buyers. At one point, its product lineup was subdivided into Classic, LC, II, Quadra, Performa, and Centris models, with essentially the same computer being sold under a number of different names. These models competed against Macintosh clones, hardware manufactured by third parties to whom Apple had licensed System 7. This succeeded in increasing the Macintosh’s market share somewhat and provided cheaper hardware for consumers, but hurt Apple financially as existing Apple customers began to buy cheaper clones which cannibalized the sales of Apple’s higher-margin Macintosh systems, while Apple continued to bear the burden of developing Mac OS.
Apple’s market share further struggled due to the release of the Windows 95 operating system, which unified Microsoft’s formerly separate MS-DOS and Windows products. Windows 95 significantly enhanced the multimedia ability and performance of IBM PC compatible computers and brought the abilities of Windows substantially nearer to parity with Mac OS.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 following the company’s purchase of NeXT, he ordered that the OS that had been previewed as System 7.7 be branded Mac OS 8, a name Apple had previously wished to preserve for the never-to-appear next generation Copland OS. This maneuver effectively ended the clone lines, as Apple had only licensed System 7 to clone manufacturers, not Mac OS 8. The decision caused significant financial losses for companies like Motorola, who produced the StarMax; Umax, who produced the SuperMac;and Power Computing, who offered several lines of Mac clones, including the PowerWave, PowerTower, and PowerTower Pro. These companies had invested substantial resources in creating their own Mac-compatible hardware. Apple bought out Power Computing’s license but allowed Umax to continue selling Mac clones until their license expired, as they had a sizeable presence in the lower-end segment that Apple did not. In September 1997 Apple extended Umax’s license allowing them to sell clones with Mac OS 8, the only clone maker to do so, but with the restriction that they only sell low-end systems. Without the higher profit margins of high-end systems, however, Umax judged this would not be profitable and exited the Mac clone market in May 1998, having lost US$36 million on the program.: 26
In 1998 Apple introduced its new iMac which, like the original 128K Mac, was an all-in-one computer. Its translucent plastic case, originally Bondi blue and later various additional colors, is considered an industrial design landmark of the late 1990s. The iMac did away with most of Apple’s standard (and usually proprietary) connections, such as SCSI and ADB, in favor of two USB ports. It replaced a floppy disk drive with a CD-ROM drive for installing software,but could not write to CDs or other media without external third-party hardware. The iMac proved to be phenomenally successful, with 800,000 units sold in 139 days. It made the company an annual profit of US$309 million, Apple’s first profitable year since Michael Spindler took over as CEO in 1995. This aesthetic was applied to the Power Macintosh G3 and later the iBook, Apple’s first consumer-level notebook computer, filling the missing quadrant of Apple’s “four-square product matrix” (desktop and portable products for both consumers and professionals). More than 140,000 pre-orders were placed before it began shipping in September,and by October proved to be a large success.
The iMac also marked Apple’s transition from the “Macintosh” name to the more simplistic “Mac”. Apple completed the elimination of the Macintosh product name in 1999 when “Power Macintosh” was retired with the introduction of the Power Mac G4.
In early 2001 Apple began shipping computers with CD-RW drives and emphasized the Mac’s ability to play DVDs by including DVD-ROM and DVD-RAM drives as standard. Steve Jobs admitted that Apple had been “late to the party” on writable CD technology, but felt that Macs could become a “digital hub” that linked and enabled an “emerging digital lifestyle”. Apple would later introduce an update to its iTunes music player software that enabled it to burn CDs, along with a controversial “Rip, Mix, Burn” advertising campaign that some felt encouraged media piracy. This accompanied the release of the iPod, Apple’s first successful handheld device. Apple continued to launch products, such as the unsuccessful Power Mac G4 Cube,the education-oriented eMac, and the titanium (and later aluminum) PowerBook G4 notebook for professionals.
The original iMac used a PowerPC G3 processor, but G4 and G5 chips were soon added, both accompanied by complete case redesigns that dropped the array of colors in favor of white plastic. As of 2007, all iMacs use aluminum cases. On January 11, 2005, Apple announced the Mac Mini, priced at US$499, making it the cheapest Mac.
Mac OS continued to evolve up to version 9.2.2, including retrofits such as the addition of a nanokernel and support for Multiprocessing Services 2.0 in Mac OS 8.6, though its dated architecture made replacement necessary. From its beginnings on an 8 MHz machine with 128 KB of RAM, it had grown to support Apple’s latest 1 GHz G4-equipped Macs. Since its architecture was first established, the lack of base features that were already common on Apple’s competition, like preemptive multitasking and protected memory, reached a critical mass. As such, Apple introduced Mac OS X, a fully overhauled Unix-based successor to Mac OS 9. OS X uses Darwin, XNU, and Mach as foundations, and is based on NeXTSTEP. It was released to the public in September 2000 as the Mac OS X Public Beta, featuring a revamped user interface called “Aqua”. At US$29.99, it allowed adventurous Mac users to sample Apple’s new operating system and provide feedback for the actual release. The initial version of Mac OS X, 10.0 “Cheetah”, was released on March 24, 2001. Older Mac OS applications could still run under early Mac OS X versions, using an environment called “Classic”. Subsequent releases of Mac OS X included 10.1 “Puma” (2001), 10.2 “Jaguar” (2002), 10.3 “Panther” (2003) and 10.4 “Tiger” (2005).
Apple discontinued the use of PowerPC processors in 2006. At WWDC 2005, Steve Jobs announced this transition, revealing that Mac OS X was always developed to run on both the Intel and PowerPC architectures. This was done to make the company’s computer more modern, keeping pace with Intel’s low power Pentium M chips, especially for heat-sensitive laptops.The PowerPC G5 chip’s heavy power consumption and heat output (the Power Mac G5 had to be liquid-cooled) also prevented its use in Mac notebook computers (as well as the original Mac mini), which were forced to use the older and slower PowerPC G4 chip. These shortcomings of the PowerPC chips were the main reasons behind the Mac’s transition to Intel processors, and the brand was revitalized by the subsequent boost in processing power available due to greater efficiency and the ability to implement multiple cores in Mac CPUs.
All Macs now used x86-64 processors made by Intel, and some were renamed as a result. Intel-based Macs running OS X 10.6 and below (support has been discontinued since 10.7) can run pre-existing software developed for PowerPC using an emulator named Rosetta, although at noticeably slower speeds than native programs. However, the Classic environment is now unavailable on the Intel architecture. Intel chips introduced the potential to run the Microsoft Windows operating system natively on Apple hardware, without emulation software such as Virtual PC. In March 2006 a group of hackers announced that they were able to run Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac. The group released their software as open source and has posted it for download on their website. On April 5, 2006, Apple announced the availability of the public beta of Boot Camp, software that allows owners of Intel-based Macs to install Windows XP on their machines; later versions added support for Windows Vista and Windows 7. Classic was discontinued in Mac OS X 10.5, and Boot Camp became a standard feature on Intel-based Macs.
Starting in 2006, Apple’s industrial design shifted to favor aluminum, which was used in the construction of the first MacBook Pro. Glass was added in 2008 with the introduction of the unibody MacBook Pro. These materials are billed as environmentally friendly. The iMac, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac Mini lines currently all use aluminum enclosures, and are now made of a single unibody. Chief designer Sir Jonathan Ive guided products towards a minimalist and simple feel, including the elimination of replaceable batteries in notebooks.Multi-touch gestures from the iPhone’s interface have been applied to the Mac line in the form of touch pads on notebooks and the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad for desktops.
On February 24, 2011, Apple became the first company to bring to market a computer that used Intel’s new Thunderbolt (codename Light Peak) I/O interface. Using the same physical interface as a Mini DisplayPort, and backwards compatible with that standard, Thunderbolt boasts two-way transfer speeds of 10 Gbit/s.
The iMac was redesigned in 2012 to feature significantly thinner side edges, faster processors, and the removal of the SuperDrive.
At WWDC 2012, the new MacBook Pro with Retina display was announced, with a thinner body, faster CPUs and GPUs, a higher pixel density display similar to the iPhone’s, MagSafe 2, and quieter impeller fans on the 15” model. It received mostly positive reviews, with Nilay Patel of The Verge calling it “one of the best displays to ever ship on a laptop”,although other reviewers criticized the lack of some ports and the removal of the SuperDrive.
On WWDC 2013, the new Mac Pro was unveiled, with Phil Schiller saying “Can’t innovate anymore, my ass!” in response to critics stating that Apple without Jobs could not innovate. It had an entirely new design, being much smaller, with a glossy dark gray cylindrical body, with a thermal core in the middle, with the components of the Mac built around it. It was released to generally positive reviews, although some criticized the lack of much upgradability.
Apple released a service program in 2015 to let users of 2011 15” MacBook Pros get their logic board replaced, due to a fatal flaw where the AMD dedicated GPU becomes overheated and generates artifacts on the display, or refuses to function entirely.
The MacBook was brought back in 2015 with a completely redesigned aluminum unibody chassis, with a 12” display, low power Intel Core M processors, a much more smaller logic board, tiered batteries to maximize use of the space, lack of any fans, a new Butterfly keyboard, a single USB-C port, and a solid-state Force Touch trackpad with pressure sensitivity. It was praised for its portability, but criticized for the lack of performance, and the need to use adapters to use most USB peripherals, and high starting price, the same as the 13” MacBook Pro’s.
In the same year, the MacBook Pro was updated to have more battery life, faster flash storage and the same Force Touch trackpad from the MacBook, being completely still in usage, with a Taptic Engine linear oscillator simulating the feel of a standard trackpad.
The 4th generation MacBook Pro was released at an Apple Special Event in October 2016, with a thinner design, the replacement of all ports except the headphone jack with USB-C ports, the Butterfly keyboard from the MacBook, P3 wide color gamut display, and the Touch Bar, an touchscreen OLED display strip replacing the function keys and the escape key on some models of the MacBook Pro, with a UI that changes and adapts depending on the application being used. It also replaces the power button with a Touch ID sensor on models with the Touch Bar. It was released to mixed reviews, with most reviewers criticizing the Touch Bar, which made it harder to use the function keys by feel, as it had no tactile feedback. The Verge’s Miranda Nielsen described it as “I felt like a kid learning how to type again.”, with Dana Wollman from Engadget hitting the Touch Bar when she meant to hit the delete key. The USB-C ports were also a source of frustration for many users, especially the professional demographic of the MacBook Pro, requiring users to buy adapters or “dongles” to connect USB-A and SD card devices.
A few months later many users reported the Butterfly keyboard on the MacBook and MacBook Pro getting stuck, or not registering letters. The problem was identified as dust or small foreign objects such as sand and food crumbs getting under the keyboard, jamming it and requiring customers to take it to an Apple Store or authorized service center to repair it.
After years had gone by without the Mac Pro getting any meaningful updates, VP of marketing Phil Schiller admitted in 2017 that the current Mac Pro did not meet expectations and in an interview with tech reporters, said the following:
“We know there are a number of customers who continue to buy our current Mac Pros. To be clear, our current Mac Pro has met the needs of some of our customers, and we know clearly not all of our customers. None of this is black and white, it’s a wide variety of customers. Some… it’s the kind of system they wanted; others, it was not.”
“-As we’ve said, we made something bold that we thought would be great for the majority of our Mac Pro users. And what we discovered was that it was great for some and not others. Enough so that we need to take another path. One of the good things, hopefully, with Apple through the years has been a willingness to say when something isn’t quite what we wanted it to be, didn’t live up to expectations, to not be afraid to admit it and look for the next answer.”
Craig Federighi, SVP of software engineering, also admitted in the same interview:
“ I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner, if you will. We designed a system with the kind of GPUs that at the time we thought we needed, and that we thought we could well serve with a two GPU architecture. That that was the thermal limit we needed, or the thermal capacity we needed. But workloads didn’t materialize to fit that as broadly as we hoped.”
The iMac Pro was revealed at WWDC 2017 by John Ternus with Intel Xeon W processors and Radeon Vega graphics.It was partly a stopgap for professional users until the next generation Mac Pro arrived.
In 2018, Apple refreshed the MacBook Pro with faster processors and a third-generation Butterfly keyboard, and the redesigned MacBook Air with a Retina display released in the same year added silicone gaskets to prevent dust and small objects from getting in, and launched a program to repair affected keyboards free of charge, but users continued to be affected by the issue.
Some models of the 2018 MacBook Pro 15” had a flaw where the Core i9 processor would get uncomfortably hot, with YouTuber Dave Lee recording a maximum temperature of 93 degrees Celsius under load, and thermal throttled to the point it was slower than the 2017 15” MacBook Pro with a Core i7 CPU.Apple patched this issue by releasing a supplemental update to High Sierra, and stated:
“Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro. A bug fix is included in today’s macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended.” After installing the patch, Dave Lee noted that the MacBook Pro alleviated the issues, now not being nearly as hot.[
The MacBook Air was redesigned with a Retina display, Butterfly keyboard, Force Touch Trackpad, and removed all ports save for the headphone jack and replaced them with 2 Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports.
2019–2020: Fixing flaws and focus on professionals
The 2019 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air refreshes both removed the Butterfly keyboard and replaced them with what Apple dubbed the “Magic Keyboard”, which is largely identical to the scissor-switch mechanism used in MacBooks prior to 2016. The Touch Bar and Touch ID was also made standard on all MacBook Pros, with the Touch ID/power button now separated and moved more to the right, and the escape key now made physical and detached from the Touch Bar too.
At WWDC 2019, then VP of hardware engineering John Ternus revealed the all-new Mac Pro, with a new design more akin to the Power Macs than the cylindrical design of the previous Mac Pro, with far more upgradability with Apple’s own custom-designed PCIe expansion cards, the MPX modules, although standard PCIe devices such as AMD graphics cards work as well, although compatibility differs depending on the card. Almost every part is user-replaceable, with iFixit giving it a 9/10 repairability score. It gained positive reviews, with reviewers praising the modularity and upgradability, and quiet cooling, while also meeting the demands of professionals who were unsatisfied with the previous generation Mac Pro.
The 2019 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air refreshes both removed the Butterfly keyboard and replaced them with what Apple dubbed the “Magic Keyboard”, which is largely identical to the scissor-switch mechanism used in MacBooks prior to 2016. The Touch Bar and Touch ID was also made standard on all MacBook Pros, with the Touch ID/power button now separated and moved more to the right, and the escape key now made physical and detached from the Touch Bar too.
At WWDC 2019, then VP of hardware engineering John Ternus revealed the all-new Mac Pro, with a new design more akin to the Power Macs than the cylindrical design of the previous Mac Pro, with far more upgradability with Apple’s own custom-designed PCIe expansion cards, the MPX modules, although standard PCIe devices such as AMD graphics cards work as well, although compatibility differs depending on the card. Almost every part is user-replaceable, with iFixit giving it a 9/10 repairability score. It gained positive reviews, with reviewers praising the modularity and upgradability, and quiet cooling, while also meeting the demands of professionals who were unsatisfied with the previous generation Mac Pro.
In April 2018, Bloomberg published rumors stating that Apple intended to drop Intel chips and replace them with ARM processors similar to those used in its phones, causing Intel’s shares to fall 6%. The Verge, commenting on the rumors, stated that such a decision made sense, as Intel was failing to make any significant improvements to its lineup and could not compete for battery life with ARM chips.
At WWDC 2020, Tim Cook announced the transition to in-house SoCs, built upon an ARM architecture, over a two-year timeline.[7] On November 10, 2020, Apple announced the first Macs to ship with Apple silicon: the MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and the 13″ MacBook Pro. The MacBook Air was the only Mac to move exclusively to Apple silicon with this announcement, as the 13″ MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini are still being sold with the option of an Intel processor. Paralleling the transition from PowerPC to Intel, Macs with Apple silicon can run software designed for Intel chips using an translator called Rosetta 2.
Apple allowed select developers to rent a Developer Transition Kit (DTK) for $500, with the agreement that they would return it after a year. The DTK was a Mac Mini with the iPad Pro’s A12Z Bionic chip inside instead of a more traditional x86 Intel processor, to help developers optimize their apps for the upcoming ARM Macs.
At an online November 2020 special event, Apple unveiled the first batch of ARM Macs, the MacBook Air, the 13” MacBook Pro, and the Mac Mini. They all had a custom-designed Apple M1 system on a chip (SoC), faster than any ARM processor ever produced by Apple, featuring 4 high-performance cores and 4 low-power cores, a 7-core GPU option in the MacBook Air or an 8-core GPU on more expensive models of the Air, and as standard on the Pro and Mini.Furthermore, they have a 16-core neural engine for up to 11 times faster machine-learning performance. As these chips are a lot less power-hungry, the MacBook Pro 13″ has a battery life of up to 20 hours.
It was released to immensely positive reviews, with most reviewers saying that it had longer battery life, was much cooler, and much faster than the Intel chips used in the previous generation. The Rosetta 2 translation software also worked with most Intel applications, with not much of a performance decrease, and much faster performance and adoption than Windows and Microsoft’s Surface Pro X.
The iMac Pro was quietly discontinued on March 6, 2021 after only receiving 2 minor updates.
On April 20, 2021, the new 24” iMac was revealed, coming in 7 new colors and the Apple M1 chip. The entire enclosure is now made from 100% recycled aluminum and is 11.5mm thin. The screen was upgraded from a 21.5” size to 24” 4.5K Retina display, with thinner white bezels.
The new MacBook Pros were revealed on October 18, 2021, featuring a design similar to Apple’s Titanium PowerBook G4s and 2012 Retina MacBook Pros, bringing back the MagSafe, HDMI, and SD card ports, in addition to 3 Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports and a high-impedance headphone jack. The displays now come in 14” and 16” configurations, featuring a mini-LED display with a 120Hz variable refresh rate screen.They have either a M1 Pro or M1 Max chip, with up to 70% faster CPU performance than the M1, according to Apple.
On March 8. 2022, the Mac Studio was revealed a new desktop Mac which can be equipped with an M1 Max or a new M1 Ultra chip, with a design similar to two Mac minis stacked on top of one another. The M1 Ultra model’s CPU is more performant than even the 28-core Intel Xeon W Mac Pro, while being much more efficient and compact. It starts from $1999 and it together with the Studio Display revealed on the same day, replaces the 27” iMac, which was quietly discontinued.
The MacBook Air with Apple silicon is a line of notebook computers developed and manufactured by Apple Inc. since 2020. In the current product line, the MacBook Air is Apple’s entry-level notebook, situated below the performance range MacBook Pro.
On June 22, 2020, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the Mac would transition away from Intel processors to Apple’s own in-house designed processors that use the ARM64 architecture, branded as Apple silicon.
On November 10, 2020, Apple announced an updated MacBook Air with an Apple-designed M1 processor, launched alongside an updated Mac Mini and 13-inch MacBook Pro as the first Macs with Apple’s new line of custom ARM-based Apple silicon processors The device uses a fanless design. It also adds support for Wi-Fi 6, Thunderbolt 3/USB4 and Wide color (P3). The M1 MacBook Air can only run one external display; the previous Intel-based model was capable of running two 4K displays. The FaceTime camera remains 720p but Apple advertises an improved image signal processor for higher quality video.
The M1 MacBook Air has received positive reviews, with much of the praise going to the capabilities of the M1 chip.
In his review for Engadget, Devindra Hardawar gave the MacBook Air a score of 94/100, praising the performance as “shockingly responsive” and highlighting the lack of fan noise and “excellent” keyboard and trackpad as among some of the pros. Other than that, he only lightly touched on the notebook’s design and feel, citing the fact that it hadn’t really changed much since the early 2020 MacBook Air. He did, however, praise the case as feeling “sturdy as ever”.
Writing for Wired, Julian Chokkattu bemoaned the fact that the Air only came with 2 USB-C ports, but praised the keyboard and battery life. He also lauded the fanless design, saying it was something he found himself “appreciating over and over again”.
On June 22, 2020, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the Mac would shift from Intel processors to Apple’s own in-house designed processors that use the ARM64 architecture, branded as Apple silicon. On April 20, 2021, Apple announced a 24-inch iMac based on the Apple M1 system on a chip.
The iMac with M1 features a 4480-by-2520 (4.5K) built-in display, 1080p FaceTime camera with an improved image signal processor and three-microphone array, and a six-driver stereo speaker system with a pair of force-cancelling woofers and a tweeter per side, that supports Dolby Atmos and spatial audio. It also adds support for Wi-Fi 6, USB4/Thunderbolt 3, and 6K output to run the Pro Display XDR. External display support is reduced to one display over USB-C/Thunderbolt; the previous 21.5-inch Intel-based model could drive two 4K displays over USB-C/Thunderbolt.The models also include a magnetic power plug and external power supply that can be configured with a Gigabit Ethernet port.
The iMac with M1 ships with a Magic Mouse 2 or Magic Trackpad 2 with a color-matching aluminum underside. It can be configured with one of three updated Magic Keyboards with rounded corners: a standard version, a version with a Touch ID sensor, and an extended layout version with a numeric keypad and Touch ID. The Magic Keyboards with Touch ID are compatible with other Mac computers with Apple silicon but only ship with the iMac.
Apple is working on updated versions of the Mac mini, and at least one of the Mac mini machines in the works is likely to replace the Intel version of the Mac mini that Apple is still selling today. Apple replaced the entry-level Mac mini with an M1 version in 2020, and the company is ready for a refresh of the Mac mini line.
In March 2022, Apple introduced the Mac Studio, which is a hybrid between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro, but the continued existence of Intel models and rumors of a refresh suggest that the Mac mini is not being phased out of Apple’s product lineup. This guide includes everything that we know about the Mac mini refresh, which could be happening imminently.
Design
Rumors suggest that Apple might tweak the design of the next-generation Mac mini, but we don’t know exactly what it will look like just yet.
Leaker Jon Prosser, who has somewhat of a mixed track record when it comes to predicting Apple’s plans, provided details on what he believes the new Mac mini will look like. He says the new Mac mini will have a plexiglass-like top that will sit over the aluminum enclosure, and that the overall size could be smaller than the current Mac mini.
Prosser provided renders, but it’s worth noting that this design is not quite accurate when it comes to port layout because there would not be so little space between USB-C ports.
Though some rumors have indicated the next-generation version of the Mac mini will see a redesign, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo does not believe that Apple will make design updates to the machine. Kuo said it is likely to continue to use the same form factor as the current model.
Colors
The Mac mini could feature a two-tone design instead of one single color, and it could potentially come in colors other than space gray or silver, much like the 24-inch iMac. Color options have not yet been confirmed, so Apple could just stick to the standard Mac mini shades.
Ports
Apple’s new Mac mini is said to be equipped with four Thunderbolt ports, two USB-A ports, an Ethernet port, and an HDMI port, along with the same magnetic charging cable used for the 24-inch iMac.
Apple Silicon Chips
Initial rumors suggested the updated Mac mini would adopt the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips that were first introduced in the 2021 MacBook Pro models, but 9to5Mac and Bloomberg have said that Apple will instead debut two M2 versions of the Mac mini, one with a standard M2 chip and a second higher-end model with an M2 Pro chip.
The M2 chip is expected to feature the same 8-core CPU as the M1, but with speed and efficiency improvements, along with a 9 or 10 core GPU, up from 7 or 8 cores. As for the M2 Pro, we don’t know full details yet, but it could feature a 12-core CPU. The current M1 Pro chip has a 10-core CPU and 16-core GPU, so we could also see a GPU boost.
Launch Date
We know a new Mac mini is coming at some point in 2022, but there’s no word on when. Apple has several Mac refreshes in the works for 2022, and following the March event that saw the launch of the Mac Studio, we could see the next unveiling in May or June. It’s worth noting that while most rumors have pointed to a 2022 launch date, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple won’t release an updated model until 2023.
The Mac Studio was announced on March 8, 2022, alongside the Apple Studio Display, and released on March 18. Customers have reported shipping delays for the Mac Studio as late as May. The delay has been attributed to the global chip shortage.
Rear ports
The Mac Studio is designed as a higher-grade machine than the Mac Mini but lower than the Mac Pro, and priced accordingly. There are two models which are driven by ARM-based SoC: the M1 Max or the M1 Ultra, which combines two M1 Max chips in one package. The Mac Studio has a similar width and depth to the Mac Mini, both about 8 inches (200 mm), but is around 3.7 inches (94 mm) tall. It has four Thunderbolt 4 (USB 4) ports, two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, HDMI (up to 4K @ 60 Hz), 10Gb Ethernet and a headphone jack. The front panel has two USB-C ports (Thunderbolt 4 in M1 Ultra models) and an SD card slot (that supports SDXC cards and UHS-II bus). It is cooled by a pair of double-sided blowers and a mesh of holes on the bottom and back of the case, which helps reduce the noise of fans spinning.Nevertheless, there have been extensive early reports of excessive fan noise.
Mac Studio models with the M1 Ultra are 2 pounds (910 g) heavier than those with the M1 Max as they are equipped with a larger copper heatsink. Apple says the Mac Studio performs 50 percent faster than a Mac Pro with a 16-core Intel Xeon processor.
The Mac Studio supports up to four 6K monitors connected via Thunderbolt, and a fifth monitor via HDMI. It was introduced alongside the Apple Studio Display, a 27-inch 5K monitor with an integrated 12 megapixel camera, six-speaker sound system with spatial audio and Dolby Atmos support and a height adjustable stand.
The Mac Pro, by some performance benchmarks, is the most powerful computer that Apple offers. It is one of four desktop computers in the current Macintosh lineup, sitting above the Mac Mini and iMac and Mac Studio.
Introduced in August 2006, the first-generation Mac Pro had two dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors and a rectangular tower case carried over from the Power Mac G5. It was replaced on April 4, 2007, by a dual quad-core Xeon Clovertown model, then on January 8, 2008, by a dual quad-core Xeon Harpertown model.
Revisions in 2010 and 2012 revisions had Nehalem/Westmere architecture Intel Xeon processors.
In December 2013, Apple released the second-generation Mac Pro with a new cylindrical design. The company said it offered twice the overall performance of the first generationwhile taking up less than one-eighth the volume. It had up to a 12-core Xeon E5 processor, dual AMD FirePro D series GPUs, PCIe-based flash storage, and an HDMI port. Thunderbolt 2 ports brought updated wired connectivity and support for six Thunderbolt displays. Reviews initially were generally positive, with caveats. Limitations of the cylindrical design prevented Apple from upgrading the second-generation Mac Pro with more powerful hardware.
In December 2019, the third-generation Mac Pro returned to a tower form factor reminiscent of the first-generation model, but with larger air cooling holes. It has up to a 28-core Xeon-W processor, eight PCIe slots, AMD Radeon Pro Vega GPUs, and replaces most data ports with USB-C and Thunderbolt 3.
Source : wikipedia
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