The
Macintosh or
Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The
first MacintoshThe Macintosh 128K machine, released as the "Apple Macintosh", was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling...
was introduced by Apple's then-chairman
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a
mouseIn computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
and a
graphical user interfaceIn computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
rather than a
command-line interfaceA command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...
. The company continued to have success through the second half of the 1980s, first primarily because of the sales of the
Apple IIThe Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
series remained strong even after the introduction of the Macintosh, only to see it dissipate in the 1990s as the personal computer market shifted toward the "
WintelWintel is a portmanteau of Windows and Intel, referring to personal computers using Intel x86 compatible processors running Microsoft Windows...
" platform:
IBM PC compatibleIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
machines running
MS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
and
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
.
Years later, Apple consolidated its multiple consumer-level desktop models into the
1998 iMacThe iMac G3 was the first model of the iMac line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. , and the originator of the Legacy-free PC market category. Like the first Macs, the iMac G3 is an all-in-one personal computer, encompassing both the monitor and the system unit in a single enclosure...
all-in-one. This proved to be a sales success and saw the Macintosh brand revitalized. Current Mac systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. These include the descendants of the original
iMacThe iMac is a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers built by Apple. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its introduction in 1998, and has evolved through five distinct forms....
and the entry-level
Mac miniThe Mac Mini is a small form factor desktop computer manufactured by Apple Inc. Like earlier mini-ITX PC designs, it is uncommonly small for a desktop computer: 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches tall. It weighs 2.7 pounds...
desktop modelsA desktop computer is a personal computer in a form intended for regular use at a single location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portable computer. Early desktop computers are designed to lay flat on the desk, while modern towers stand upright...
, the
Mac ProThe Mac Pro is a workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc. The machines are based on Xeon microprocessors, but are similar to the Power Mac G5 they replaced in terms of outward appearance and expansion capabilities...
tower
graphicsComputer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
workstationA workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
, the
MacBookThe MacBook was a brand of Macintosh notebook computers built by Apple Inc. First introduced in May 2006, it replaced the iBook and 12-inch PowerBook series of notebooks as a part of the Apple–Intel transition. Positioned as the low end of the MacBook family, the Apple MacBook was aimed at the...
,
MacBook AirThe MacBook Air family is a line of Apple ultraportable Macintosh notebook computers.The first-generation MacBook Air was a 13.3"-only model, previously promoted as the World's Thinnest Notebook, introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. It featured a custom Intel Merom CPU...
and
MacBook ProThe MacBook Pro is a line of Macintosh portable computers introduced in January 2006 by Apple. It replaced the PowerBook G4 and was the second model, after the iMac, to be announced in the Apple–Intel transition...
laptops. The
XserveXserve was a line of rack unit computers designed by Apple Inc. for use as servers. When the Xserve was introduced in 2002, it was Apple's first designated server hardware design since the Apple Network Server in 1996...
serverIn the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
was discontinued January 31, 2011.
Production of the Mac is based on a
vertical integrationIn microeconomics and management, the term vertical integration describes a style of management control. Vertically integrated companies in a supply chain are united through a common owner. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or service, and the products combine to...
model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its hardware and creates its own
operating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
that is pre-installed on all Mac computers. This is in contrast to most
IBM PC compatibleIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
s, where multiple sellers create and integrate hardware intended to run another company's operating software. Apple exclusively produces Mac hardware, choosing internal systems,
designsIndustrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
, and prices. Apple does use third party components, however, such as graphics subsystems from
nVidiaNvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
and
ATiAs a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines* Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...
. Current Mac
CPUsThe central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
use Intel's
X86-64x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...
architecture; the earliest models (1984–1994) used
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
's
68kThe Motorola 680x0/m68000/68000 is a family of 32-bit CISC microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors...
and models from 1994–2006 used the
AIM allianceThe AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. , IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a...
's
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
. Apple also develops the operating system for the Mac, currently
Mac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
version 10.7 "Lion". The modern Mac, like other personal computers, is capable of running alternative operating systems such as
LinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
,
FreeBSDFreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, and, in the case of Intel-based Macs,
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. However, Apple does not
licenseA software license agreement is a contract between the "licensor" and purchaser of the right to use software. The license may define ways under which the copy can be used, in addition to the automatic rights of the buyer including the first sale doctrine and .Many form contracts are only contained...
Mac OS X for use on non-Apple computers.
1979 to 1984: Development
The Macintosh project started in the late 1970s with
Jef RaskinJef Raskin was an American human-computer interface expert best known for starting the Macintosh project for Apple in the late 1970s.-Early years and education:...
, an Apple employee, who 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, but the name had to be changed for legal reasons as it was too close, phonetically, to that of the
McIntosh audio equipmentMcIntosh Laboratory is an American manufacturer of high-end audio equipment based in Binghamton, New York. The company was founded in 1949 by Frank McIntosh,. The "classic" vacuum tube components of the 1960s include the MC275 power amplifier, the C22 preamplifier, and the MR67 tuner...
manufacturer.
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
requested a release of the name so that Apple could use it, but was denied, forcing Apple to eventually buy the rights to use the name. Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project in September 1979, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype.
Bill AtkinsonBill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
, a member of Apple's
LisaThe Apple Lisa—also known as the Lisa—is a :personal computer designed by Apple Computer, Inc. during the early 1980s....
team (which was developing a similar but higher-end computer), introduced him to
Burrell SmithBurrell Carver Smith is an American engineer who, while working at Apple Computer, designed the motherboard for the original Macintosh. He was Apple employee #282, and was hired in February, 1979, initially as an Apple II service technician...
, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year. Over the years, Raskin assembled a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh hardware and
softwareComputer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith, the team included
George CrowGeorge L. Crow Jr. was a member of the original Apple Macintosh team in 1984 at Apple Computer. Crow left Apple in 1985 to become a co-founder of Steve Jobs' NeXT. Prior to working at Apple, Crow worked at HP; after leaving NeXT he worked for SuperMac and then Truevision...
,
Chris EspinosaChris Espinosa is a senior employee of Apple, officially employee number 8. He joined the company at the age of fourteen in 1976 when it was still housed in Steve Jobs' parents' garage, writing software manuals and coding after school...
,
Joanna HoffmanJoanna Hoffman was the fifth person hired by Jef Raskin to be part of the original Apple Macintosh developer team. She acted as the team's only marketing person for more than a year; among her contributions was writing the first draft of the Macintosh User Interface Guidelines.Before joining...
,
Bruce HornBruce Lawrence Horn was a programmer with Apple Computer and the creator of the Macintosh Finder and the Macintosh Resource Manager. His signature is amongst those molded to the case of the Macintosh 128K....
,
Susan KareSusan Kare is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She was also one of the original employees of NeXT , working as the Creative Director.-Background:Kare was born in Ithaca, New York and is the sister of aerospace engineer...
,
Andy HertzfeldAndy Hertzfeld is a computer scientist who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a designer for the Macintosh system software...
,
Guy KawasakiGuy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, bestselling author, and Apple Fellow. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. He is currently a Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, and has been involved in the rumor reporting...
,
Daniel KottkeDaniel Kottke is a U.S. computer engineer and one of the earliest employees of Apple Inc. His official employee number was 12, having been assigned a few months after he originally started working. He assembled and tested the first Apple I computers with its computer designer and Apple co-founder...
, and
Jerry ManockJerrold C. Manock is an American industrial designer. He worked for Apple Computer from 1977 to 1984, contributing to housing designs for the Apple II, Apple III, and earlier compact Apple Macintosh computers. Manock is widely regarded as the "father" of the Apple Industrial Design Group...
.
Smith's first Macintosh board was built to Raskin's design specifications: it had 64 kilobytes (kB) of RAM, used the
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
6809EThe Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit microprocessor CPU from Motorola, designed by Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced 1978...
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
, and was capable of supporting a 256×256
pixelIn digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
black-and-whiteBlack-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
bitmapIn computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
display.
Bud TribbleGuy L. "Bud" Tribble, MD, PhD, is Vice President of Software Technology at Apple Inc. Tribble served as the manager of the original Macintosh software development team where he helped to design the Mac OS and user interface. He was among the founders of NeXT, Inc., serving as NeXT's vice...
, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisa's graphical programs on the Macintosh, and asked Smith whether he could incorporate the Lisa's
Motorola 68000The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
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 5
MHzThe hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
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 production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. The final Mac design was self-contained and had the complete
QuickDrawQuickDraw is the 2D graphics library and associated Application Programming Interface which is a core part of the classic Apple Macintosh operating system. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still exists as part of the libraries of Mac OS X, but has been...
picture language and interpreter in 64 kB of
ROMRead-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
– far more than most other computers; it had 128 kB of RAM, in the form of sixteen 64
kilobitThe kilobit is a multiple of the unit bit for digital information or computer storage. The prefix kilo is defined in the International System of Units as a multiplier of 103 , and therefore,...
(kb) RAM chips
solderSolder is a fusible metal alloy used to join together metal workpieces and having a melting point below that of the workpiece.Soft solder is what is most often thought of when solder or soldering are mentioned and it typically has a melting range of . It is commonly used in electronics and...
ed to the
logicboardIn personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...
. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 kB by means of soldering sixteen
ICAn integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
sockets to accept 256 kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final product's screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel
monochromeMonochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...
display, exceeding the prototypes.
The design caught the attention of
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
, co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, he began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and team member Andy Hertzfeld said that the final Macintosh design is closer to Jobs' ideas than Raskin's. After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being developed at
Xerox PARCPARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....
, Jobs had negotiated a visit to see the
Xerox AltoThe Xerox Alto was one of the first computers designed for individual use , making it arguably what is now called a personal computer. It was developed at Xerox PARC in 1973...
computer and
SmalltalkSmalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...
development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh group's own ideas. Jobs also commissioned industrial designer
Hartmut EsslingerHartmut Esslinger is a German-American industrial designer and inventor. He is known for his design company Frogdesign, particularly his work for Apple Computer in the 1980s.-Life and career:...
to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the
"Snow White" design languageThe Snow White design language was an industrial design language developed by Hartmut Esslinger's Frog Design. Used by Apple Computer from 1984 to 1990, the scheme has vertical and horizontal stripes for decoration, ventilation, and the illusion that the computer enclosure is smaller than it...
; although it came too late for the earliest Macs, it was implemented in most other mid- to late-1980s Apple computers. However, Jobs' leadership at the Macintosh project did not last; after an internal power struggle with new CEO
John SculleyJohn Sculley is an American businessman. Sculley was vice-president and president of PepsiCo , until he became CEO of Apple on April 8, 1983, a position he held until leaving in 1993...
, Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985, went on to found
NeXTNext, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
, another computer company, and did not return until 1997 when Apple acquired NeXT.
1984: Introduction
The
Macintosh 128KThe Macintosh 128K machine, released as the "Apple Macintosh", was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling...
was announced to the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million
Ridley ScottSir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
television commercial, "
1984"1984" is an American television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer for the first time. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, Venice, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott. Anya Major...
". The commercial most notably aired during the third quarter of
Super Bowl XVIIISuper Bowl XVIII was an American football game played on January 22, 1984, at Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida, deciding the National Football League champion following the 1983 regular season. The American Football Conference champion Los Angeles Raiders defeated the National Football Conference...
on January 22, 1984 and is now considered a "watershed event" and a "masterpiece." "1984" used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by a
PicassoPablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
-style picture of
AppleApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
's Macintosh 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
alludesAn allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
to
George OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's novel,
Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
, which described a
dystopian futureA dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
ruled by a televised "
Big BrotherBig Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence – where the ruling Party wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.In the society that Orwell...
."
Two days after the 1984 ad aired, the Macintosh went on sale. It came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface:
MacWriteMacWrite was a word processor application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. It was the first such program that was widely available to the public to offer WYSIWYG operation, with multiple fonts and styles...
and
MacPaintMacPaint was a bitmap-based graphics painting software program developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 22, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processor counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate...
. 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 around 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 developerA software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...
s chose not to undertake, and could be regarded as a reason for an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's
MultiPlanMultiplan was an early spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft. Known initially by the code name "EP" , it was introduced in 1982 as a competitor for VisiCalc....
migrated over from
MS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
, with
Microsoft WordMicrosoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
following in January 1985. In 1985,
Lotus SoftwareLotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts...
introduced
Lotus JazzLotus Jazz was an office suite for the Apple Macintosh, released in 1985, after the substantial success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM-compatible PC...
for the Macintosh platform after the success of
Lotus 1-2-3Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
for the
IBM PCThe IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
, although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced
Macintosh OfficeThe Macintosh Office was Apple's third failed attempt to enter into the business environment as a serious competitor to IBM. Consisting of three key parts, a network file server, local area network and a network Laser printer, Apple announced Macintosh Office in January 1985 with an ill-fated,...
the same year with the
lemmings adLemmings was a television commercial that launched the "Macintosh Office" by Apple Computer in the United States, in January 1985, a year after the introduction of the Apple Macintosh in 1984. It was aired during the 1985 Super Bowl...
. Infamous for insulting its own potential customers, the ad was not successful.
For a special post-election edition of
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
in November 1984, Apple spent more than US$2.5 million to buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue. Apple also 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 shape that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from US$1,995 to US$2,495 (adjusting for inflation, about $5,200 in 2010).
1985 to 1989: Desktop publishing era
In 1985, the combination of the Mac, Apple's
LaserWriterThe LaserWriter was a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter introduced by Apple in 1985. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market...
printer, and Mac-specific software like Boston Software's
MacPublisherMacPublisher was the first Desktop Publishing program for the Apple Macintosh, introduced in 1984, the same year that Apple introduced the Macintosh...
and
Aldus PageMakerPageMaker was one of the first desktop publishing programs, introduced in 1985 by Aldus Corporation, initially for the then-new Apple Macintosh and in 1987 for PCs running Windows 1.0....
enabled users to design, preview, and print page layouts complete with text and graphics—an activity to become known as
desktop publishingDesktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
. Initially, desktop publishing was unique to the Macintosh, but eventually became available for other platforms as well. Later, applications such as Macromedia FreeHand,
QuarkXPressQuarkXPress is a computer application for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG environment. It runs on Mac OS X and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc...
,
Adobe PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
, and
Adobe IllustratorAdobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....
strengthened the Mac's position as a graphics computer and helped to expand the emerging desktop publishing market.
The limitations of the first Mac soon became clear: it had very little memory, even compared with other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily; and it lacked a hard disk drive or the means to attach one easily. Many small companies sprang up to address the memory issue, by upgrading the 128k Mac to 512 kB, by removing the computer's 16 memory chips and replacing them with larger-capacity chips, a tedious operation that was not always successful. In October 1985, Apple increased the Mac's memory to 512 kB, and offered an upgrade for 128k Macs that involved replacing the logic board. In an attempt to improve connectivity, Apple released the
Macintosh PlusThe Macintosh Plus computer was the third model in the Macintosh line, introduced on January 16, 1986, two years after the original Macintosh and a little more than a year after the Macintosh 512K, with a price tag of US$2599...
on January 10, 1986 for US$2,600. It offered one
megabyteThe megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
of RAM, easily expandable to four by the use of
socketed RAM boardsA SIMM, or single in-line memory module, is a type of memory module containing random access memory used in computers from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. It differs from a dual in-line memory module , the most predominant form of memory module today, in that the contacts on a SIMM are redundant...
, and a
SCSISmall Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
parallel interface, allowing up to seven peripherals—such as hard drives and scanners—to be attached to the machine. Its
floppy driveThe Macintosh External Disk Drive was the original of a series of external 3.5" floppy disk drives manufactured and sold by Apple Computer exclusively for the Macintosh series of computers introduced in January, 1984. Later, Apple would unify their external drives to work cross-platform between the...
was increased to an 800
kBThe kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
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.
Updated Motorola CPUs made a faster machine possible, and in 1987 Apple took advantage of the new Motorola technology and introduced the
Macintosh IIThe Apple Macintosh II was the first personal computer model of the Macintosh II series in the Apple Macintosh line and the first Macintosh to support a color display.- History :...
, which used a
Motorola 68020The Motorola 68020 is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. It is the successor to the Motorola 68010 and is succeeded by the Motorola 68030...
processor. The primary improvement in the Macintosh II was Color
QuickDrawQuickDraw is the 2D graphics library and associated Application Programming Interface which is a core part of the classic Apple Macintosh operating system. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still exists as part of the libraries of Mac OS X, but has been...
in ROM, a color version of the graphics language which was the heart of the machine. Among the many innovations in Color QuickDraw were an 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 architectureOpen architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture that allows adding, upgrading and swapping components. For example, the IBM PC and Apple IIe have an open architecture, whereas the Apple IIc and Amiga 500 computers have a closed architecture...
with several
NuBusNuBus is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus and the NuMachine was done by Western Digital for their NuMachine, and for the Lisp Machines Inc. LMI-Lambda. The NuBus was later...
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.
In September 1986, Apple introduced the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, or
MPWMacintosh Programmer's Workshop or MPW, is a software development environment for the Classic Mac OS, written by Apple Computer. For Macintosh developers, it was one of the primary tools for building applications for System 7.x and Mac OS 8.x and 9.x. Initially, MPW was sold as a commercial product...
that allowed software developers to create software for Macintosh on Macintosh, rather than cross compiling from a Lisa. In August 1987, Apple unveiled
HyperCardHyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written...
, and introduced
MultiFinderMultiFinder was the name of an extension software for the Apple Macintosh, introduced on August 11, 1987 and included with System Software 5. It added the ability to co-operatively multitask between several applications at once – a great improvement over the previous systems, which could only...
, which added cooperative multitasking to the Macintosh. Apple began bundling both with every Macintosh.
The
Macintosh SEThe Macintosh SE was a personal computer manufactured by Apple between March 1987 and October 1990. This computer marked a significant improvement on the Macintosh Plus design and was introduced by Apple at the same time as the Macintosh II....
was released at the same time as the Macintosh II, as the first
compact Mac"Compact Macintosh" or "Classic Macintosh" are informal terms that refer to the direct descendants of the original Macintosh personal computer case design by Apple Computer, Inc. All of them are all-in-one desktop computer designs with the display integrated in the computer case, but not the...
with a 20 MB internal hard drive and one 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 ManockJerrold C. Manock is an American industrial designer. He worked for Apple Computer from 1977 to 1984, contributing to housing designs for the Apple II, Apple III, and earlier compact Apple Macintosh computers. Manock is widely regarded as the "father" of the Apple Industrial Design Group...
and Terry Oyama's original design and shared the Macintosh II's
Snow WhiteThe Snow White design language was an industrial design language developed by Hartmut Esslinger's Frog Design. Used by Apple Computer from 1984 to 1990, the scheme has vertical and horizontal stripes for decoration, ventilation, and the illusion that the computer enclosure is smaller than it...
design language, as well as the new
Apple Desktop BusApple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999....
(ADB) mouse and keyboard that had first appeared on the
Apple IIGSThe Apple , the fifth and most powerful model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The "GS" in the name stands for Graphics and Sound, referring to its enhanced graphics and sound capabilities, both of which greatly surpassed previous models of the line...
some months earlier.
In 1987, Apple spun off its software business as
ClarisClaris was a computer software developer formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and...
. It was given the code and rights to several applications that had been written within Apple, notably MacWrite, MacPaint, and
MacProjectMacProject was a project management and scheduling business application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. MacProject was one of the first major business tools for the Macintosh which enabled users to calculate the "critical path" to completion and estimate costs in...
. 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 WingzWingz was a spreadsheet program sold by Informix in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Originally developed for the Macintosh, it was later distributed on Microsoft Windows, OS/2, NextStep and several other commercial flavors of Unix...
spreadsheetA spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
on the Mac, renaming it
Claris ResolveClaris Resolve was a spreadsheet software program for the Apple Macintosh. It was released by Claris in 1991 and sold until 1994.In an effort to flesh out their software suite, in the early 90's Claris wanted to introduce a spreadsheet application, and decided to buy an existing one...
, and added the new presentation software
Claris ImpactClaris Impact was a presentation and chart software program made for the Apple Macintosh computer developed by Claris....
. By the early 1990s, Claris applications were shipping with the majority of consumer-level Macintoshes and were extremely popular. In 1991, Claris released
ClarisWorksAppleWorks refers to two different office suite products, both of which are now discontinued. Originally, AppleWorks was an integrated software package for the Apple II platform, released in 1984 by Apple Computer...
, 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
suedApple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation, 35 F.3d 1435 was a copyright infringement lawsuit in which Apple Computer, Inc. sought to prevent Microsoft Corporation and Hewlett-Packard from using visual graphical user interface elements that were similar to those in Apple's Lisa and Macintosh...
Microsoft and
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
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
appealsThe United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system...
. Apple's actions were criticized by some in the software community, including the
Free Software FoundationThe Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
(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 68030The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features on-chip...
processor came the
Macintosh IIxThe Macintosh IIx was introduced by Apple in 1988 as an incremental update of the original Macintosh II model. It replaced the 16 MHz Motorola 68020 CPU and 68881 FPU of the II with a 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU ; and the 800 KB floppy drive with the 1.44 MB SuperDrive...
in 1988, which had benefited from internal improvements, including an on-board
MMUA memory management unit , sometimes called paged memory management unit , is a computer hardware component responsible for handling accesses to memory requested by the CPU...
. It was followed in 1989 by a more compact version with fewer slots (the
Macintosh IIcxHalf a year following the release of the Macintosh IIx passed before Apple introduced the Macintosh IIcx in 1989. Despite resembling the IIx to a great extent and providing the same performance, the IIcx was quieter than its predecessor. The design was also made much more compact by reducing the...
) and a version of the Mac SE powered by the 68030, the
Macintosh SE/30The Macintosh SE/30 is a personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1989 until 1991. It was the fastest and most expandable of the original black-and-white compact Macintosh series....
. Later that year, the
Macintosh IIciThe Apple Macintosh IIci was an improvement on the Macintosh IIcx. Sharing the same compact case design with three expansion slots, the IIci improved upon the IIcx's 16 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU, replacing them with 25 MHz versions of these chips. The IIci came with either a 40 or...
, running at , was the first Mac to be "32-bit clean," allowing 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
flagsIn computer programming, flag can refer to one or more bits that are used to store a binary value or code that has an assigned meaning, but can refer to uses of other data types...
).
System 7System 7 is a single-user graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was introduced on May 13, 1991 by Apple Computer. It succeeded System 6, and was the main Macintosh operating system until it was succeeded by Mac OS 8 in 1997...
was the first Macintosh operating system to support 32-bit addressing. Apple also introduced the
Macintosh PortableThe Macintosh Portable was Apple Inc.'s first attempt at making a battery-powered portable Macintosh personal computer that held the power of a desktop Macintosh...
, a 68000 machine with an active matrix
flat panel displayAn active matrix liquid crystal display is a type of flat panel display, currently the overwhelming choice of notebook computer manufacturers, due to low weight, very good image quality, wide color gamut and response time...
that was
backlitA backlight is a form of illumination used in liquid crystal displays . As LCDs do not produce light themselves , they need illumination to produce a visible image...
on some models. The following year the
Macintosh IIfxThe Macintosh IIfx was a model of Apple Macintosh computer, introduced in 1990 and discontinued in 1992. At introduction it cost from US $9,000 to US $12,000, depending on configuration, and was the fastest Mac...
, starting at US$9,900, was unveiled. Apart from its fast
68030The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features on-chip...
processor, it had significant internal architectural improvements, including faster memory and two
Apple II CPUsThe MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of...
dedicated to
I/OIn computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
processing.
1990 to 1998: Growth and decline
Microsoft Windows 3.0Windows 3.0, a graphical environment, is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, and was released on 22 May 1990. It became the first widely successful version of Windows and a rival to Apple Macintosh and the Commodore Amiga on the GUI front...
, which began to approach the Macintosh operating system in both performance and feature set, was released in May 1990 and was a less expensive alternative to the Macintosh platform. Apple's response was to introduce a range of relatively inexpensive Macs in October 1990. The
Macintosh ClassicThe Macintosh Classic was a personal computer manufactured by Apple Computer. Introduced on October 15, 1990, it was the first Apple Macintosh to sell for less than US$1,000. Production of the Classic was prompted by the success of the Macintosh Plus and the SE...
, essentially a less expensive version of the Macintosh Plus, was the least expensive Mac until early 2001. The 68020-powered
Macintosh LCThe Macintosh LC was Apple Computer's product family of low-end consumer Macintosh personal computers in the early 1990s. The original Macintosh LC was released in 1990 and was the first affordable color-capable Macintosh. Due to its affordability and Apple II compatibility the LC was adopted...
, in its distinctive "
pizza boxIn computing, a pizza box is a style of case for computers or network switches. Cases of this type tend to be wide and flat, normally one or two rack units in height, thus resembling pizza delivery boxes....
" case, offered color graphics and was accompanied by a new, low-cost 512 × 384 pixel monitor. The
Macintosh IIsiThe Macintosh IIsi was a compact three-box desktop unit, effectively a cut-down Macintosh IIci in a smaller case , made cheaper by the redesign of the motherboard and the deletion of all but one of the expansion card slots...
was essentially a IIci with only one expansion slot. All three machines sold well, although Apple's profit margin was considerably lower than on earlier machines.
Apple improved Macintosh computers by introducing models equipped with newly available processors from the 68k lineup. The
Macintosh Classic IIThe Apple Macintosh Classic II replaced the Macintosh SE/30 in the compact Macintosh line in 1991. Like the SE/30, the Classic II was powered by a 16 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 40 or 80 MB hard disk, but in contrast to its predecessor, it was limited by a 16-bit data bus and a 10 MB memory...
and Macintosh LC II, which used a 68030 CPU, were joined in 1991 by the
Macintosh QuadraThe Macintosh Quadra series was Apple Computer's product family of professional high-end Apple Macintosh personal computers built using the Motorola 68040 CPU. The first two models in the Quadra line were introduced in 1991, and the name was used until the Power Mac was introduced in 1994...
700 and 900, the first Macs to employ the faster
Motorola 68040The Motorola 68040 is a microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060. There was no 68050. In keeping with general Motorola naming, the 68040 is often referred to as simply the '040 ....
processor. In 1994, Apple abandoned Motorola CPUs for the
RISCReduced instruction set computing, or RISC , is a CPU design strategy based on the insight that simplified instructions can provide higher performance if this simplicity enables much faster execution of each instruction. A computer based on this strategy is a reduced instruction set computer...
PowerPC architecture developed by the
AIM allianceThe AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. , IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a...
of Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola. The
Power MacintoshPower Macintosh, later Power Mac, was a line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers based on various models of PowerPC microprocessors that were developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Inc. from March 1994 until August 2006. The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100,...
line, the first to use the new chips, proved to be highly successful, with over a million PowerPC units sold in nine months.
Apple replaced the Macintosh Portable in 1991 with the first of the
PowerBookThe PowerBook was a line of Macintosh laptop computers that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1991 to 2006. During its lifetime, the PowerBook went through several major revisions and redesigns, often being the first to incorporate features that would later become...
line: the
PowerBook 100The PowerBook 100 was a portable subnotebook personal computer manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced on October 21, 1991 at the COMDEX computer expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. Priced at US$2,300, the PowerBook 100 was the low-end model of the first three simultaneously-released...
, a miniaturized Portable; the 68030
PowerBook 140The PowerBook 140 was released in the first line of PowerBooks. It was the mid-range PowerBook, between the low-end 100 and the high-end 170. As with the PowerBook 170, and unlike the 100, this PowerBook featured an internal floppy drive. Codenames for this model are: Tim Lite, Tim LC,...
; and the 68030
PowerBook 170The PowerBook 170 was released by Apple Inc. in 1991 along with the PowerBook 100 and the PowerBook 140. Identical to the 140, it was the high end of the original...
. They were the first portable computers with the keyboard behind a palm rest, and with a built-in pointing device (a
trackballA trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down mouse with an exposed protruding ball. The user rolls the ball with the thumb, fingers, or the palm of the hand to move a cursor...
) in front of the keyboard. The 1993 PowerBook 165c was Apple's first portable computer to feature a color screen, displaying 256 colors with pixel resolution. The second-generation of PowerBooks, the 68040-equipped
500 seriesThe PowerBook 500 series was a range of Apple Macintosh PowerBook portable computers first introduced by Apple Computer with the 540c model on 16 May 1994...
, introduced the trackpad, integrated stereo speakers and built-in
EthernetEthernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
to the laptop form factor in 1994.
As for
Mac OSMac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
,
System 7System 7 is a single-user graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was introduced on May 13, 1991 by Apple Computer. It succeeded System 6, and was the main Macintosh operating system until it was succeeded by Mac OS 8 in 1997...
was a
32-bitThe range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
rewrite from
PascalPascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
to
C++C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
that introduced
virtual memoryIn computing, virtual memory is a memory management technique developed for multitasking kernels. This technique virtualizes a computer architecture's various forms of computer data storage , allowing a program to be designed as though there is only one kind of memory, "virtual" memory, which...
, and improved the handling of color graphics, memory addressing, networking, and 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 Frogdesign, in favor of bringing the work in-house by establishing the
Apple Industrial Design GroupThe Apple Industrial Design Group is the industrial design arm of Apple Inc. responsible for crafting the appearance of all Apple products, including the Apple Macintosh computer line.-History:...
. They became responsible for to crafting a new look to go with the new operating system and all other Apple products.
Despite these technical and commercial successes,
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
and Intel began to rapidly lower Apple's
market shareMarket share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
with the
Windows 95Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
operating system and Pentium processors respectively. These significantly enhanced the multimedia capability and performance of
IBM PC compatibleIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
computers, and brought Windows still closer to the Mac
GUIGui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
. Furthermore, Apple had created too many similar models that confused potential buyers. At one point Apple's product lineup was subdivided into Classic, LC, II, Quadra,
PerformaThe Macintosh Performa series was Apple Computer's consumer product family of Apple Macintosh personal computers sold through department stores and mass-market retailers from 1992 until 1997, when it was superseded by the Power Macintosh 5x00 series...
, and
CentrisMacintosh Centris is a line of Macintosh computers, introduced in 1993, that were built around the Motorola 68LC040 and 68040 CPUs. The name was chosen to indicate that the consumer was selecting a Macintosh in the center of Apple's product line: lower performance than the Quadra computers, but...
models, with essentially the same computer being sold under a number of different names. These models competed against the
Macintosh cloneA Macintosh clone is a personal computer made by a manufacturer other than Apple, using Macintosh ROMs and system software.-Background:...
s, hardware manufactured by third-parties that ran Apple's 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 while Apple shouldered the burden of developing the platform.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he ordered that the OS that had been previewed as version 7.7 be branded
Mac OS 8Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It represented the largest overhaul of the Mac OS since the release of System 7, some six years previously. It puts more emphasis on color than previous operating systems...
(in place of the never-to-appear
Copland OSCopland was a project at Apple Computer to create an updated version of the Macintosh operating system. It was to have introduced protected memory, preemptive multitasking and a number of new underlying operating system features, yet still be compatible with existing Mac software...
). Since Apple had licensed only System 7 to third-parties, this move effectively ended the clone line. The decision caused significant financial losses for companies like
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, who produced the
StarMaxThe Motorola StarMax was a line of Macintosh clones produced by Motorola in 1996 and 1997. They used versions of Apple's Tanzania motherboard, which was designed to use standard IBM PC compatible components in addition to Apple-proprietary components then in common use in the Power Macintosh family...
, Umax, who produced the SuperMac, and Power Computing Corporation, who offered several lines Mac clones, including 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.
1998 to 2005: New beginnings
In 1998, a year after
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
had returned to the company, Apple introduced an all-in-one Macintosh called the
iMacThe iMac is a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers built by Apple. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its introduction in 1998, and has evolved through five distinct forms....
. Its translucent plastic case, originally Bondi blue and later many other colors, is considered an
industrial designIndustrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
landmark of the late 1990s. The iMac did away with most of Apple's standard (and usually proprietary) connections, such as
SCSISmall Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
and
ADBApple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999....
, in favor of two
USBUSB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
ports. It also had no internal
floppy diskA floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
drive and instead included a
CD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
drive for installing software, but was incapable of writing 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, making the company an annual profit of US$309 million—Apple's first profitable year since
Michael SpindlerMichael Spindler , nicknamed "the Diesel" for his reputed around-the-clock work habits, was president and CEO of Apple from 1993 to 1996....
took over as CEO in 1995. The iMacs's "blue and white" aesthetic was applied to the
Power MacintoshThe Power Macintosh G3 series was a series of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer Inc. as part of their Power Macintosh line...
, and then to a new product, the
iBookThe iBook was a line of laptop computers sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2006. The line targeted the consumer and education markets, with lower specifications and prices than the PowerBook, Apple's higher-end line of laptop computers....
. Introduced in July 1999, the iBook was Apple's first consumer-level laptop 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 started shipping in September, and by October it was as much a sales hit as the iMac.
In early 2001, Apple began shipping computers with CDRW drives for the first time. Apple had been emphasizing the Mac's ability to play DVDs by including DVD-ROM and
DVD-RAMDVD-RAM is a disc specification presented in 1996 by the DVD Forum, which specifies rewritable DVD-RAM media and the appropriate DVD writers. DVD-RAM media have been used in computers as well as camcorders and personal video recorders since 1998.-Design:DVD-RAM is one of three competing...
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
iTunesiTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
music player software that could burn CDs, along with a controversial "Rip, Mix, Burn" advertising campaign that some felt encouraged media piracy. This accompanied the release of the
iPodiPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
, Apple's first successful handheld device.
Apple continued to add new products to their lineup, such as the
Power Mac G4 CubeThe Power Mac G4 Cube was a small form factor Macintosh personal computer from Apple Inc. It was sold from 2000 to 2001. Its cube shape is reminiscent of the NeXTcube from NeXT, acquired by Apple in 1996. The machine was designed by Apple industrial designer Jonathan Ive...
, the
eMacThe eMac, short for education Mac, was a Macintosh desktop computer made by Apple Inc. It was originally aimed at the education market, but was later made available as a cheaper mass market alternative to Apple's second-generation LCD display iMac....
for the education market and
PowerBook G4The PowerBook G4 are a series of notebook computers that were manufactured, marketed, and sold by Apple, Inc. between 2001 and 2006 as part of its PowerBook line. It uses the PowerPC G4 processor, initially produced by Motorola and later by Freescale, after Motorola spun off its semiconductor...
laptop for professionals. The
original iMacThe iMac G3 was the first model of the iMac line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. , and the originator of the Legacy-free PC market category. Like the first Macs, the iMac G3 is an all-in-one personal computer, encompassing both the monitor and the system unit in a single enclosure...
used a
G3 processorThe PowerPC 7xx is a family of third generation 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by IBM and Motorola . This family is called the PowerPC G3 by its well-known customer Apple Computer...
, but the
G4The iMac G4 was a computer that was produced by Apple from the beginning of 2002 to mid 2004. It replaced the aging iMac G3. The computer had a new design compared to older Macs. It had a 15-inch LCD which was mounted on an adjustable arm above a hemisphere containing a full-size, tray-loading...
and then
G5The iMac G5 was a series of desktop Macintosh computers designed and built by Apple Inc. using the PowerPC chip architecture. It was the last line of iMac computers that used a PowerPC chip, making it the last of the iMacs that could run Mac OS 9 applications. In August 2004, the iMac design was...
chips were accompanied by successive new designs, dropping the array of colors in favor of white plastic.
{{About|Apple personal computers|other uses|McIntosh (disambiguation){{!}}McIntosh}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2011}}
{{pp-move-indef}}
The
Macintosh ({{pron-en|ˈmækɨntɒʃ}} {{respell|MAK|in-tosh}}), or
Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The
first MacintoshThe Macintosh 128K machine, released as the "Apple Macintosh", was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling...
was introduced by Apple's then-chairman
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a
mouseIn computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
and a
graphical user interfaceIn computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
rather than a
command-line interfaceA command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...
. The company continued to have success through the second half of the 1980s, first primarily because of the sales of the
Apple IIThe Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
series remained strong even after the introduction of the Macintosh, only to see it dissipate in the 1990s as the personal computer market shifted toward the "
WintelWintel is a portmanteau of Windows and Intel, referring to personal computers using Intel x86 compatible processors running Microsoft Windows...
" platform:
IBM PC compatibleIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
machines running
MS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
and
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
.
Years later, Apple consolidated its multiple consumer-level desktop models into the
1998 iMacThe iMac G3 was the first model of the iMac line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. , and the originator of the Legacy-free PC market category. Like the first Macs, the iMac G3 is an all-in-one personal computer, encompassing both the monitor and the system unit in a single enclosure...
all-in-one. This proved to be a sales success and saw the Macintosh brand revitalized. Current Mac systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. These include the descendants of the original
iMacThe iMac is a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers built by Apple. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its introduction in 1998, and has evolved through five distinct forms....
and the entry-level
Mac miniThe Mac Mini is a small form factor desktop computer manufactured by Apple Inc. Like earlier mini-ITX PC designs, it is uncommonly small for a desktop computer: 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches tall. It weighs 2.7 pounds...
desktop modelsA desktop computer is a personal computer in a form intended for regular use at a single location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portable computer. Early desktop computers are designed to lay flat on the desk, while modern towers stand upright...
, the
Mac ProThe Mac Pro is a workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc. The machines are based on Xeon microprocessors, but are similar to the Power Mac G5 they replaced in terms of outward appearance and expansion capabilities...
tower
graphicsComputer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
workstationA workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
, the
MacBookThe MacBook was a brand of Macintosh notebook computers built by Apple Inc. First introduced in May 2006, it replaced the iBook and 12-inch PowerBook series of notebooks as a part of the Apple–Intel transition. Positioned as the low end of the MacBook family, the Apple MacBook was aimed at the...
,
MacBook AirThe MacBook Air family is a line of Apple ultraportable Macintosh notebook computers.The first-generation MacBook Air was a 13.3"-only model, previously promoted as the World's Thinnest Notebook, introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. It featured a custom Intel Merom CPU...
and
MacBook ProThe MacBook Pro is a line of Macintosh portable computers introduced in January 2006 by Apple. It replaced the PowerBook G4 and was the second model, after the iMac, to be announced in the Apple–Intel transition...
laptops. The
XserveXserve was a line of rack unit computers designed by Apple Inc. for use as servers. When the Xserve was introduced in 2002, it was Apple's first designated server hardware design since the Apple Network Server in 1996...
serverIn the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
was discontinued January 31, 2011.
Production of the Mac is based on a
vertical integrationIn microeconomics and management, the term vertical integration describes a style of management control. Vertically integrated companies in a supply chain are united through a common owner. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or service, and the products combine to...
model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its hardware and creates its own
operating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
that is pre-installed on all Mac computers. This is in contrast to most
IBM PC compatibleIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
s, where multiple sellers create and integrate hardware intended to run another company's operating software. Apple exclusively produces Mac hardware, choosing internal systems,
designsIndustrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
, and prices. Apple does use third party components, however, such as graphics subsystems from
nVidiaNvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
and
ATiAs a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines* Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...
. Current Mac
CPUsThe central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
use Intel's
X86-64x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...
architecture; the earliest models (1984–1994) used
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
's
68kThe Motorola 680x0/m68000/68000 is a family of 32-bit CISC microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors...
and models from 1994–2006 used the
AIM allianceThe AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. , IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a...
's
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
. Apple also develops the operating system for the Mac, currently
Mac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
version 10.7 "Lion". The modern Mac, like other personal computers, is capable of running alternative operating systems such as
LinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
,
FreeBSDFreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, and, in the case of Intel-based Macs,
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. However, Apple does not
licenseA software license agreement is a contract between the "licensor" and purchaser of the right to use software. The license may define ways under which the copy can be used, in addition to the automatic rights of the buyer including the first sale doctrine and .Many form contracts are only contained...
Mac OS X for use on non-Apple computers.
1979 to 1984: Development
The Macintosh project started in the late 1970s with
Jef RaskinJef Raskin was an American human-computer interface expert best known for starting the Macintosh project for Apple in the late 1970s.-Early years and education:...
, an Apple employee, who 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, but the name had to be changed for legal reasons as it was too close, phonetically, to that of the
McIntosh audio equipmentMcIntosh Laboratory is an American manufacturer of high-end audio equipment based in Binghamton, New York. The company was founded in 1949 by Frank McIntosh,. The "classic" vacuum tube components of the 1960s include the MC275 power amplifier, the C22 preamplifier, and the MR67 tuner...
manufacturer.
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
requested a release of the name so that Apple could use it, but was denied, forcing Apple to eventually buy the rights to use the name. Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project in September 1979, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype.
Bill AtkinsonBill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
, a member of Apple's
LisaThe Apple Lisa—also known as the Lisa—is a :personal computer designed by Apple Computer, Inc. during the early 1980s....
team (which was developing a similar but higher-end computer), introduced him to
Burrell SmithBurrell Carver Smith is an American engineer who, while working at Apple Computer, designed the motherboard for the original Macintosh. He was Apple employee #282, and was hired in February, 1979, initially as an Apple II service technician...
, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year. Over the years, Raskin assembled a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh hardware and
softwareComputer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith, the team included
George CrowGeorge L. Crow Jr. was a member of the original Apple Macintosh team in 1984 at Apple Computer. Crow left Apple in 1985 to become a co-founder of Steve Jobs' NeXT. Prior to working at Apple, Crow worked at HP; after leaving NeXT he worked for SuperMac and then Truevision...
,
Chris EspinosaChris Espinosa is a senior employee of Apple, officially employee number 8. He joined the company at the age of fourteen in 1976 when it was still housed in Steve Jobs' parents' garage, writing software manuals and coding after school...
,
Joanna HoffmanJoanna Hoffman was the fifth person hired by Jef Raskin to be part of the original Apple Macintosh developer team. She acted as the team's only marketing person for more than a year; among her contributions was writing the first draft of the Macintosh User Interface Guidelines.Before joining...
,
Bruce HornBruce Lawrence Horn was a programmer with Apple Computer and the creator of the Macintosh Finder and the Macintosh Resource Manager. His signature is amongst those molded to the case of the Macintosh 128K....
,
Susan KareSusan Kare is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She was also one of the original employees of NeXT , working as the Creative Director.-Background:Kare was born in Ithaca, New York and is the sister of aerospace engineer...
,
Andy HertzfeldAndy Hertzfeld is a computer scientist who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a designer for the Macintosh system software...
,
Guy KawasakiGuy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, bestselling author, and Apple Fellow. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. He is currently a Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, and has been involved in the rumor reporting...
,
Daniel KottkeDaniel Kottke is a U.S. computer engineer and one of the earliest employees of Apple Inc. His official employee number was 12, having been assigned a few months after he originally started working. He assembled and tested the first Apple I computers with its computer designer and Apple co-founder...
, and
Jerry ManockJerrold C. Manock is an American industrial designer. He worked for Apple Computer from 1977 to 1984, contributing to housing designs for the Apple II, Apple III, and earlier compact Apple Macintosh computers. Manock is widely regarded as the "father" of the Apple Industrial Design Group...
.
Smith's first Macintosh board was built to Raskin's design specifications: it had 64 kilobytes (kB) of RAM, used the
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
6809EThe Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit microprocessor CPU from Motorola, designed by Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced 1978...
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
, and was capable of supporting a 256×256
pixelIn digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
black-and-whiteBlack-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
bitmapIn computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
display.
Bud TribbleGuy L. "Bud" Tribble, MD, PhD, is Vice President of Software Technology at Apple Inc. Tribble served as the manager of the original Macintosh software development team where he helped to design the Mac OS and user interface. He was among the founders of NeXT, Inc., serving as NeXT's vice...
, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisa's graphical programs on the Macintosh, and asked Smith whether he could incorporate the Lisa's
Motorola 68000The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
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 5
MHzThe hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
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 production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. The final Mac design was self-contained and had the complete
QuickDrawQuickDraw is the 2D graphics library and associated Application Programming Interface which is a core part of the classic Apple Macintosh operating system. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still exists as part of the libraries of Mac OS X, but has been...
picture language and interpreter in 64 kB of
ROMRead-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
– far more than most other computers; it had 128 kB of RAM, in the form of sixteen 64
kilobitThe kilobit is a multiple of the unit bit for digital information or computer storage. The prefix kilo is defined in the International System of Units as a multiplier of 103 , and therefore,...
(kb) RAM chips
solderSolder is a fusible metal alloy used to join together metal workpieces and having a melting point below that of the workpiece.Soft solder is what is most often thought of when solder or soldering are mentioned and it typically has a melting range of . It is commonly used in electronics and...
ed to the
logicboardIn personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...
. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 kB by means of soldering sixteen
ICAn integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
sockets to accept 256 kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final product's screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel
monochromeMonochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...
display, exceeding the prototypes.
The design caught the attention of
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
, co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, he began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and team member Andy Hertzfeld said that the final Macintosh design is closer to Jobs' ideas than Raskin's. After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being developed at
Xerox PARCPARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....
, Jobs had negotiated a visit to see the
Xerox AltoThe Xerox Alto was one of the first computers designed for individual use , making it arguably what is now called a personal computer. It was developed at Xerox PARC in 1973...
computer and
SmalltalkSmalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...
development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh group's own ideas. Jobs also commissioned industrial designer
Hartmut EsslingerHartmut Esslinger is a German-American industrial designer and inventor. He is known for his design company Frogdesign, particularly his work for Apple Computer in the 1980s.-Life and career:...
to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the
"Snow White" design languageThe Snow White design language was an industrial design language developed by Hartmut Esslinger's Frog Design. Used by Apple Computer from 1984 to 1990, the scheme has vertical and horizontal stripes for decoration, ventilation, and the illusion that the computer enclosure is smaller than it...
; although it came too late for the earliest Macs, it was implemented in most other mid- to late-1980s Apple computers. However, Jobs' leadership at the Macintosh project did not last; after an internal power struggle with new CEO
John SculleyJohn Sculley is an American businessman. Sculley was vice-president and president of PepsiCo , until he became CEO of Apple on April 8, 1983, a position he held until leaving in 1993...
, Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985, went on to found
NeXTNext, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
, another computer company, and did not return until 1997 when Apple acquired NeXT.
1984: Introduction
The
Macintosh 128KThe Macintosh 128K machine, released as the "Apple Macintosh", was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling...
was announced to the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million
Ridley ScottSir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
television commercial, "
1984"1984" is an American television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer for the first time. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, Venice, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott. Anya Major...
". The commercial most notably aired during the third quarter of
Super Bowl XVIIISuper Bowl XVIII was an American football game played on January 22, 1984, at Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida, deciding the National Football League champion following the 1983 regular season. The American Football Conference champion Los Angeles Raiders defeated the National Football Conference...
on January 22, 1984 and is now considered a "watershed event" and a "masterpiece." "1984" used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by a
PicassoPablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
-style picture of
AppleApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
's Macintosh 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
alludesAn allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
to
George OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's novel,
Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
, which described a
dystopian futureA dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
ruled by a televised "
Big BrotherBig Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence – where the ruling Party wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.In the society that Orwell...
."
Two days after the 1984 ad aired, the Macintosh went on sale. It came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface:
MacWriteMacWrite was a word processor application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. It was the first such program that was widely available to the public to offer WYSIWYG operation, with multiple fonts and styles...
and
MacPaintMacPaint was a bitmap-based graphics painting software program developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 22, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processor counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate...
. 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 around 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 developerA software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...
s chose not to undertake, and could be regarded as a reason for an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's
MultiPlanMultiplan was an early spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft. Known initially by the code name "EP" , it was introduced in 1982 as a competitor for VisiCalc....
migrated over from
MS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
, with
Microsoft WordMicrosoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
following in January 1985. In 1985,
Lotus SoftwareLotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts...
introduced
Lotus JazzLotus Jazz was an office suite for the Apple Macintosh, released in 1985, after the substantial success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM-compatible PC...
for the Macintosh platform after the success of
Lotus 1-2-3Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
for the
IBM PCThe IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
, although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced
Macintosh OfficeThe Macintosh Office was Apple's third failed attempt to enter into the business environment as a serious competitor to IBM. Consisting of three key parts, a network file server, local area network and a network Laser printer, Apple announced Macintosh Office in January 1985 with an ill-fated,...
the same year with the
lemmings adLemmings was a television commercial that launched the "Macintosh Office" by Apple Computer in the United States, in January 1985, a year after the introduction of the Apple Macintosh in 1984. It was aired during the 1985 Super Bowl...
. Infamous for insulting its own potential customers, the ad was not successful.
For a special post-election edition of
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
in November 1984, Apple spent more than US$2.5 million to buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue. Apple also 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 shape that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from US$1,995 to US$2,495 (adjusting for inflation, about $5,200 in 2010).
1985 to 1989: Desktop publishing era
In 1985, the combination of the Mac, Apple's
LaserWriterThe LaserWriter was a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter introduced by Apple in 1985. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market...
printer, and Mac-specific software like Boston Software's
MacPublisherMacPublisher was the first Desktop Publishing program for the Apple Macintosh, introduced in 1984, the same year that Apple introduced the Macintosh...
and
Aldus PageMakerPageMaker was one of the first desktop publishing programs, introduced in 1985 by Aldus Corporation, initially for the then-new Apple Macintosh and in 1987 for PCs running Windows 1.0....
enabled users to design, preview, and print page layouts complete with text and graphics—an activity to become known as
desktop publishingDesktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
. Initially, desktop publishing was unique to the Macintosh, but eventually became available for other platforms as well. Later, applications such as Macromedia FreeHand,
QuarkXPressQuarkXPress is a computer application for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG environment. It runs on Mac OS X and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc...
,
Adobe PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
, and
Adobe IllustratorAdobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....
strengthened the Mac's position as a graphics computer and helped to expand the emerging desktop publishing market.
The limitations of the first Mac soon became clear: it had very little memory, even compared with other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily; and it lacked a hard disk drive or the means to attach one easily. Many small companies sprang up to address the memory issue, by upgrading the 128k Mac to 512 kB, by removing the computer's 16 memory chips and replacing them with larger-capacity chips, a tedious operation that was not always successful. In October 1985, Apple increased the Mac's memory to 512 kB, and offered an upgrade for 128k Macs that involved replacing the logic board. In an attempt to improve connectivity, Apple released the
Macintosh PlusThe Macintosh Plus computer was the third model in the Macintosh line, introduced on January 16, 1986, two years after the original Macintosh and a little more than a year after the Macintosh 512K, with a price tag of US$2599...
on January 10, 1986 for US$2,600. It offered one
megabyteThe megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
of RAM, easily expandable to four by the use of
socketed RAM boardsA SIMM, or single in-line memory module, is a type of memory module containing random access memory used in computers from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. It differs from a dual in-line memory module , the most predominant form of memory module today, in that the contacts on a SIMM are redundant...
, and a
SCSISmall Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
parallel interface, allowing up to seven peripherals—such as hard drives and scanners—to be attached to the machine. Its
floppy driveThe Macintosh External Disk Drive was the original of a series of external 3.5" floppy disk drives manufactured and sold by Apple Computer exclusively for the Macintosh series of computers introduced in January, 1984. Later, Apple would unify their external drives to work cross-platform between the...
was increased to an 800
kBThe kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
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.
Updated Motorola CPUs made a faster machine possible, and in 1987 Apple took advantage of the new Motorola technology and introduced the
Macintosh IIThe Apple Macintosh II was the first personal computer model of the Macintosh II series in the Apple Macintosh line and the first Macintosh to support a color display.- History :...
, which used a {{nowrap|16 MHz}}
Motorola 68020The Motorola 68020 is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. It is the successor to the Motorola 68010 and is succeeded by the Motorola 68030...
processor. The primary improvement in the Macintosh II was Color
QuickDrawQuickDraw is the 2D graphics library and associated Application Programming Interface which is a core part of the classic Apple Macintosh operating system. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still exists as part of the libraries of Mac OS X, but has been...
in ROM, a color version of the graphics language which was the heart of the machine. Among the many innovations in Color QuickDraw were an 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 architectureOpen architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture that allows adding, upgrading and swapping components. For example, the IBM PC and Apple IIe have an open architecture, whereas the Apple IIc and Amiga 500 computers have a closed architecture...
with several
NuBusNuBus is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus and the NuMachine was done by Western Digital for their NuMachine, and for the Lisp Machines Inc. LMI-Lambda. The NuBus was later...
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.
In September 1986, Apple introduced the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, or
MPWMacintosh Programmer's Workshop or MPW, is a software development environment for the Classic Mac OS, written by Apple Computer. For Macintosh developers, it was one of the primary tools for building applications for System 7.x and Mac OS 8.x and 9.x. Initially, MPW was sold as a commercial product...
that allowed software developers to create software for Macintosh on Macintosh, rather than cross compiling from a Lisa. In August 1987, Apple unveiled
HyperCardHyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written...
, and introduced
MultiFinderMultiFinder was the name of an extension software for the Apple Macintosh, introduced on August 11, 1987 and included with System Software 5. It added the ability to co-operatively multitask between several applications at once – a great improvement over the previous systems, which could only...
, which added cooperative multitasking to the Macintosh. Apple began bundling both with every Macintosh.
The
Macintosh SEThe Macintosh SE was a personal computer manufactured by Apple between March 1987 and October 1990. This computer marked a significant improvement on the Macintosh Plus design and was introduced by Apple at the same time as the Macintosh II....
was released at the same time as the Macintosh II, as the first
compact Mac"Compact Macintosh" or "Classic Macintosh" are informal terms that refer to the direct descendants of the original Macintosh personal computer case design by Apple Computer, Inc. All of them are all-in-one desktop computer designs with the display integrated in the computer case, but not the...
with a 20 MB internal hard drive and one 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 ManockJerrold C. Manock is an American industrial designer. He worked for Apple Computer from 1977 to 1984, contributing to housing designs for the Apple II, Apple III, and earlier compact Apple Macintosh computers. Manock is widely regarded as the "father" of the Apple Industrial Design Group...
and Terry Oyama's original design and shared the Macintosh II's
Snow WhiteThe Snow White design language was an industrial design language developed by Hartmut Esslinger's Frog Design. Used by Apple Computer from 1984 to 1990, the scheme has vertical and horizontal stripes for decoration, ventilation, and the illusion that the computer enclosure is smaller than it...
design language, as well as the new
Apple Desktop BusApple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999....
(ADB) mouse and keyboard that had first appeared on the
Apple IIGSThe Apple , the fifth and most powerful model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The "GS" in the name stands for Graphics and Sound, referring to its enhanced graphics and sound capabilities, both of which greatly surpassed previous models of the line...
some months earlier.
In 1987, Apple spun off its software business as
ClarisClaris was a computer software developer formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and...
. It was given the code and rights to several applications that had been written within Apple, notably MacWrite, MacPaint, and
MacProjectMacProject was a project management and scheduling business application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. MacProject was one of the first major business tools for the Macintosh which enabled users to calculate the "critical path" to completion and estimate costs in...
. 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 WingzWingz was a spreadsheet program sold by Informix in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Originally developed for the Macintosh, it was later distributed on Microsoft Windows, OS/2, NextStep and several other commercial flavors of Unix...
spreadsheetA spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
on the Mac, renaming it
Claris ResolveClaris Resolve was a spreadsheet software program for the Apple Macintosh. It was released by Claris in 1991 and sold until 1994.In an effort to flesh out their software suite, in the early 90's Claris wanted to introduce a spreadsheet application, and decided to buy an existing one...
, and added the new presentation software
Claris ImpactClaris Impact was a presentation and chart software program made for the Apple Macintosh computer developed by Claris....
. By the early 1990s, Claris applications were shipping with the majority of consumer-level Macintoshes and were extremely popular. In 1991, Claris released
ClarisWorksAppleWorks refers to two different office suite products, both of which are now discontinued. Originally, AppleWorks was an integrated software package for the Apple II platform, released in 1984 by Apple Computer...
, 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
suedApple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation, 35 F.3d 1435 was a copyright infringement lawsuit in which Apple Computer, Inc. sought to prevent Microsoft Corporation and Hewlett-Packard from using visual graphical user interface elements that were similar to those in Apple's Lisa and Macintosh...
Microsoft and
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
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
appealsThe United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system...
. Apple's actions were criticized by some in the software community, including the
Free Software FoundationThe Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
(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 68030The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features on-chip...
processor came the
Macintosh IIxThe Macintosh IIx was introduced by Apple in 1988 as an incremental update of the original Macintosh II model. It replaced the 16 MHz Motorola 68020 CPU and 68881 FPU of the II with a 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU ; and the 800 KB floppy drive with the 1.44 MB SuperDrive...
in 1988, which had benefited from internal improvements, including an on-board
MMUA memory management unit , sometimes called paged memory management unit , is a computer hardware component responsible for handling accesses to memory requested by the CPU...
. It was followed in 1989 by a more compact version with fewer slots (the
Macintosh IIcxHalf a year following the release of the Macintosh IIx passed before Apple introduced the Macintosh IIcx in 1989. Despite resembling the IIx to a great extent and providing the same performance, the IIcx was quieter than its predecessor. The design was also made much more compact by reducing the...
) and a version of the Mac SE powered by the {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68030, the
Macintosh SE/30The Macintosh SE/30 is a personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1989 until 1991. It was the fastest and most expandable of the original black-and-white compact Macintosh series....
. Later that year, the
Macintosh IIciThe Apple Macintosh IIci was an improvement on the Macintosh IIcx. Sharing the same compact case design with three expansion slots, the IIci improved upon the IIcx's 16 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU, replacing them with 25 MHz versions of these chips. The IIci came with either a 40 or...
, running at {{nowrap|25 MHz}}, was the first Mac to be "32-bit clean," allowing 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
flagsIn computer programming, flag can refer to one or more bits that are used to store a binary value or code that has an assigned meaning, but can refer to uses of other data types...
).
System 7System 7 is a single-user graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was introduced on May 13, 1991 by Apple Computer. It succeeded System 6, and was the main Macintosh operating system until it was succeeded by Mac OS 8 in 1997...
was the first Macintosh operating system to support 32-bit addressing. Apple also introduced the
Macintosh PortableThe Macintosh Portable was Apple Inc.'s first attempt at making a battery-powered portable Macintosh personal computer that held the power of a desktop Macintosh...
, a {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68000 machine with an active matrix
flat panel displayAn active matrix liquid crystal display is a type of flat panel display, currently the overwhelming choice of notebook computer manufacturers, due to low weight, very good image quality, wide color gamut and response time...
that was
backlitA backlight is a form of illumination used in liquid crystal displays . As LCDs do not produce light themselves , they need illumination to produce a visible image...
on some models. The following year the
Macintosh IIfxThe Macintosh IIfx was a model of Apple Macintosh computer, introduced in 1990 and discontinued in 1992. At introduction it cost from US $9,000 to US $12,000, depending on configuration, and was the fastest Mac...
, starting at US$9,900, was unveiled. Apart from its fast {{nowrap|40 MHz}}
68030The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features on-chip...
processor, it had significant internal architectural improvements, including faster memory and two
Apple II CPUsThe MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of...
dedicated to
I/OIn computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
processing.
1990 to 1998: Growth and decline
Microsoft Windows 3.0Windows 3.0, a graphical environment, is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, and was released on 22 May 1990. It became the first widely successful version of Windows and a rival to Apple Macintosh and the Commodore Amiga on the GUI front...
, which began to approach the Macintosh operating system in both performance and feature set,{{citation needed|date=November 2010}} was released in May 1990 and was a less expensive alternative to the Macintosh platform. Apple's response was to introduce a range of relatively inexpensive Macs in October 1990. The
Macintosh ClassicThe Macintosh Classic was a personal computer manufactured by Apple Computer. Introduced on October 15, 1990, it was the first Apple Macintosh to sell for less than US$1,000. Production of the Classic was prompted by the success of the Macintosh Plus and the SE...
, essentially a less expensive version of the Macintosh Plus, was the least expensive Mac until early 2001. The 68020-powered
Macintosh LCThe Macintosh LC was Apple Computer's product family of low-end consumer Macintosh personal computers in the early 1990s. The original Macintosh LC was released in 1990 and was the first affordable color-capable Macintosh. Due to its affordability and Apple II compatibility the LC was adopted...
, in its distinctive "
pizza boxIn computing, a pizza box is a style of case for computers or network switches. Cases of this type tend to be wide and flat, normally one or two rack units in height, thus resembling pizza delivery boxes....
" case, offered color graphics and was accompanied by a new, low-cost 512 × 384 pixel monitor. The
Macintosh IIsiThe Macintosh IIsi was a compact three-box desktop unit, effectively a cut-down Macintosh IIci in a smaller case , made cheaper by the redesign of the motherboard and the deletion of all but one of the expansion card slots...
was essentially a {{nowrap|20 MHz}} IIci with only one expansion slot. All three machines sold well, although Apple's profit margin was considerably lower than on earlier machines.
Apple improved Macintosh computers by introducing models equipped with newly available processors from the 68k lineup. The
Macintosh Classic IIThe Apple Macintosh Classic II replaced the Macintosh SE/30 in the compact Macintosh line in 1991. Like the SE/30, the Classic II was powered by a 16 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 40 or 80 MB hard disk, but in contrast to its predecessor, it was limited by a 16-bit data bus and a 10 MB memory...
and Macintosh LC II, which used a {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68030 CPU, were joined in 1991 by the
Macintosh QuadraThe Macintosh Quadra series was Apple Computer's product family of professional high-end Apple Macintosh personal computers built using the Motorola 68040 CPU. The first two models in the Quadra line were introduced in 1991, and the name was used until the Power Mac was introduced in 1994...
700 and 900, the first Macs to employ the faster
Motorola 68040The Motorola 68040 is a microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060. There was no 68050. In keeping with general Motorola naming, the 68040 is often referred to as simply the '040 ....
processor. In 1994, Apple abandoned Motorola CPUs for the
RISCReduced instruction set computing, or RISC , is a CPU design strategy based on the insight that simplified instructions can provide higher performance if this simplicity enables much faster execution of each instruction. A computer based on this strategy is a reduced instruction set computer...
PowerPC architecture developed by the
AIM allianceThe AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. , IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a...
of Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola. The
Power MacintoshPower Macintosh, later Power Mac, was a line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers based on various models of PowerPC microprocessors that were developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Inc. from March 1994 until August 2006. The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100,...
line, the first to use the new chips, proved to be highly successful, with over a million PowerPC units sold in nine months.
Apple replaced the Macintosh Portable in 1991 with the first of the
PowerBookThe PowerBook was a line of Macintosh laptop computers that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1991 to 2006. During its lifetime, the PowerBook went through several major revisions and redesigns, often being the first to incorporate features that would later become...
line: the
PowerBook 100The PowerBook 100 was a portable subnotebook personal computer manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced on October 21, 1991 at the COMDEX computer expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. Priced at US$2,300, the PowerBook 100 was the low-end model of the first three simultaneously-released...
, a miniaturized Portable; the {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68030
PowerBook 140The PowerBook 140 was released in the first line of PowerBooks. It was the mid-range PowerBook, between the low-end 100 and the high-end 170. As with the PowerBook 170, and unlike the 100, this PowerBook featured an internal floppy drive. Codenames for this model are: Tim Lite, Tim LC,...
; and the {{nowrap|25 MHz}} 68030
PowerBook 170The PowerBook 170 was released by Apple Inc. in 1991 along with the PowerBook 100 and the PowerBook 140. Identical to the 140, it was the high end of the original...
. They were the first portable computers with the keyboard behind a palm rest, and with a built-in pointing device (a
trackballA trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down mouse with an exposed protruding ball. The user rolls the ball with the thumb, fingers, or the palm of the hand to move a cursor...
) in front of the keyboard. The 1993 PowerBook 165c was Apple's first portable computer to feature a color screen, displaying 256 colors with {{nowrap|640 x 400}} pixel resolution. The second-generation of PowerBooks, the 68040-equipped
500 seriesThe PowerBook 500 series was a range of Apple Macintosh PowerBook portable computers first introduced by Apple Computer with the 540c model on 16 May 1994...
, introduced the trackpad, integrated stereo speakers and built-in
EthernetEthernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
to the laptop form factor in 1994.
As for
Mac OSMac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
,
System 7System 7 is a single-user graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was introduced on May 13, 1991 by Apple Computer. It succeeded System 6, and was the main Macintosh operating system until it was succeeded by Mac OS 8 in 1997...
was a
32-bitThe range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
rewrite from
PascalPascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
to
C++C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
that introduced
virtual memoryIn computing, virtual memory is a memory management technique developed for multitasking kernels. This technique virtualizes a computer architecture's various forms of computer data storage , allowing a program to be designed as though there is only one kind of memory, "virtual" memory, which...
, and improved the handling of color graphics, memory addressing, networking, and 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 Frogdesign, in favor of bringing the work in-house by establishing the
Apple Industrial Design GroupThe Apple Industrial Design Group is the industrial design arm of Apple Inc. responsible for crafting the appearance of all Apple products, including the Apple Macintosh computer line.-History:...
. They became responsible for to crafting a new look to go with the new operating system and all other Apple products.
Despite these technical and commercial successes,
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
and Intel began to rapidly lower Apple's
market shareMarket share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
with the
Windows 95Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
operating system and Pentium processors respectively. These significantly enhanced the multimedia capability and performance of
IBM PC compatibleIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
computers, and brought Windows still closer to the Mac
GUIGui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
. Furthermore, Apple had created too many similar models that confused potential buyers. At one point Apple's product lineup was subdivided into Classic, LC, II, Quadra,
PerformaThe Macintosh Performa series was Apple Computer's consumer product family of Apple Macintosh personal computers sold through department stores and mass-market retailers from 1992 until 1997, when it was superseded by the Power Macintosh 5x00 series...
, and
CentrisMacintosh Centris is a line of Macintosh computers, introduced in 1993, that were built around the Motorola 68LC040 and 68040 CPUs. The name was chosen to indicate that the consumer was selecting a Macintosh in the center of Apple's product line: lower performance than the Quadra computers, but...
models, with essentially the same computer being sold under a number of different names. These models competed against the
Macintosh cloneA Macintosh clone is a personal computer made by a manufacturer other than Apple, using Macintosh ROMs and system software.-Background:...
s, hardware manufactured by third-parties that ran Apple's 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 while Apple shouldered the burden of developing the platform.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he ordered that the OS that had been previewed as version 7.7 be branded
Mac OS 8Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It represented the largest overhaul of the Mac OS since the release of System 7, some six years previously. It puts more emphasis on color than previous operating systems...
(in place of the never-to-appear
Copland OSCopland was a project at Apple Computer to create an updated version of the Macintosh operating system. It was to have introduced protected memory, preemptive multitasking and a number of new underlying operating system features, yet still be compatible with existing Mac software...
). Since Apple had licensed only System 7 to third-parties, this move effectively ended the clone line. The decision caused significant financial losses for companies like
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, who produced the
StarMaxThe Motorola StarMax was a line of Macintosh clones produced by Motorola in 1996 and 1997. They used versions of Apple's Tanzania motherboard, which was designed to use standard IBM PC compatible components in addition to Apple-proprietary components then in common use in the Power Macintosh family...
, Umax, who produced the SuperMac, and Power Computing Corporation, who offered several lines Mac clones, including 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.{{citation needed|date=November 2010}}
1998 to 2005: New beginnings
In 1998, a year after
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
had returned to the company, Apple introduced an all-in-one Macintosh called the
iMacThe iMac is a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers built by Apple. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its introduction in 1998, and has evolved through five distinct forms....
. Its translucent plastic case, originally Bondi blue and later many other colors, is considered an
industrial designIndustrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
landmark of the late 1990s. The iMac did away with most of Apple's standard (and usually proprietary) connections, such as
SCSISmall Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
and
ADBApple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999....
, in favor of two
USBUSB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
ports. It also had no internal
floppy diskA floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
drive and instead included a
CD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
drive for installing software, but was incapable of writing 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, making the company an annual profit of US$309 million—Apple's first profitable year since
Michael SpindlerMichael Spindler , nicknamed "the Diesel" for his reputed around-the-clock work habits, was president and CEO of Apple from 1993 to 1996....
took over as CEO in 1995. The iMacs's "blue and white" aesthetic was applied to the
Power MacintoshThe Power Macintosh G3 series was a series of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer Inc. as part of their Power Macintosh line...
, and then to a new product, the
iBookThe iBook was a line of laptop computers sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2006. The line targeted the consumer and education markets, with lower specifications and prices than the PowerBook, Apple's higher-end line of laptop computers....
. Introduced in July 1999, the iBook was Apple's first consumer-level laptop 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 started shipping in September, and by October it was as much a sales hit as the iMac.
In early 2001, Apple began shipping computers with CDRW drives for the first time. Apple had been emphasizing the Mac's ability to play DVDs by including DVD-ROM and
DVD-RAMDVD-RAM is a disc specification presented in 1996 by the DVD Forum, which specifies rewritable DVD-RAM media and the appropriate DVD writers. DVD-RAM media have been used in computers as well as camcorders and personal video recorders since 1998.-Design:DVD-RAM is one of three competing...
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
iTunesiTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
music player software that could burn CDs, along with a controversial "Rip, Mix, Burn" advertising campaign that some felt encouraged media piracy. This accompanied the release of the
iPodiPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
, Apple's first successful handheld device.
Apple continued to add new products to their lineup, such as the
Power Mac G4 CubeThe Power Mac G4 Cube was a small form factor Macintosh personal computer from Apple Inc. It was sold from 2000 to 2001. Its cube shape is reminiscent of the NeXTcube from NeXT, acquired by Apple in 1996. The machine was designed by Apple industrial designer Jonathan Ive...
, the
eMacThe eMac, short for education Mac, was a Macintosh desktop computer made by Apple Inc. It was originally aimed at the education market, but was later made available as a cheaper mass market alternative to Apple's second-generation LCD display iMac....
for the education market and
PowerBook G4The PowerBook G4 are a series of notebook computers that were manufactured, marketed, and sold by Apple, Inc. between 2001 and 2006 as part of its PowerBook line. It uses the PowerPC G4 processor, initially produced by Motorola and later by Freescale, after Motorola spun off its semiconductor...
laptop for professionals. The
original iMacThe iMac G3 was the first model of the iMac line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. , and the originator of the Legacy-free PC market category. Like the first Macs, the iMac G3 is an all-in-one personal computer, encompassing both the monitor and the system unit in a single enclosure...
used a
G3 processorThe PowerPC 7xx is a family of third generation 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by IBM and Motorola . This family is called the PowerPC G3 by its well-known customer Apple Computer...
, but the
G4The iMac G4 was a computer that was produced by Apple from the beginning of 2002 to mid 2004. It replaced the aging iMac G3. The computer had a new design compared to older Macs. It had a 15-inch LCD which was mounted on an adjustable arm above a hemisphere containing a full-size, tray-loading...
and then
G5The iMac G5 was a series of desktop Macintosh computers designed and built by Apple Inc. using the PowerPC chip architecture. It was the last line of iMac computers that used a PowerPC chip, making it the last of the iMacs that could run Mac OS 9 applications. In August 2004, the iMac design was...
chips were accompanied by successive new designs, dropping the array of colors in favor of white plastic.
{{About|Apple personal computers|other uses|McIntosh (disambiguation){{!}}McIntosh}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2011}}
{{pp-move-indef}}
The
Macintosh ({{pron-en|ˈmækɨntɒʃ}} {{respell|MAK|in-tosh}}), or
Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The
first MacintoshThe Macintosh 128K machine, released as the "Apple Macintosh", was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling...
was introduced by Apple's then-chairman
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a
mouseIn computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
and a
graphical user interfaceIn computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
rather than a
command-line interfaceA command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...
. The company continued to have success through the second half of the 1980s, first primarily because of the sales of the
Apple IIThe Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
series remained strong even after the introduction of the Macintosh, only to see it dissipate in the 1990s as the personal computer market shifted toward the "
WintelWintel is a portmanteau of Windows and Intel, referring to personal computers using Intel x86 compatible processors running Microsoft Windows...
" platform:
IBM PC compatibleIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
machines running
MS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
and
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
.
Years later, Apple consolidated its multiple consumer-level desktop models into the
1998 iMacThe iMac G3 was the first model of the iMac line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. , and the originator of the Legacy-free PC market category. Like the first Macs, the iMac G3 is an all-in-one personal computer, encompassing both the monitor and the system unit in a single enclosure...
all-in-one. This proved to be a sales success and saw the Macintosh brand revitalized. Current Mac systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. These include the descendants of the original
iMacThe iMac is a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers built by Apple. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its introduction in 1998, and has evolved through five distinct forms....
and the entry-level
Mac miniThe Mac Mini is a small form factor desktop computer manufactured by Apple Inc. Like earlier mini-ITX PC designs, it is uncommonly small for a desktop computer: 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches tall. It weighs 2.7 pounds...
desktop modelsA desktop computer is a personal computer in a form intended for regular use at a single location, as opposed to a mobile laptop or portable computer. Early desktop computers are designed to lay flat on the desk, while modern towers stand upright...
, the
Mac ProThe Mac Pro is a workstation computer manufactured by Apple Inc. The machines are based on Xeon microprocessors, but are similar to the Power Mac G5 they replaced in terms of outward appearance and expansion capabilities...
tower
graphicsComputer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
workstationA workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems...
, the
MacBookThe MacBook was a brand of Macintosh notebook computers built by Apple Inc. First introduced in May 2006, it replaced the iBook and 12-inch PowerBook series of notebooks as a part of the Apple–Intel transition. Positioned as the low end of the MacBook family, the Apple MacBook was aimed at the...
,
MacBook AirThe MacBook Air family is a line of Apple ultraportable Macintosh notebook computers.The first-generation MacBook Air was a 13.3"-only model, previously promoted as the World's Thinnest Notebook, introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. It featured a custom Intel Merom CPU...
and
MacBook ProThe MacBook Pro is a line of Macintosh portable computers introduced in January 2006 by Apple. It replaced the PowerBook G4 and was the second model, after the iMac, to be announced in the Apple–Intel transition...
laptops. The
XserveXserve was a line of rack unit computers designed by Apple Inc. for use as servers. When the Xserve was introduced in 2002, it was Apple's first designated server hardware design since the Apple Network Server in 1996...
serverIn the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
was discontinued January 31, 2011.
Production of the Mac is based on a
vertical integrationIn microeconomics and management, the term vertical integration describes a style of management control. Vertically integrated companies in a supply chain are united through a common owner. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or service, and the products combine to...
model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its hardware and creates its own
operating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
that is pre-installed on all Mac computers. This is in contrast to most
IBM PC compatibleIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
s, where multiple sellers create and integrate hardware intended to run another company's operating software. Apple exclusively produces Mac hardware, choosing internal systems,
designsIndustrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
, and prices. Apple does use third party components, however, such as graphics subsystems from
nVidiaNvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
and
ATiAs a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines* Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...
. Current Mac
CPUsThe central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
use Intel's
X86-64x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...
architecture; the earliest models (1984–1994) used
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
's
68kThe Motorola 680x0/m68000/68000 is a family of 32-bit CISC microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors...
and models from 1994–2006 used the
AIM allianceThe AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. , IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a...
's
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
. Apple also develops the operating system for the Mac, currently
Mac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
version 10.7 "Lion". The modern Mac, like other personal computers, is capable of running alternative operating systems such as
LinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
,
FreeBSDFreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, and, in the case of Intel-based Macs,
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. However, Apple does not
licenseA software license agreement is a contract between the "licensor" and purchaser of the right to use software. The license may define ways under which the copy can be used, in addition to the automatic rights of the buyer including the first sale doctrine and .Many form contracts are only contained...
Mac OS X for use on non-Apple computers.
1979 to 1984: Development
The Macintosh project started in the late 1970s with
Jef RaskinJef Raskin was an American human-computer interface expert best known for starting the Macintosh project for Apple in the late 1970s.-Early years and education:...
, an Apple employee, who 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, but the name had to be changed for legal reasons as it was too close, phonetically, to that of the
McIntosh audio equipmentMcIntosh Laboratory is an American manufacturer of high-end audio equipment based in Binghamton, New York. The company was founded in 1949 by Frank McIntosh,. The "classic" vacuum tube components of the 1960s include the MC275 power amplifier, the C22 preamplifier, and the MR67 tuner...
manufacturer.
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
requested a release of the name so that Apple could use it, but was denied, forcing Apple to eventually buy the rights to use the name. Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project in September 1979, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype.
Bill AtkinsonBill Atkinson is an American computer engineer and photographer. Atkinson worked at Apple Computer from 1978 to 1990. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego, where Apple Macintosh developer Jef Raskin was one of his professors...
, a member of Apple's
LisaThe Apple Lisa—also known as the Lisa—is a :personal computer designed by Apple Computer, Inc. during the early 1980s....
team (which was developing a similar but higher-end computer), introduced him to
Burrell SmithBurrell Carver Smith is an American engineer who, while working at Apple Computer, designed the motherboard for the original Macintosh. He was Apple employee #282, and was hired in February, 1979, initially as an Apple II service technician...
, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year. Over the years, Raskin assembled a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh hardware and
softwareComputer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith, the team included
George CrowGeorge L. Crow Jr. was a member of the original Apple Macintosh team in 1984 at Apple Computer. Crow left Apple in 1985 to become a co-founder of Steve Jobs' NeXT. Prior to working at Apple, Crow worked at HP; after leaving NeXT he worked for SuperMac and then Truevision...
,
Chris EspinosaChris Espinosa is a senior employee of Apple, officially employee number 8. He joined the company at the age of fourteen in 1976 when it was still housed in Steve Jobs' parents' garage, writing software manuals and coding after school...
,
Joanna HoffmanJoanna Hoffman was the fifth person hired by Jef Raskin to be part of the original Apple Macintosh developer team. She acted as the team's only marketing person for more than a year; among her contributions was writing the first draft of the Macintosh User Interface Guidelines.Before joining...
,
Bruce HornBruce Lawrence Horn was a programmer with Apple Computer and the creator of the Macintosh Finder and the Macintosh Resource Manager. His signature is amongst those molded to the case of the Macintosh 128K....
,
Susan KareSusan Kare is an artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She was also one of the original employees of NeXT , working as the Creative Director.-Background:Kare was born in Ithaca, New York and is the sister of aerospace engineer...
,
Andy HertzfeldAndy Hertzfeld is a computer scientist who was a member of the original Apple Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a designer for the Macintosh system software...
,
Guy KawasakiGuy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, bestselling author, and Apple Fellow. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. He is currently a Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, and has been involved in the rumor reporting...
,
Daniel KottkeDaniel Kottke is a U.S. computer engineer and one of the earliest employees of Apple Inc. His official employee number was 12, having been assigned a few months after he originally started working. He assembled and tested the first Apple I computers with its computer designer and Apple co-founder...
, and
Jerry ManockJerrold C. Manock is an American industrial designer. He worked for Apple Computer from 1977 to 1984, contributing to housing designs for the Apple II, Apple III, and earlier compact Apple Macintosh computers. Manock is widely regarded as the "father" of the Apple Industrial Design Group...
.
Smith's first Macintosh board was built to Raskin's design specifications: it had 64 kilobytes (kB) of RAM, used the
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
6809EThe Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit microprocessor CPU from Motorola, designed by Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced 1978...
microprocessorA microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
, and was capable of supporting a 256×256
pixelIn digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
black-and-whiteBlack-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
bitmapIn computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
display.
Bud TribbleGuy L. "Bud" Tribble, MD, PhD, is Vice President of Software Technology at Apple Inc. Tribble served as the manager of the original Macintosh software development team where he helped to design the Mac OS and user interface. He was among the founders of NeXT, Inc., serving as NeXT's vice...
, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisa's graphical programs on the Macintosh, and asked Smith whether he could incorporate the Lisa's
Motorola 68000The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
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 5
MHzThe hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
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 production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. The final Mac design was self-contained and had the complete
QuickDrawQuickDraw is the 2D graphics library and associated Application Programming Interface which is a core part of the classic Apple Macintosh operating system. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still exists as part of the libraries of Mac OS X, but has been...
picture language and interpreter in 64 kB of
ROMRead-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
– far more than most other computers; it had 128 kB of RAM, in the form of sixteen 64
kilobitThe kilobit is a multiple of the unit bit for digital information or computer storage. The prefix kilo is defined in the International System of Units as a multiplier of 103 , and therefore,...
(kb) RAM chips
solderSolder is a fusible metal alloy used to join together metal workpieces and having a melting point below that of the workpiece.Soft solder is what is most often thought of when solder or soldering are mentioned and it typically has a melting range of . It is commonly used in electronics and...
ed to the
logicboardIn personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...
. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 kB by means of soldering sixteen
ICAn integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
sockets to accept 256 kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final product's screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel
monochromeMonochrome describes paintings, drawings, design, or photographs in one color or shades of one color. A monochromatic object or image has colors in shades of limited colors or hues. Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale or black-and-white...
display, exceeding the prototypes.
The design caught the attention of
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
, co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, he began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and team member Andy Hertzfeld said that the final Macintosh design is closer to Jobs' ideas than Raskin's. After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being developed at
Xerox PARCPARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and co-development company in Palo Alto, California, with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology and hardware systems....
, Jobs had negotiated a visit to see the
Xerox AltoThe Xerox Alto was one of the first computers designed for individual use , making it arguably what is now called a personal computer. It was developed at Xerox PARC in 1973...
computer and
SmalltalkSmalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...
development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh group's own ideas. Jobs also commissioned industrial designer
Hartmut EsslingerHartmut Esslinger is a German-American industrial designer and inventor. He is known for his design company Frogdesign, particularly his work for Apple Computer in the 1980s.-Life and career:...
to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the
"Snow White" design languageThe Snow White design language was an industrial design language developed by Hartmut Esslinger's Frog Design. Used by Apple Computer from 1984 to 1990, the scheme has vertical and horizontal stripes for decoration, ventilation, and the illusion that the computer enclosure is smaller than it...
; although it came too late for the earliest Macs, it was implemented in most other mid- to late-1980s Apple computers. However, Jobs' leadership at the Macintosh project did not last; after an internal power struggle with new CEO
John SculleyJohn Sculley is an American businessman. Sculley was vice-president and president of PepsiCo , until he became CEO of Apple on April 8, 1983, a position he held until leaving in 1993...
, Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985, went on to found
NeXTNext, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
, another computer company, and did not return until 1997 when Apple acquired NeXT.
1984: Introduction
The
Macintosh 128KThe Macintosh 128K machine, released as the "Apple Macintosh", was the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case contained a monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. An indentation in the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. It had a selling...
was announced to the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million
Ridley ScottSir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
television commercial, "
1984"1984" is an American television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer for the first time. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, Venice, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott. Anya Major...
". The commercial most notably aired during the third quarter of
Super Bowl XVIIISuper Bowl XVIII was an American football game played on January 22, 1984, at Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida, deciding the National Football League champion following the 1983 regular season. The American Football Conference champion Los Angeles Raiders defeated the National Football Conference...
on January 22, 1984 and is now considered a "watershed event" and a "masterpiece." "1984" used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by a
PicassoPablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
-style picture of
AppleApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
's Macintosh 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
alludesAn allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
to
George OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's novel,
Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
, which described a
dystopian futureA dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
ruled by a televised "
Big BrotherBig Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence – where the ruling Party wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.In the society that Orwell...
."
Two days after the 1984 ad aired, the Macintosh went on sale. It came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface:
MacWriteMacWrite was a word processor application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. It was the first such program that was widely available to the public to offer WYSIWYG operation, with multiple fonts and styles...
and
MacPaintMacPaint was a bitmap-based graphics painting software program developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 22, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processor counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate...
. 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 around 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 developerA software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...
s chose not to undertake, and could be regarded as a reason for an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's
MultiPlanMultiplan was an early spreadsheet program developed by Microsoft. Known initially by the code name "EP" , it was introduced in 1982 as a competitor for VisiCalc....
migrated over from
MS-DOSMS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
, with
Microsoft WordMicrosoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
following in January 1985. In 1985,
Lotus SoftwareLotus Software is a software company with headquarters in Westford, Massachusetts...
introduced
Lotus JazzLotus Jazz was an office suite for the Apple Macintosh, released in 1985, after the substantial success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM-compatible PC...
for the Macintosh platform after the success of
Lotus 1-2-3Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program from Lotus Software . It was the IBM PC's first "killer application"; its huge popularity in the mid-1980s contributed significantly to the success of the IBM PC in the corporate environment.-Beginnings:...
for the
IBM PCThe IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
, although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced
Macintosh OfficeThe Macintosh Office was Apple's third failed attempt to enter into the business environment as a serious competitor to IBM. Consisting of three key parts, a network file server, local area network and a network Laser printer, Apple announced Macintosh Office in January 1985 with an ill-fated,...
the same year with the
lemmings adLemmings was a television commercial that launched the "Macintosh Office" by Apple Computer in the United States, in January 1985, a year after the introduction of the Apple Macintosh in 1984. It was aired during the 1985 Super Bowl...
. Infamous for insulting its own potential customers, the ad was not successful.
For a special post-election edition of
NewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
in November 1984, Apple spent more than US$2.5 million to buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue. Apple also 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 shape that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from US$1,995 to US$2,495 (adjusting for inflation, about $5,200 in 2010).
1985 to 1989: Desktop publishing era
In 1985, the combination of the Mac, Apple's
LaserWriterThe LaserWriter was a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter introduced by Apple in 1985. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market...
printer, and Mac-specific software like Boston Software's
MacPublisherMacPublisher was the first Desktop Publishing program for the Apple Macintosh, introduced in 1984, the same year that Apple introduced the Macintosh...
and
Aldus PageMakerPageMaker was one of the first desktop publishing programs, introduced in 1985 by Aldus Corporation, initially for the then-new Apple Macintosh and in 1987 for PCs running Windows 1.0....
enabled users to design, preview, and print page layouts complete with text and graphics—an activity to become known as
desktop publishingDesktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
. Initially, desktop publishing was unique to the Macintosh, but eventually became available for other platforms as well. Later, applications such as Macromedia FreeHand,
QuarkXPressQuarkXPress is a computer application for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG environment. It runs on Mac OS X and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc...
,
Adobe PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
, and
Adobe IllustratorAdobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....
strengthened the Mac's position as a graphics computer and helped to expand the emerging desktop publishing market.
The limitations of the first Mac soon became clear: it had very little memory, even compared with other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily; and it lacked a hard disk drive or the means to attach one easily. Many small companies sprang up to address the memory issue, by upgrading the 128k Mac to 512 kB, by removing the computer's 16 memory chips and replacing them with larger-capacity chips, a tedious operation that was not always successful. In October 1985, Apple increased the Mac's memory to 512 kB, and offered an upgrade for 128k Macs that involved replacing the logic board. In an attempt to improve connectivity, Apple released the
Macintosh PlusThe Macintosh Plus computer was the third model in the Macintosh line, introduced on January 16, 1986, two years after the original Macintosh and a little more than a year after the Macintosh 512K, with a price tag of US$2599...
on January 10, 1986 for US$2,600. It offered one
megabyteThe megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
of RAM, easily expandable to four by the use of
socketed RAM boardsA SIMM, or single in-line memory module, is a type of memory module containing random access memory used in computers from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. It differs from a dual in-line memory module , the most predominant form of memory module today, in that the contacts on a SIMM are redundant...
, and a
SCSISmall Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
parallel interface, allowing up to seven peripherals—such as hard drives and scanners—to be attached to the machine. Its
floppy driveThe Macintosh External Disk Drive was the original of a series of external 3.5" floppy disk drives manufactured and sold by Apple Computer exclusively for the Macintosh series of computers introduced in January, 1984. Later, Apple would unify their external drives to work cross-platform between the...
was increased to an 800
kBThe kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
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.
Updated Motorola CPUs made a faster machine possible, and in 1987 Apple took advantage of the new Motorola technology and introduced the
Macintosh IIThe Apple Macintosh II was the first personal computer model of the Macintosh II series in the Apple Macintosh line and the first Macintosh to support a color display.- History :...
, which used a {{nowrap|16 MHz}}
Motorola 68020The Motorola 68020 is a 32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1984. It is the successor to the Motorola 68010 and is succeeded by the Motorola 68030...
processor. The primary improvement in the Macintosh II was Color
QuickDrawQuickDraw is the 2D graphics library and associated Application Programming Interface which is a core part of the classic Apple Macintosh operating system. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still exists as part of the libraries of Mac OS X, but has been...
in ROM, a color version of the graphics language which was the heart of the machine. Among the many innovations in Color QuickDraw were an 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 architectureOpen architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture that allows adding, upgrading and swapping components. For example, the IBM PC and Apple IIe have an open architecture, whereas the Apple IIc and Amiga 500 computers have a closed architecture...
with several
NuBusNuBus is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus and the NuMachine was done by Western Digital for their NuMachine, and for the Lisp Machines Inc. LMI-Lambda. The NuBus was later...
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.
In September 1986, Apple introduced the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, or
MPWMacintosh Programmer's Workshop or MPW, is a software development environment for the Classic Mac OS, written by Apple Computer. For Macintosh developers, it was one of the primary tools for building applications for System 7.x and Mac OS 8.x and 9.x. Initially, MPW was sold as a commercial product...
that allowed software developers to create software for Macintosh on Macintosh, rather than cross compiling from a Lisa. In August 1987, Apple unveiled
HyperCardHyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written...
, and introduced
MultiFinderMultiFinder was the name of an extension software for the Apple Macintosh, introduced on August 11, 1987 and included with System Software 5. It added the ability to co-operatively multitask between several applications at once – a great improvement over the previous systems, which could only...
, which added cooperative multitasking to the Macintosh. Apple began bundling both with every Macintosh.
The
Macintosh SEThe Macintosh SE was a personal computer manufactured by Apple between March 1987 and October 1990. This computer marked a significant improvement on the Macintosh Plus design and was introduced by Apple at the same time as the Macintosh II....
was released at the same time as the Macintosh II, as the first
compact Mac"Compact Macintosh" or "Classic Macintosh" are informal terms that refer to the direct descendants of the original Macintosh personal computer case design by Apple Computer, Inc. All of them are all-in-one desktop computer designs with the display integrated in the computer case, but not the...
with a 20 MB internal hard drive and one 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 ManockJerrold C. Manock is an American industrial designer. He worked for Apple Computer from 1977 to 1984, contributing to housing designs for the Apple II, Apple III, and earlier compact Apple Macintosh computers. Manock is widely regarded as the "father" of the Apple Industrial Design Group...
and Terry Oyama's original design and shared the Macintosh II's
Snow WhiteThe Snow White design language was an industrial design language developed by Hartmut Esslinger's Frog Design. Used by Apple Computer from 1984 to 1990, the scheme has vertical and horizontal stripes for decoration, ventilation, and the illusion that the computer enclosure is smaller than it...
design language, as well as the new
Apple Desktop BusApple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999....
(ADB) mouse and keyboard that had first appeared on the
Apple IIGSThe Apple , the fifth and most powerful model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The "GS" in the name stands for Graphics and Sound, referring to its enhanced graphics and sound capabilities, both of which greatly surpassed previous models of the line...
some months earlier.
In 1987, Apple spun off its software business as
ClarisClaris was a computer software developer formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and...
. It was given the code and rights to several applications that had been written within Apple, notably MacWrite, MacPaint, and
MacProjectMacProject was a project management and scheduling business application released along with the first Apple Macintosh systems in 1984. MacProject was one of the first major business tools for the Macintosh which enabled users to calculate the "critical path" to completion and estimate costs in...
. 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 WingzWingz was a spreadsheet program sold by Informix in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Originally developed for the Macintosh, it was later distributed on Microsoft Windows, OS/2, NextStep and several other commercial flavors of Unix...
spreadsheetA spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
on the Mac, renaming it
Claris ResolveClaris Resolve was a spreadsheet software program for the Apple Macintosh. It was released by Claris in 1991 and sold until 1994.In an effort to flesh out their software suite, in the early 90's Claris wanted to introduce a spreadsheet application, and decided to buy an existing one...
, and added the new presentation software
Claris ImpactClaris Impact was a presentation and chart software program made for the Apple Macintosh computer developed by Claris....
. By the early 1990s, Claris applications were shipping with the majority of consumer-level Macintoshes and were extremely popular. In 1991, Claris released
ClarisWorksAppleWorks refers to two different office suite products, both of which are now discontinued. Originally, AppleWorks was an integrated software package for the Apple II platform, released in 1984 by Apple Computer...
, 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
suedApple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation, 35 F.3d 1435 was a copyright infringement lawsuit in which Apple Computer, Inc. sought to prevent Microsoft Corporation and Hewlett-Packard from using visual graphical user interface elements that were similar to those in Apple's Lisa and Macintosh...
Microsoft and
Hewlett-PackardHewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
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
appealsThe United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system...
. Apple's actions were criticized by some in the software community, including the
Free Software FoundationThe Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
(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 68030The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features on-chip...
processor came the
Macintosh IIxThe Macintosh IIx was introduced by Apple in 1988 as an incremental update of the original Macintosh II model. It replaced the 16 MHz Motorola 68020 CPU and 68881 FPU of the II with a 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU ; and the 800 KB floppy drive with the 1.44 MB SuperDrive...
in 1988, which had benefited from internal improvements, including an on-board
MMUA memory management unit , sometimes called paged memory management unit , is a computer hardware component responsible for handling accesses to memory requested by the CPU...
. It was followed in 1989 by a more compact version with fewer slots (the
Macintosh IIcxHalf a year following the release of the Macintosh IIx passed before Apple introduced the Macintosh IIcx in 1989. Despite resembling the IIx to a great extent and providing the same performance, the IIcx was quieter than its predecessor. The design was also made much more compact by reducing the...
) and a version of the Mac SE powered by the {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68030, the
Macintosh SE/30The Macintosh SE/30 is a personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1989 until 1991. It was the fastest and most expandable of the original black-and-white compact Macintosh series....
. Later that year, the
Macintosh IIciThe Apple Macintosh IIci was an improvement on the Macintosh IIcx. Sharing the same compact case design with three expansion slots, the IIci improved upon the IIcx's 16 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 68882 FPU, replacing them with 25 MHz versions of these chips. The IIci came with either a 40 or...
, running at {{nowrap|25 MHz}}, was the first Mac to be "32-bit clean," allowing 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
flagsIn computer programming, flag can refer to one or more bits that are used to store a binary value or code that has an assigned meaning, but can refer to uses of other data types...
).
System 7System 7 is a single-user graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was introduced on May 13, 1991 by Apple Computer. It succeeded System 6, and was the main Macintosh operating system until it was succeeded by Mac OS 8 in 1997...
was the first Macintosh operating system to support 32-bit addressing. Apple also introduced the
Macintosh PortableThe Macintosh Portable was Apple Inc.'s first attempt at making a battery-powered portable Macintosh personal computer that held the power of a desktop Macintosh...
, a {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68000 machine with an active matrix
flat panel displayAn active matrix liquid crystal display is a type of flat panel display, currently the overwhelming choice of notebook computer manufacturers, due to low weight, very good image quality, wide color gamut and response time...
that was
backlitA backlight is a form of illumination used in liquid crystal displays . As LCDs do not produce light themselves , they need illumination to produce a visible image...
on some models. The following year the
Macintosh IIfxThe Macintosh IIfx was a model of Apple Macintosh computer, introduced in 1990 and discontinued in 1992. At introduction it cost from US $9,000 to US $12,000, depending on configuration, and was the fastest Mac...
, starting at US$9,900, was unveiled. Apart from its fast {{nowrap|40 MHz}}
68030The Motorola 68030 is a 32-bit microprocessor in Motorola's 68000 family. It was released in 1987. The 68030 was the successor to the Motorola 68020, and was followed by the Motorola 68040. In keeping with general Motorola naming, this CPU is often referred to as the 030 .The 68030 features on-chip...
processor, it had significant internal architectural improvements, including faster memory and two
Apple II CPUsThe MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of...
dedicated to
I/OIn computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
processing.
1990 to 1998: Growth and decline
Microsoft Windows 3.0Windows 3.0, a graphical environment, is the third major release of Microsoft Windows, and was released on 22 May 1990. It became the first widely successful version of Windows and a rival to Apple Macintosh and the Commodore Amiga on the GUI front...
, which began to approach the Macintosh operating system in both performance and feature set,{{citation needed|date=November 2010}} was released in May 1990 and was a less expensive alternative to the Macintosh platform. Apple's response was to introduce a range of relatively inexpensive Macs in October 1990. The
Macintosh ClassicThe Macintosh Classic was a personal computer manufactured by Apple Computer. Introduced on October 15, 1990, it was the first Apple Macintosh to sell for less than US$1,000. Production of the Classic was prompted by the success of the Macintosh Plus and the SE...
, essentially a less expensive version of the Macintosh Plus, was the least expensive Mac until early 2001. The 68020-powered
Macintosh LCThe Macintosh LC was Apple Computer's product family of low-end consumer Macintosh personal computers in the early 1990s. The original Macintosh LC was released in 1990 and was the first affordable color-capable Macintosh. Due to its affordability and Apple II compatibility the LC was adopted...
, in its distinctive "
pizza boxIn computing, a pizza box is a style of case for computers or network switches. Cases of this type tend to be wide and flat, normally one or two rack units in height, thus resembling pizza delivery boxes....
" case, offered color graphics and was accompanied by a new, low-cost 512 × 384 pixel monitor. The
Macintosh IIsiThe Macintosh IIsi was a compact three-box desktop unit, effectively a cut-down Macintosh IIci in a smaller case , made cheaper by the redesign of the motherboard and the deletion of all but one of the expansion card slots...
was essentially a {{nowrap|20 MHz}} IIci with only one expansion slot. All three machines sold well, although Apple's profit margin was considerably lower than on earlier machines.
Apple improved Macintosh computers by introducing models equipped with newly available processors from the 68k lineup. The
Macintosh Classic IIThe Apple Macintosh Classic II replaced the Macintosh SE/30 in the compact Macintosh line in 1991. Like the SE/30, the Classic II was powered by a 16 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU and 40 or 80 MB hard disk, but in contrast to its predecessor, it was limited by a 16-bit data bus and a 10 MB memory...
and Macintosh LC II, which used a {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68030 CPU, were joined in 1991 by the
Macintosh QuadraThe Macintosh Quadra series was Apple Computer's product family of professional high-end Apple Macintosh personal computers built using the Motorola 68040 CPU. The first two models in the Quadra line were introduced in 1991, and the name was used until the Power Mac was introduced in 1994...
700 and 900, the first Macs to employ the faster
Motorola 68040The Motorola 68040 is a microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060. There was no 68050. In keeping with general Motorola naming, the 68040 is often referred to as simply the '040 ....
processor. In 1994, Apple abandoned Motorola CPUs for the
RISCReduced instruction set computing, or RISC , is a CPU design strategy based on the insight that simplified instructions can provide higher performance if this simplicity enables much faster execution of each instruction. A computer based on this strategy is a reduced instruction set computer...
PowerPC architecture developed by the
AIM allianceThe AIM alliance was an alliance formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple Inc. , IBM, and Motorola to create a new computing standard based on the PowerPC architecture. The stated goal of the alliance was to challenge the dominant Wintel computing platform with a new computer design and a...
of Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola. The
Power MacintoshPower Macintosh, later Power Mac, was a line of Apple Macintosh workstation-class personal computers based on various models of PowerPC microprocessors that were developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Inc. from March 1994 until August 2006. The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100,...
line, the first to use the new chips, proved to be highly successful, with over a million PowerPC units sold in nine months.
Apple replaced the Macintosh Portable in 1991 with the first of the
PowerBookThe PowerBook was a line of Macintosh laptop computers that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1991 to 2006. During its lifetime, the PowerBook went through several major revisions and redesigns, often being the first to incorporate features that would later become...
line: the
PowerBook 100The PowerBook 100 was a portable subnotebook personal computer manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced on October 21, 1991 at the COMDEX computer expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. Priced at US$2,300, the PowerBook 100 was the low-end model of the first three simultaneously-released...
, a miniaturized Portable; the {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68030
PowerBook 140The PowerBook 140 was released in the first line of PowerBooks. It was the mid-range PowerBook, between the low-end 100 and the high-end 170. As with the PowerBook 170, and unlike the 100, this PowerBook featured an internal floppy drive. Codenames for this model are: Tim Lite, Tim LC,...
; and the {{nowrap|25 MHz}} 68030
PowerBook 170The PowerBook 170 was released by Apple Inc. in 1991 along with the PowerBook 100 and the PowerBook 140. Identical to the 140, it was the high end of the original...
. They were the first portable computers with the keyboard behind a palm rest, and with a built-in pointing device (a
trackballA trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down mouse with an exposed protruding ball. The user rolls the ball with the thumb, fingers, or the palm of the hand to move a cursor...
) in front of the keyboard. The 1993 PowerBook 165c was Apple's first portable computer to feature a color screen, displaying 256 colors with {{nowrap|640 x 400}} pixel resolution. The second-generation of PowerBooks, the 68040-equipped
500 seriesThe PowerBook 500 series was a range of Apple Macintosh PowerBook portable computers first introduced by Apple Computer with the 540c model on 16 May 1994...
, introduced the trackpad, integrated stereo speakers and built-in
EthernetEthernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
to the laptop form factor in 1994.
As for
Mac OSMac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
,
System 7System 7 is a single-user graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers. It was introduced on May 13, 1991 by Apple Computer. It succeeded System 6, and was the main Macintosh operating system until it was succeeded by Mac OS 8 in 1997...
was a
32-bitThe range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
rewrite from
PascalPascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
to
C++C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
that introduced
virtual memoryIn computing, virtual memory is a memory management technique developed for multitasking kernels. This technique virtualizes a computer architecture's various forms of computer data storage , allowing a program to be designed as though there is only one kind of memory, "virtual" memory, which...
, and improved the handling of color graphics, memory addressing, networking, and 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 Frogdesign, in favor of bringing the work in-house by establishing the
Apple Industrial Design GroupThe Apple Industrial Design Group is the industrial design arm of Apple Inc. responsible for crafting the appearance of all Apple products, including the Apple Macintosh computer line.-History:...
. They became responsible for to crafting a new look to go with the new operating system and all other Apple products.
Despite these technical and commercial successes,
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
and Intel began to rapidly lower Apple's
market shareMarket share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
with the
Windows 95Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
operating system and Pentium processors respectively. These significantly enhanced the multimedia capability and performance of
IBM PC compatibleIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
computers, and brought Windows still closer to the Mac
GUIGui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
. Furthermore, Apple had created too many similar models that confused potential buyers. At one point Apple's product lineup was subdivided into Classic, LC, II, Quadra,
PerformaThe Macintosh Performa series was Apple Computer's consumer product family of Apple Macintosh personal computers sold through department stores and mass-market retailers from 1992 until 1997, when it was superseded by the Power Macintosh 5x00 series...
, and
CentrisMacintosh Centris is a line of Macintosh computers, introduced in 1993, that were built around the Motorola 68LC040 and 68040 CPUs. The name was chosen to indicate that the consumer was selecting a Macintosh in the center of Apple's product line: lower performance than the Quadra computers, but...
models, with essentially the same computer being sold under a number of different names. These models competed against the
Macintosh cloneA Macintosh clone is a personal computer made by a manufacturer other than Apple, using Macintosh ROMs and system software.-Background:...
s, hardware manufactured by third-parties that ran Apple's 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 while Apple shouldered the burden of developing the platform.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he ordered that the OS that had been previewed as version 7.7 be branded
Mac OS 8Mac OS 8 is an operating system that was released by Apple Computer on July 26, 1997. It represented the largest overhaul of the Mac OS since the release of System 7, some six years previously. It puts more emphasis on color than previous operating systems...
(in place of the never-to-appear
Copland OSCopland was a project at Apple Computer to create an updated version of the Macintosh operating system. It was to have introduced protected memory, preemptive multitasking and a number of new underlying operating system features, yet still be compatible with existing Mac software...
). Since Apple had licensed only System 7 to third-parties, this move effectively ended the clone line. The decision caused significant financial losses for companies like
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, who produced the
StarMaxThe Motorola StarMax was a line of Macintosh clones produced by Motorola in 1996 and 1997. They used versions of Apple's Tanzania motherboard, which was designed to use standard IBM PC compatible components in addition to Apple-proprietary components then in common use in the Power Macintosh family...
, Umax, who produced the SuperMac, and Power Computing Corporation, who offered several lines Mac clones, including 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.{{citation needed|date=November 2010}}
1998 to 2005: New beginnings
In 1998, a year after
Steve JobsSteven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
had returned to the company, Apple introduced an all-in-one Macintosh called the
iMacThe iMac is a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers built by Apple. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its introduction in 1998, and has evolved through five distinct forms....
. Its translucent plastic case, originally Bondi blue and later many other colors, is considered an
industrial designIndustrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
landmark of the late 1990s. The iMac did away with most of Apple's standard (and usually proprietary) connections, such as
SCSISmall Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
and
ADBApple Desktop Bus is an obsolete bit-serial computer bus connecting low-speed devices to computers. Used primarily on the Macintosh platform, ADB equipment is still available but not supported by most Apple hardware manufactured since 1999....
, in favor of two
USBUSB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
ports. It also had no internal
floppy diskA floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
drive and instead included a
CD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
drive for installing software, but was incapable of writing 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, making the company an annual profit of US$309 million—Apple's first profitable year since
Michael SpindlerMichael Spindler , nicknamed "the Diesel" for his reputed around-the-clock work habits, was president and CEO of Apple from 1993 to 1996....
took over as CEO in 1995. The iMacs's "blue and white" aesthetic was applied to the
Power MacintoshThe Power Macintosh G3 series was a series of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer Inc. as part of their Power Macintosh line...
, and then to a new product, the
iBookThe iBook was a line of laptop computers sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2006. The line targeted the consumer and education markets, with lower specifications and prices than the PowerBook, Apple's higher-end line of laptop computers....
. Introduced in July 1999, the iBook was Apple's first consumer-level laptop 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 started shipping in September, and by October it was as much a sales hit as the iMac.
In early 2001, Apple began shipping computers with CDRW drives for the first time. Apple had been emphasizing the Mac's ability to play DVDs by including DVD-ROM and
DVD-RAMDVD-RAM is a disc specification presented in 1996 by the DVD Forum, which specifies rewritable DVD-RAM media and the appropriate DVD writers. DVD-RAM media have been used in computers as well as camcorders and personal video recorders since 1998.-Design:DVD-RAM is one of three competing...
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
iTunesiTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
music player software that could burn CDs, along with a controversial "Rip, Mix, Burn" advertising campaign that some felt encouraged media piracy. This accompanied the release of the
iPodiPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
, Apple's first successful handheld device.
Apple continued to add new products to their lineup, such as the
Power Mac G4 CubeThe Power Mac G4 Cube was a small form factor Macintosh personal computer from Apple Inc. It was sold from 2000 to 2001. Its cube shape is reminiscent of the NeXTcube from NeXT, acquired by Apple in 1996. The machine was designed by Apple industrial designer Jonathan Ive...
, the
eMacThe eMac, short for education Mac, was a Macintosh desktop computer made by Apple Inc. It was originally aimed at the education market, but was later made available as a cheaper mass market alternative to Apple's second-generation LCD display iMac....
for the education market and
PowerBook G4The PowerBook G4 are a series of notebook computers that were manufactured, marketed, and sold by Apple, Inc. between 2001 and 2006 as part of its PowerBook line. It uses the PowerPC G4 processor, initially produced by Motorola and later by Freescale, after Motorola spun off its semiconductor...
laptop for professionals. The
original iMacThe iMac G3 was the first model of the iMac line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. , and the originator of the Legacy-free PC market category. Like the first Macs, the iMac G3 is an all-in-one personal computer, encompassing both the monitor and the system unit in a single enclosure...
used a
G3 processorThe PowerPC 7xx is a family of third generation 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by IBM and Motorola . This family is called the PowerPC G3 by its well-known customer Apple Computer...
, but the
G4The iMac G4 was a computer that was produced by Apple from the beginning of 2002 to mid 2004. It replaced the aging iMac G3. The computer had a new design compared to older Macs. It had a 15-inch LCD which was mounted on an adjustable arm above a hemisphere containing a full-size, tray-loading...
and then
G5The iMac G5 was a series of desktop Macintosh computers designed and built by Apple Inc. using the PowerPC chip architecture. It was the last line of iMac computers that used a PowerPC chip, making it the last of the iMacs that could run Mac OS 9 applications. In August 2004, the iMac design was...
chips were accompanied by successive new designs, dropping the array of colors in favor of white plastic. {{As of|2011]]
iMacsThe iMac is a series of Macintosh desktop computers offered by Apple Inc. The current Apple iMac features either an Intel Core i5, or Intel Core i7 processor, ATI HD 6750M graphics or an ATI Radeon HD 6770M with options to upgrade to the ATI Radeon HD 6970M , and a choice of glossy 21.5" or 27" LCD...
used aluminum enclosures. On January 11, 2005, Apple announced the release of the
Mac MiniThe Mac Mini is a small form factor desktop computer manufactured by Apple Inc. Like earlier mini-ITX PC designs, it is uncommonly small for a desktop computer: 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches tall. It weighs 2.7 pounds...
priced at US$499, the least expensive Mac at its release.
Mac OS continued to evolve up to version 9.2.2, including retrofits such as the addition of a nanokernel and support for
Multiprocessing ServicesA multi-core processor is a single computing component with two or more independent actual processors , which are the units that read and execute program instructions...
2.0 in Mac OS 8.6. Ultimately its dated architecture made replacement necessary. Initially developed in the
PascalPascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
programming language, it was substantially rewritten in
C++C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
for System 7. From its beginnings on a 128k 8 MHz machine, it had grown to support Apple's latest 1 GHz G4-equipped Macs. But since its architecture was laid down, OS features like preemptive multitasking and protected memory had become feasible on the kind of hardware Apple manufactured – features that were already common on Apple's competition. As such, Apple introduced
Mac OS XMac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, a fully overhauled
UnixUnix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
-based successor to
Mac OS 9Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...
, using
DarwinDarwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, and other free software projects....
,
XNUXNU is the computer operating system kernel that Apple Inc. acquired and developed for use in the Mac OS X operating system and released as free and open source software as part of the Darwin operating system...
, and Mach as
foundationsMac OS X is the culmination of Apple Inc.'s decade-long search for an operating system to replace the original Mac OS. After the failures of their previous attempts; Pink, which started as an Apple project but evolved into a joint venture with IBM called Taligent, and Copland, which started in...
, and based on
NEXTSTEPNeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube...
. Mac OS X was not released to the public until September 2000, as the
Mac OS X Public BetaThe Mac OS X Public Beta was an early beta version of Apple Computer's Mac OS X operating system Cheetah. It was released to the public on September 13, 2000 for US$29.95...
, with a revamped
user interfaceThe user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
Apple called "
AquaAqua is the GUI and primary visual theme of Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system. It is based around the theme of water, as its name suggests, with droplet-like elements and liberal use of translucency and reflection effects...
". 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 release of Mac OS X,
10.0Mac OS X version 10.0, code named "Cheetah", is the first major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. Mac OS X v10.0 was released on March 24, 2001 for a price of US$129...
(nicknamed Cheetah), was released on March 24, 2001. Older Mac OS applications could still run under early Mac OS X versions, using an environment called
ClassicClassic, or Classic Environment, was a hardware and software abstraction layer in Mac OS X that allowed applications compatible with Mac OS 9 to run on the Mac OS X operating system...
. Subsequent releases of Mac OS X were
10.1 "Puma"Mac OS X version 10.1, code named "Puma", is the second major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It superseded Mac OS X v10.0 and preceded Mac OS X v10.2. Version 10.1 was released on 25 September 2001 as a 'free update' to version 10.0...
(September 25, 2001),
10.2 "Jaguar"Mac OS X version 10.2 "Jaguar" is the third major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It superseded Mac OS X v10.1 code name Puma and preceded Mac OS X Panther...
(August 24, 2002),
10.3 "Panther"Mac OS X Panther is the fourth major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar" and preceded Mac OS X Tiger...
(October 24, 2003) and
10.4 "Tiger"Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger is the fifth major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Tiger was released to the public on 29 April 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X Panther , which had been released 18 months earlier...
(April 29, 2005).
2006 onward: Intel era
Apple discontinued the use of
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
microprocessors in 2006. At WWDC 2005, Steve Jobs revealed this transition and also noted that Mac OS X was in development to run both on Intel and PowerPC architecture from the very beginning. All new Macs now use
x86 processorsThe term x86 refers to a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU. The 8086 was launched in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit based 8080 microprocessor and also introduced segmentation to overcome the 16-bit addressing barrier of such designs...
made by
IntelIntel Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most...
, and some Macs were given new names to signify the switch. Intel-based Macs can run pre-existing software developed for PowerPC using an
emulatorIn computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
called
RosettaRosetta was a lightweight and dynamic binary translator for Mac OS X which Apple released in 2006 when it transitioned the Macintosh from PowerPC to Intel processors. It allowed pre-existing software to run on the new systems without modification....
, although at noticeably slower speeds than native programs, and the
ClassicClassic, or Classic Environment, was a hardware and software abstraction layer in Mac OS X that allowed applications compatible with Mac OS 9 to run on the Mac OS X operating system...
environment is unavailable. Intel chips introduced the potential to run the
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
natively on Apple hardware, without emulation software such as
Virtual PCWindows Virtual PC is a virtualization program for Microsoft Windows. In July 2006 Microsoft released the Windows-hosted version as a free product...
. In March 2006, a group of hackers announced that they were able to run
Windows XPWindows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
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 public beta availability of their own Boot Camp software that allows owners of Intel-based Macs to install Windows XP on their machines; later versions added support for
Windows VistaWindows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
. Boot Camp became a standard feature in Mac OS X 10.5, while support for Classic was dropped from PowerPC Macs.
Starting in 2006, Apple's
industrial designIndustrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
has shifted to favor aluminum, which was used in the construction of the first
MacBook ProThe MacBook Pro is a line of Macintosh portable computers introduced in January 2006 by Apple. It replaced the PowerBook G4 and was the second model, after the iMac, to be announced in the Apple–Intel transition...
. Glass was added in 2008 with the introduction of the unibody MacBook Pro. These materials are billed as environmentally friendly. The iMac, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines use aluminum enclosures, and are now made of a single
unibodyMonocoque is a construction technique that supports structural load by using an object's external skin, as opposed to using an internal frame or truss that is then covered with a non-load-bearing skin or coachwork...
. Chief designer
Jonathan IveJonathan "Jony" Ive, CBE is an English designer and the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc. He is the leading designer and conceptual mind behind the iMac, titanium and aluminum PowerBook G4, G4 Cube, MacBook, unibody MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.- Early...
continues to guide products towards a minimalist and simple feel, including the elimination of replaceable batteries in notebooks.
Multi-touchIn computing, multi-touch refers to a touch sensing surface's ability to recognize the presence of two or more points of contact with the surface...
gesturesGesture recognition is a topic in computer science and language technology with the goal of interpreting human gestures via mathematical algorithms. Gestures can originate from any bodily motion or state but commonly originate from the face or hand. Current focuses in the field include emotion...
from the
iPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
's interface have been applied to the Mac line in the form of touch pads on notebooks and the Magic Mouse and
Magic TrackpadThe Magic Trackpad is a multi-touch trackpad produced by Apple Inc. Announced on July 27, 2010, it is similar to the trackpad found on the current MacBook family of laptops, albeit 80% larger...
for desktops.
In recent years, Apple has seen a significant boost in sales of Macs. This has been attributed, in part, to the success of the
iPodiPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
and the
iPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, a
halo effectThe halo effect is a cognitive bias whereby one trait influences another trait or traits of that person or object. This is very common among physically attractiveness...
whereby satisfied iPod or iPhone owners purchase more Apple equipment, as well as the use of Intel microprocessors. From 2001 to 2008, Mac sales increased continuously on an annual basis. Apple reported worldwide sales of 3.36 million Macs during the 2009 holiday season. As of Mid-2011, Macintosh continues to enjoy rapid market share increase in the US, growing from 7.3% of all computer shipments in 2010 to 9.3% in 2011.
On February 24, 2011, Apple was the first company to bring to market a computer that utilized Intel's new Thunderbolt (codename Light Peak) I/O interface. Using the same physical interface as a minidisplay port, and backwards compatible with that standard, Thunderbolt boasts two-way transfer speeds of 10 Gbit/s.
{{Timeline of Macintosh models|headerextension}}
Hardware
{{Main|Macintosh hardware}}
Apple directly sub-contracts hardware production to Asian
original equipment manufacturerAn original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a...
s such as
AsusASUSTeK Computer Incorporated is a multinational computer technology and consumer electronics product manufacturer headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan. Its product range includes motherboards, desktops, laptops, monitors, tablet PCs, servers and mobile phones...
, maintaining a high degree of control over the end product. By contrast, most other companies (including
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
) create software that can be run on hardware produced by a variety of third-parties, like
DellDell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
,
HPHewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
/
CompaqCompaq Computer Corporation is a personal computer company founded in 1982. Once the largest supplier of personal computing systems in the world, Compaq existed as an independent corporation until 2002, when it was acquired for US$25 billion by Hewlett-Packard....
, and Lenovo. Consequently, the Macintosh buyer has comparably fewer options.
The current Mac product family uses
IntelIntel Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most...
x86-64x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...
processorsThe central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
. Apple introduced an emulator during the transition from
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
chips (called Rosetta), much as it did during the transition from
Motorola 68000The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...
architecture a decade earlier. The Macintosh is the only mainstream computer platform to have successfully transitioned to a new CPU architecture, and has done so twice. All current Mac models ship with at least 2
GBThe gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
RAM-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
as standard. Current Mac computers use
ATI RadeonRadeon is a brand of graphics processing units and random access memory produced by Advanced Micro Devices , first launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon is the successor to the Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by...
or
nVidia GeForceGeForce is a brand of graphics processing units designed by Nvidia. , there have been eleven iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for use on add-on graphics boards, intended for the high-margin PC gaming market...
graphics cards as well as Intel graphics built into the main CPU. All current Macs (except for the
MacBook AirThe MacBook Air family is a line of Apple ultraportable Macintosh notebook computers.The first-generation MacBook Air was a 13.3"-only model, previously promoted as the World's Thinnest Notebook, introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. It featured a custom Intel Merom CPU...
and
Mac MiniThe Mac Mini is a small form factor desktop computer manufactured by Apple Inc. Like earlier mini-ITX PC designs, it is uncommonly small for a desktop computer: 7.7 inches square and 1.4 inches tall. It weighs 2.7 pounds...
) ship with an optical media drive that includes a dual-function DVD/CD burner, called the
SuperDriveSuperDrive is a trademark used by Apple Inc. for two different storage drives: from 1988–99 to refer to a high-density floppy disk drive capable of reading all major 3.5" disk formats; and from 2001 onwards to refer to a combined CD/DVD reader/writer....
. Macs include two standard data transfer ports: USB and FireWire (except for the
MacBook AirThe MacBook Air family is a line of Apple ultraportable Macintosh notebook computers.The first-generation MacBook Air was a 13.3"-only model, previously promoted as the World's Thinnest Notebook, introduced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. It featured a custom Intel Merom CPU...
and
MacBookThe MacBook was a brand of Macintosh notebook computers built by Apple Inc. First introduced in May 2006, it replaced the iBook and 12-inch PowerBook series of notebooks as a part of the Apple–Intel transition. Positioned as the low end of the MacBook family, the Apple MacBook was aimed at the...
that do not include FireWire). MacBook Pro and MacBook Air computers now also feature the "Thunderbolt" port, which Apple says can transfer data at speeds up to 10 gigabytes per second. USB was introduced in the 1998
iMac G3The iMac G3 was the first model of the iMac line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. , and the originator of the Legacy-free PC market category. Like the first Macs, the iMac G3 is an all-in-one personal computer, encompassing both the monitor and the system unit in a single enclosure...
and is ubiquitous today, while FireWire is mainly reserved for high-performance devices such as hard drives or video cameras. Starting with a new iMac G5 released in October 2005, Apple started to include built-in
iSightiSight is a webcam, both external and internal, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. The external iSight was sold retail for US$149, connected to a computer via a FireWire cable, and came with a set of mounts to place it atop any then-current Apple display, laptop computer, all-in-one desktop...
cameras to appropriate models, and a media center interface called Front Row that can be operated by an
Apple RemoteThe Apple Remote is a remote control made for use with Apple products with infrared capabilities released after October 2005. The device was announced by Steve Jobs on October 12, 2005. The remote is largely based on the interface of the first generation iPod Shuffle and has only six buttons...
or keyboard for accessing media stored on the computer.
Apple was initially reluctant to embrace
miceIn computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons...
with multiple buttons and
scroll wheelA scroll wheel is a hard plastic or rubbery disc on a computer mouse that is perpendicular to the mouse surface. It is normally located between the left and right mouse buttons.- Functionality :...
s. Macs did not natively support multiple buttons, even from third parties, until Mac OS X arrived in 2001. Apple continued to offer only single button mice, with wired and
BluetoothBluetooth is a proprietary open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security...
wireless versions, until August 2005, when it introduced the
Mighty MouseThe Apple Mouse is a multi-button USB mouse manufactured and sold by Apple Inc. It was announced and sold for the first time on August 2, 2005, and a Bluetooth version was available from 2006 to 2009...
. While it looked like a traditional one-button mouse, it actually had four buttons and a scroll ball, capable of independent
x- and
y-
axisA Cartesian coordinate system specifies each point uniquely in a plane by a pair of numerical coordinates, which are the signed distances from the point to two fixed perpendicular directed lines, measured in the same unit of length...
movement. A Bluetooth version followed in July 2006. In October 2009, Apple introduced the
Magic MouseThe Magic Mouse is a multi-touch mouse manufactured and sold by Apple, and it was announced and sold for the first time on October 20, 2009. The Magic Mouse is the first consumer mouse to have multi-touch capabilities...
which uses
multi-touchIn computing, multi-touch refers to a touch sensing surface's ability to recognize the presence of two or more points of contact with the surface...
gesture recognitionGesture recognition is a topic in computer science and language technology with the goal of interpreting human gestures via mathematical algorithms. Gestures can originate from any bodily motion or state but commonly originate from the face or hand. Current focuses in the field include emotion...
similar to the
iPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
instead of a physical scroll wheel or ball. It is available only in Bluetooth, and the Mighty Mouse (re-branded as "Apple Mouse") is available with a cord. Apple also features the "Magic Trackpad" as a means to control Macintosh desktop computers such as the iMac or Mac Pro. This was introduced in 2010.
Software
{{Main|Mac OS|History of Mac OS|Mac OS X}}
The original Macintosh was the first successful personal computer to use a
graphical user interfaceIn computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
devoid of a command line. It used a
desktop metaphorThe desktop metaphor is an interface metaphor which is a set of unifying concepts used by graphical user interfaces to help users more easily interact with the computer. The desktop metaphor treats the monitor of a computer as if it is the user's desktop, upon which objects such as documents and...
, depicting real-world objects like documents and a trashcan as
iconsA computer icon is a pictogram displayed on a computer screen and used to navigate a computer system or mobile device. The icon itself is a small picture or symbol serving as a quick, intuitive representation of a software tool, function or a data file accessible on the system. It functions as an...
onscreen. The
System software introduced in 1984 with the first Macintosh and renamed
Mac OS in 1997, continued to evolve until version
9.2.2Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...
. In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X, based on
DarwinDarwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, and other free software projects....
and
NEXTSTEPNeXTSTEP was the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube...
; its new features included the
DockThe Dock is a prominent feature of the graphical user interface of the Mac OS X operating system. It is used to launch applications and switch between running applications...
and the
AquaAqua is the GUI and primary visual theme of Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system. It is based around the theme of water, as its name suggests, with droplet-like elements and liberal use of translucency and reflection effects...
user interface. During the transition, Apple included an emulator known as
ClassicClassic, or Classic Environment, was a hardware and software abstraction layer in Mac OS X that allowed applications compatible with Mac OS 9 to run on the Mac OS X operating system...
allowing users to run Mac OS 9 applications under Mac OS X, version 10.4 and earlier on PowerPC machines. The most recent version is Mac OS X v10.7 "Lion." In addition to Lion, all new Macs are bundled with assorted Apple-produced applications, including
iLifeiLife is a suite of software applications developed by Apple for organizing, editing, and publishing photos, movies, and music. The suite comprises five applications: iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and iWeb, all of which run on the Mac OS X operating system....
, the
SafariSafari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...
web browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
and the
iTunesiTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
media player. Apple released Mac OS X 10.7 in 2010, which was made available in the summer of 2011. This operating system includes many new features such as: Mission Control, the Mac App Store (available to Mac OS X v10.6.6 "Snow Leopard." users by software update),Launchpad, an application viewer and launcher akin to the iOS Home Screen, and Resume, a feature similar to the hibernate function found in Microsoft Windows.
Historically Mac OS X enjoyed a near-absence of the types of
malwareMalware, short for malicious software, consists of programming that is designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, or gain unauthorized access to system resources, or that otherwise exhibits abusive behavior...
and
spywareSpyware is a type of malware that can be installed on computers, and which collects small pieces of information about users without their knowledge. The presence of spyware is typically hidden from the user, and can be difficult to detect. Typically, spyware is secretly installed on the user's...
that affect
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
users. Mac OS X has a smaller usage share compared to Microsoft Windows (roughly 5% and 92%, respectively), but it also has secure
UNIXUnix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
roots. Worms as well as potential vulnerabilities were noted in February 2006, that led some industry analysts and anti-virus companies to issue warnings that Apple's Mac OS X is not immune to malware. Increasing market share coincided with additional reports of a variety of attacks. Apple releases security updates for its software. In early 2011 Mac OS X experienced a large increase in malware attacks, and malware such as
Mac DefenderMac Defender is an internet rogue security program that can be installed by unwitting users of computers running the Mac OS X operating system. The Mac security firm Intego discovered the fake antivirus software on May 2, 2011, with a patch not being provided by Apple until May 31...
, MacProtector, MacGuard were seen as an increasing problem for Mac users. At first, the malware installer required the user to enter the administrative password but later versions were able to install without user input Initially Apple support staff were instructed not to assist in the removal of the malware or admit the existence of the malware issue, but as the malware spread a support document was issued and Apple announced a OS X update to fix the problem. An estimated 100,000 users were affected.
Originally, the hardware architecture was so closely tied to the Mac OS operating system that it was impossible to boot an alternative operating system. The most common workaround, used even by Apple for
A/UXA/UX was Apple Computer’s implementation of the Unix operating system for some of their Macintosh computers. The later versions of A/UX ran on the Macintosh II, Quadra and Centris series of machines as well as the SE/30. A/UX was first released in 1988, with the final version released in 1995...
, was to boot into Mac OS and then to hand over control to a program that took over the system and acted as a boot loader. This technique was no longer necessary with the introduction of Open Firmware-based PCI Macs, though it was formerly used for convenience on many
Old World ROMOld World ROM Macintosh computers are the Macintosh models that use a Macintosh Toolbox ROM chip, usually in a socket . All Macs prior to the iMac use Old World ROM, while the iMac and all subsequent models until the introduction of the Intel-based EFI Models are New World ROM machines...
systems due to bugs in the firmware implementation.{{Citation needed|date=December 2009}} Now, Mac hardware boots directly from
Open FirmwareOpen Firmware, or OpenBoot in Sun Microsystems parlance, is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . It originated at Sun, and has been used by Sun, Apple, IBM, and most other non-x86 PCI chipset...
(most PowerPC-based Macs) or
EFIThe Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware...
(all Intel-based Macs), and Macs are no longer limited to running just Mac OS X.
Following the release of the Intel-based Mac, third-party platform virtualization software such as Parallels Desktop,
VMware FusionVMware Fusion is a virtual machine software product developed by VMware for Macintosh computers with Intel processors. Fusion allows Intel-based Macs to run x86 and x86-64 "guest" operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris as virtual machines simultaneously with Mac OS...
, and
VirtualBoxOracle VM VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software package, originally created by software company Innotek GmbH, purchased by Sun Microsystems, and now developed by Oracle Corporation as part of its family of virtualization products...
began to emerge. These programs allow users to run
Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
or previously Windows-only software on Macs at near native speed. Apple also released Boot Camp and Mac-specific Windows
driversIn computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
that help users to install
Windows XPWindows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
or
VistaWindows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
and natively
dual bootMulti-boot or Multi-booting is the act of installing multiple operating systems on a computer, and being able to choose which one to boot when starting the computer. The term dual-booting refers to the common configuration of exactly two operating systems...
between Mac OS X and Windows. Though not condoned by Apple, it is possible to run the
LinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
operating system using Boot camp or other virtualization
workaroundA workaround is a bypass of a recognized problem in a system. A workaround is typically a temporary fix that implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed...
s.
Because Mac OS X is a
UNIXUnix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
system, borrowing heavily from
FreeBSDFreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, many applications written for
LinuxThe Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
or
BSDBerkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995...
run on Mac OS X, often using
X11The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
. Apple's smaller market share than Microsoft's means that a smaller range of
sharewareThe term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
is available, but many popular
commercial softwareCommercial software, or less commonly, payware, is computer software that is produced for sale or that serves commercial purposes.Commercial software is most often proprietary software, but free software packages may also be commercial software....
applications from large developers such as
Microsoft OfficeMicrosoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
and
Adobe PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
are ported to both Mac OS and Windows. And much of open source software like the Firefox
web browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
and the
OpenOffice.orgOpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
office suiteIn computing, an office suite, sometimes called an office software suite or productivity suite is a collection of programs intended to be used by knowledge workers...
are
cross-platformIn computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...
and run natively.
Advertising
{{Main|Apple Inc. advertising}}
Macintosh advertisements have usually attacked the established market leader, directly or indirectly. They tend to portray the Mac as an alternative to overly complex or unreliable PCs. Apple hyped the introduction of the original Mac with their
1984"1984" is an American television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer for the first time. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, Venice, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott. Anya Major...
commercial that aired during the
Super BowlSuper Bowl XVIII was an American football game played on January 22, 1984, at Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida, deciding the National Football League champion following the 1983 regular season. The American Football Conference champion Los Angeles Raiders defeated the National Football Conference...
. It was supplemented by a number of printed pamphlets and other TV ads demonstrating the new interface and emphasizing the mouse. Many more brochures for new models like the
Macintosh PlusThe Macintosh Plus computer was the third model in the Macintosh line, introduced on January 16, 1986, two years after the original Macintosh and a little more than a year after the Macintosh 512K, with a price tag of US$2599...
and the
PerformaThe Macintosh Performa series was Apple Computer's consumer product family of Apple Macintosh personal computers sold through department stores and mass-market retailers from 1992 until 1997, when it was superseded by the Power Macintosh 5x00 series...
followed. In the 1990s, Apple started the "What's on your PowerBook?" campaign, with print ads and television commercials featuring celebrities describing how the PowerBook helps them in their businesses and everyday lives. In 1995, Apple responded to the introduction of
Windows 95Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
with several print ads and a television commercial demonstrating its disadvantages and lack of innovation. In 1997 the
Think Different"Think Different" is an advertising slogan created for Apple Computer in 1997 by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day.It was used in a television commercial, several print advertisements and a number of TV promos for Apple products. Apple's use of the slogan was discontinued...
campaign introduced Apple's new slogan, and in 2002 the
Switch campaignSwitch was an advertising campaign launched by Apple Computer on June 10, 2002. It featured what the company referred to as "real people" who had "switched" from the Microsoft Windows platform to the Mac. An international television and print ad campaign directed users to a website where various...
followed. The most recent advertising strategy by Apple is the
Get a MacThe Get a Mac campaign is a television advertising campaign created for Apple Inc. by TBWA\Media Arts Lab, the company's advertising agency, that ran from 2006 to 2009...
campaign, with North American, UK and Japanese variants.
Today, Apple introduces new products at "special events" at the Apple Town Hall auditorium, and
keynotes"Stevenote" is a colloquial term for the keynote speeches given by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs at events such as the Worldwide Developers Conference and previously the Macworld and Apple Expos. Jobs' vibrant speaking style and manner of exciting the crowd was often referred to as inducing a...
at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, and (formerly) trade shows like the
Apple ExpoThe Apple Expo is a European annual sales conference and technology exposition held by Apple Inc. The conference features over 250 exhibitors annually, with Apple being its main exhibitor...
and the
MacWorld ExpoProduced by Boston-based IDG World Expo, Macworld | iWorld is a trade-show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It is held annually in the United States, usually during the second week of January...
. The events typically draw a large gathering of media representatives and spectators, and are preceded by
speculationThe Apple rumor community is concerned with Apple Inc. and its products, including the Macintosh, the iPhone, the iPod and the iPad. In recent years, a subculture has developed around rumors about new products and services from Apple. The company enjoys a cult-like following for its Macintosh...
about possible new products. In the past, special events have been used to unveil its desktop and notebook computers such as the iMac and MacBook, and other consumer electronic devices like the
iPodiPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
, Apple TV, and
iPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, as well as provide updates on sales and market share statistics. Apple has begun to focus its advertising on its retail stores instead of these trade shows; the last MacWorld keynote was in 2009.
Market share and user demographics
Since the introduction of the Macintosh, Apple has struggled to gain a significant
shareMarket share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
of the personal computer market. At first, the Macintosh 128K suffered from a dearth of available software compared to IBM's PC, resulting in disappointing sales in 1984 and 1985. It took 74 days for 50,000 units to sell. Market share is measured by browser hits, sales and installed base. If using the browser metric, Mac market share has increased substantially in 2007. If measuring market share by installed base, there were more than 20 million Mac users by 1997, compared to an installed base of around 340 million
WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
PCs. Statistics from late 2003 indicate that Apple had 2.06 percent of the desktop share in the United States that had increased to 2.88 percent by Q4 2004. As of October 2006, research firms IDC and Gartner reported that Apple's market share in the U.S. had increased to about 6 percent. Figures from December 2006, showing a market share around 6 percent (IDC) and 6.1 percent (Gartner) are based on a more than 30 percent increase in unit sale from 2005 to 2006. The
installed baseInstalled base or installed user base is a measure of the number of units of a particular type of system—usually a computing platform—actually in use, as opposed to market share, which only reflects sales over a particular period. Because installed base includes machines that may have been in use...
of Mac computers is hard to determine, with numbers ranging from 5% (estimated in 2009) to 16% (estimated in 2005). Mac OS X's share of the OS market increased from 7.31% in December 2007 to 9.63% in December 2008, which is a 32% increase in market share during 2008, compared with a 22% increase during 2007.
By March 2011, OS X market share in North America had increased to slightly over 14%. Whether the size of the Mac's market share and installed base is relevant, and to whom, is a hotly debated issue. Industry pundits have often called attention to the Mac's relatively small market share to predict Apple's impending doom, particularly in the early and mid 1990s when the company's future seemed bleakest. Others argue that market share is the wrong way to judge the Mac's success. Apple has positioned the Mac as a higher-end personal computer, and so it may be misleading to compare it to a budget PC. Because the overall market for personal computers has grown rapidly, the Mac's increasing sales numbers are effectively swamped by the industry's expanding sales volume as a whole. Apple's small market share, then, gives the impression that fewer people are using Macs than did ten years ago, when exactly the opposite is true. Soaring sales of the iPhone and iPad mean that the portion of Apple's profits represented by the Macintosh has declined in 2010, dropping to 24% from 46% two years earlier. Others try to de-emphasize market share, citing that it is rarely brought up in other industries. Regardless of the Mac's market share, Apple has remained profitable since Steve Jobs' return and the company's subsequent reorganization. Notably, a report published in the first quarter of 2008 found that Apple had a 14% market share in the personal computer market in the US, including 66% of all computers over $1,000.
Market researchMarket research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...
indicates that Apple draws its customer base from a higher-income demographic than the mainstream personal computer market.
See also
{{Wikipedia books|Apple Inc.}}
{{Portal box|Apple Inc.|Computer Science|Design}}
{{Clear}}
External links
{{Commons|Apple Macintosh}}
{{Portal box|Apple Inc.}}
{{Apple}}
{{Apple hardware before 1998}}
{{Apple hardware since 1998}}
{{Mac_OS History}}
{{Mac OS}}