Thirty Year Old Apple

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the first Macintosh

On January 24, 1984, the first Apple Macintosh computers appeared in US stores. It was the release of computers in this series that became Apple's main business for many years. I suggest you go through the most interesting and unusual for the modern reader pages of the history of Mac computers together.

Disclaimer: I am neither an adherent or opponent of Apple technology, the article was written solely for the reason that I consider the release of the Macintosh 128K a milestone in the history of IT

Let's start with the background. It consists in the fact that at the same time with the Macintosh in Apple since 1979, the Lisa computer was developed. However, due to the large amount of RAM for that time(there were versions with 512 and 1024 KB of memory), the first computer in this series - Lisa I, had a very high cost: almost $ 10,000! In addition, he had a considerable size. The Macintosh team managed to create a computer that met the requirements of most people both in terms of cost and in terms of performance (128 KB of RAM and the Motorola 68000 processor, taken from Lisa, with a clock frequency of 5 to 8 MHz). This fact, as well as more attractive, according to Steve Jobs, the design, determined the fate of the Lisa and Macintosh series: the first ceased to exist, and the second still pleases Apple customers and brings huge profits to the company.

As a result, the Macintosh 128K was the first personal computer in its modern sense: in addition to its small size and low cost, the computer provided a completely new interface. The user no longer had to work with the command line: on the Mac for the first time in mass production, the GUI was used . And all this on the monitor with a diagonal of 9 inches and with a resolution of 512 × 342 pixels. In addition, the mouse was also included in the package of delivery, which had high hopes: in the first versions of Mac, the keyboards did not even have arrow keys.

Apple did not stint and thoroughly approached the advertising of its revolutionary product, which also paid off.

But the work done by the Lisa project staff was not in vain: after all, the Macintosh 128K was based on Lisa hardware (as well as the 512K that appeared later with increased RAM ), and the Macintosh XL, released in 1985, was essentially a revised version of Lisa, even the form factor has remained the same.

The third model of the Macintosh line is considered the Macintosh Plus, which was released in 1986 (by the way, his birthday was January 16). Like 512K, this is an improved version of the previous model, that is, a direct descendant of 128K. Later in the same case will come computers SE, Classic and Classic II. Although, in addition to increasing capacity, there were other changes in this line: for example, the Macintosh Classic II was based on Macintosh LC hardware, a budget version that appeared in 1990.

But we ran ahead. Indeed, in 1987, Apple first created not a candy bar, but a computer with a separate system unit: Macintosh II. It is with this model that Apple begins to produce and sell system units separately, as well as other components. It was the first Macintosh series computer with a color display, and the first PC to display a photorealistic image from the conveyor, without additional upgrades. Macintosh II has become a serious competitor for products from Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. A separate system unit of this model laid the foundation for the creation of the Quadra 700 and Quadra 900 in 1991 - the first Apple computers in the tower form factor .

In 1989, Apple introduced the first laptop computer: the Macintosh Portable, which was powered by a battery.It was “portable” only in fact: the weight of 7.2 kg prevented frequent carrying. However, the high weight was justified by high performance. In addition, Macintosh Portable for the first time Apple has installed a black and white LCD display. In this and future versions of laptops, Apple has replaced the mouse with a trackball to provide mobility. But despite such advantages as 10-hour battery life, and a positive assessment from critics, one of the first laptops was not widely used.

In October 1991, the Macintosh 100 laptop and its older brothers saw the light: Macintosh 140 and 170. These were already laptops in their modern sense. In fact, the series was designed and manufactured by Sony, together with Apple engineers. This is probably why the design of this series was significantly different from previous Apple products. In my opinion, this series, like the subsequent series of Apple laptops, does not cause such nostalgic feelings as the models that I mentioned above. Therefore, I propose to return to the desktop.

And there is something to see: in 1993, the Macintosh LC 520 and Macintosh TV computers appeared. These TV-like all-in-ones had a 14 "monitor, a CD-drive (two Macintosh TVs) and built-in stereo speakers! In fact, these were not computers, but home media centers: the Macintosh TV could even work like a TV and had a remote The Classic Color and Classic Color II models released in the same year are based on the same platform, but had a smaller screen size and compact body.

In 1995, the unremarkable Power Macintosh 5000 series appeared ... And it so happened that, perhaps, the most unusual model from the Macintosh series came to the end of the passing era. This computer was the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, released for Apple's twentieth anniversary, with a circulation of 12,000 units. Futuristic design tamdiffered from the usual beige boxes, which were the computers of that time. TAM was one of the first desktop computers with an LCD display. It was an extremely modern computer, equipped with a PowerPC 603e processor with a clock frequency of 250 MHz, the latest 12.1 "LCD display, an ATI 3D Rage II graphics card with 2 MB of memory (displaying a 16-bit image with a resolution of 800x600), a CD-ROM, and a 2 GB hard disk , A TV / FM tuner and a custom-made Bose acoustic 2.1 system.

This is where I will end my first article on Habré: iMac G3marked the transition to the next round of development of Apple computers, both in technological terms and in design. But, I think, many of the readers of Habrahabr saw him and the models that followed him, if not live, then at least in the photo. So I, perhaps, will save the story about these computers until the next anniversary of the Macintosh line.