Power Macintosh
Encyclopedia
Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, was a line of Apple Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

 workstation
Workstation
A 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...

-class personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

s based on various models of PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

 microprocessor
Microprocessor
A 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...

s that were developed, marketed, and supported by Apple Inc. from March 1994 until August 2006. The first models were the Power Macintosh 6100
Power Macintosh 6100
The Power Macintosh 6100 was Apple Computer's first computer to use the new PowerPC RISC type processor created by IBM and Motorola. It came in the Centris 610's "pizza box" low-profile case, and superseded the Quadra series that used Motorola's 68040 processor, Apple's previous high end...

, 7100
Power Macintosh 7100
The Power Macintosh 7100 was a mid-range Apple Macintosh personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from March 1994 to January 1996. The PowerMac 7100 was faster and more expandable than the Power Macintosh 6100, and was a part of the original Power Macintosh line...

, and 8100
Power Macintosh 8100
The Power Macintosh 8100 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers...

, which offered speeds ranging from 60 to 110 MHz. These machines replaced Apple's Quadra
Macintosh Quadra
The 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...

 series of personal computers, and were housed in cases very similar to systems sold by Apple up to that point. The Power Mac went on to become the mainstay of Apple's top-end offerings for twelve years, through a succession of case designs, four major generations of PowerPC chips, and a great deal of press coverage, design accolades, and technical controversy. In August 2006, the Power Mac's retirement was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference
Worldwide Developers Conference
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is a conference held annually in California by Apple Inc. The conference is primarily used by Apple to showcase its new software and technologies for developers, as well as offering hands-on labs and feedback sessions...

 by Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven 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...

 and Phil Schiller, making way for its Intel-based replacement, the Mac Pro
Mac Pro
The 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...

.

Old World ROM

  • Power Macintosh 4400
    Power Macintosh 4400
    The Power Macintosh 4400 was a mid-to-high-end Macintosh personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1996 until 1998...

    /160, 200 (PC)
  • Power Macintosh 5200/75 LC
  • Power Macintosh 5260/100, 120
  • Power Macintosh 5300/100 LC
  • Power Macintosh 5400/120, 180, 200
  • Power Macintosh 5500/225, 250
  • Power Macintosh 6100
    Power Macintosh 6100
    The Power Macintosh 6100 was Apple Computer's first computer to use the new PowerPC RISC type processor created by IBM and Motorola. It came in the Centris 610's "pizza box" low-profile case, and superseded the Quadra series that used Motorola's 68040 processor, Apple's previous high end...

    /60 (PC), 60AV, 66 (PC), 66AV
  • Power Macintosh 6200
    Power Macintosh 6200
    The Power Macintosh 6200 is a series of mid-range personal computers that are a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh and Macintosh Performa series of Macintosh computers...

    /75
  • Power Macintosh 6300/120
  • Power Macintosh 6400/180, 200
  • Power Macintosh 6500/225, 250, 275, 300
  • Power Macintosh 7100
    Power Macintosh 7100
    The Power Macintosh 7100 was a mid-range Apple Macintosh personal computer that was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from March 1994 to January 1996. The PowerMac 7100 was faster and more expandable than the Power Macintosh 6100, and was a part of the original Power Macintosh line...

    /66, 66AV, 80, 80AV
  • Power Macintosh 7200
    Power Macintosh 7200
    The Power Macintosh 7200 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers. It was introduced in August 1995 as a successor to the Power Macintosh 7100, and was discontinued in favor of the Power Macintosh 7300 in February 1997...

    /75, 90, 120 (PC), 200 (PC)
  • Power Macintosh 7300
    Power Macintosh 7300
    The Power Macintosh 7300 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers...

    /166, 180 (PC), 200
  • Power Macintosh 7500
    Power Macintosh 7500
    The Power Macintosh 7500 was one of the first PCI capable Macs manufactured by Apple Computer. It was released alongside the Power Macintosh 7200, and the Power Macintosh 8500 in October 1995. The 7500 had a PowerPC 601 processor rated at 100 MHz that was replaceable via a daughtercard...

    /100
  • Power Macintosh 7600
    Power Macintosh 7600
    The Power Macintosh 7600 was a PowerPC 604 based desktop computer sold by Apple in three speeds between April 1996 and November 1997. The 7600 was essentially a Power Macintosh 7500 with a different CPU card, the change in model number occurring because of the move from the 7500's PPC601 to the...

    /120, 132, 200
  • Power Macintosh 8100
    Power Macintosh 8100
    The Power Macintosh 8100 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers...

    /80, 80AV, 100, 100AV, 110, 110AV
  • Power Macintosh 8115/110
  • Power Macintosh 8200/100, 120
  • Power Macintosh 8500
    Power Macintosh 8500
    The Power Macintosh 8500 was a high-end Macintosh personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1995 until 1997. Billed as a high-end graphics computer, the Power Macintosh 8500 was also the first Macintosh to ship with a replaceable daughtercard...

    /120, 132, 150, 180
  • Power Macintosh 8515/120
  • Power Macintosh 8600
    Power Macintosh 8600
    The Power Macintosh 8600 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers. It was introduced at a processor speed of 200 MHz in February 1997 alongside the Power Macintosh 7300 and the Power Macintosh 9600. It replaced the Power Macintosh...

    /200, 250, 300
  • Power Macintosh 9500
    Power Macintosh 9500
    The Power Macintosh 9500 was a high-end Macintosh personal computer which was designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from May 1995 until early 1997. It was powered by a PowerPC 604 processor, a second-generation PowerPC chip which was faster than the earlier PowerPC 601 chip...

    /120, 132, 150, 180MP, 200
  • Power Macintosh 9515/132
  • Power Macintosh 9600
    Power Macintosh 9600
    The Power Macintosh 9600 is a personal computer that is a part of Apple Computer's Power Macintosh series of Macintosh computers...

    /200, 200MP, 233, 300, 350
  • Power Macintosh G3 (beige)
    Power Macintosh G3
    The Power Macintosh G3, commonly called "beige G3s" or "platinum G3s" for the color of their cases, was a series of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from November 1997 to January 1999...

    /233, 266, 300, 333

New World ROM


The following are recent Power Mac lines based on the New World ROM
New World ROM
New World ROM computers are Macintosh models that do not use a Macintosh Toolbox ROM on the logic board. Due to Mac OS X not requiring the availability of the Toolbox, this allowed ROM sizes to shrink dramatically , and facilitated the use of Flash memory for system firmware instead of the now more...

.
  • Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White)
    Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White)
    The 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...

  • Power Mac G4
    Power Mac G4
    The Power Mac G4 was a series of personal computers that was designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple between 1999 and 2004. They used the PowerPC G4 series of microprocessors. They were heralded by Apple to be the first personal supercomputers, reaching speeds of 4 to 20 Gigaflops...

  • Power Mac G4 Cube
    Power Mac G4 Cube
    The 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...

  • Power Mac G5
    Power Mac G5
    The Power Mac G5 is Apple's marketing name for models of the Power Macintosh that contains the IBM PowerPC G5 CPU. The professional-grade computer was the most powerful in Apple's lineup when it was introduced, widely hailed as the first 64-bit PC, and was touted by Apple as the fastest personal...


Processor and software

The ROM
Read-only memory
Read-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...

 and Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac 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...

 operating system
Operating system
An 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...

 released with the new Power Mac machines included an Mac 68K emulator
Mac 68K emulator
The Mac 68K emulator was a software emulator built into all versions of the Mac OS for PowerPC. This emulator permitted the running of applications and system code that were originally written for the 680x0 based Macintosh models. The emulator was completely seamless for users, and reasonably...

 to enable programs written for Motorola 68k series CPUs, including nearly all prior Mac software, to run without changes. (A similar scheme is employed to run 68K software on modern x86 Alpha Microsystems
Alpha Microsystems
Alpha Microsystems is a computer company founded in 1977 by John French, Dick Wilcox and Bob Hitchcock. The first Alpha Micro computer was the S-100 AM-100, based upon the WD16 microprocessor chipset from Western Digital...

 machines.) As the Power Mac was originally intended to be a part of the high end of Apple's product line, for a number of years the company continued to offer less expensive 68k-based computers alongside the more expensive Power Mac lineup. However, for many of these so-called 68K transition Macs, Apple offered an upgrade path in the form of a PowerPC Macintosh Processor Upgrade Card
Macintosh Processor Upgrade Card
The generically named Macintosh Processor Upgrade Card was a central processing unit upgrade card sold by Apple Computer, designed for many 68040-powered LC and Performa model Macintoshes. The card contains a PowerPC 601 CPU and plugs into the 68040 CPU socket of the upgraded machine...

 and aggressively marketed it to assure a wary consumer of their investment. In April 1996, Apple discontinued the Macintosh LC 580 (released in 1995), the last remaining desktop model of the 68k-based Macintosh line. The PowerBook 190cs, the last 68k-based PowerBook, was discontinued in October 1996. All subsequent Macintosh computers would be based on PowerPC processors until 2006, when Apple switched to Intel processors.

Naming

All Power Macs prior to 1997 used PowerPC 60x-series processors, and 4-digit model numbers (e.g. Power Mac 8600). In 1997 the first third-generation ("G3") Power Macintosh was introduced, using the PowerPC 750 processor. From this model onward, Apple no longer used a numbering scheme to identify their Power Mac models, but instead referred to them by their PowerPC processor generation number (i.e. G3, G4, and G5). Later models based on the same generation of PowerPC processor relied on descriptive characteristics to differentiate them, e.g. the color scheme ("Power Macintosh G3 – Blue and White") or a technical feature of a particular model ("Power Mac G4 – Gigabit Ethernet"). This same identification scheme was used in the iMac
IMac
The 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....

, PowerBook
PowerBook
The 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...

, and iBook
IBook
The 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....

 lines of Macintosh computers.

The marketing name was changed from Power Macintosh to Power Mac with the introduction of the G4 models, meaning all G3 and earlier models are Power Macintoshes, while all G4 and G5 models are Power Macs. Not all Apple documentation follows this rule, but the vast majority does.

Usage

The Power Mac brand name was used for Apple's high-end tower style computers, targeted primarily at businesses and creative professionals, in differentiation to their more compact "iMac" line (intended for home use) and the "eMac" line (for the education markets). They were usually equipped with Apple's newest technologies, and commanded the highest prices among Apple desktop models. Some Power Mac G4 and G5 models were offered in dual-processor
Multiprocessing
Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor and/or the ability to allocate tasks between them...

 configurations.

Prior to the Power Mac name change, certain Power Macintosh models were otherwise identical to their lower-cost re-branded siblings sold as the Macintosh LC
Macintosh LC
The 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...

 and Macintosh Performa
Macintosh Performa
The 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...

, as well as the dedicated Apple Workgroup Server
Apple Workgroup Server
Apple Workgroup Server and, later, Macintosh Server, were the names given to selected models of Macintosh computers which were sold by Apple Computer with additional server software and sometimes bigger hard drives. Apart from that, they were mostly identical to computers out of Apple's...

 and Macintosh Server G3 & G4
Apple Workgroup Server
Apple Workgroup Server and, later, Macintosh Server, were the names given to selected models of Macintosh computers which were sold by Apple Computer with additional server software and sometimes bigger hard drives. Apart from that, they were mostly identical to computers out of Apple's...

 lines. Other past Macintosh lines which used PowerPC processors include the PowerBook 5300
PowerBook 5300
The PowerBook 5300 series was the first generation of PowerBook laptops manufactured by Apple Computer to use the PowerPC processor. Released in August 1995, these PowerBooks were notable for being the first to feature hot-swappable expansion modules for a variety of different units such as ZIP...

 and later models, iMac
IMac
The 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....

, iBook
IBook
The 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....

 and Xserve
Xserve
Xserve 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...

 as well as the Apple Network Server
Apple Network Server
The Apple Network Server was a short-lived line of PowerPC-based server computers manufactured by Apple Computer from February 1996 to April 1997, when it was discontinued due to very poor sales...

, which was not technically a Macintosh.

Successor

The Intel-based successor of the Power Mac is the Mac Pro
Mac Pro
The 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...

, in line with the renaming of Apple's professional notebooks from PowerBook
PowerBook
The 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...

 to MacBook Pro
MacBook Pro
The 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...

.
The successor to the All-In-One Power Macintosh models (5x00 series), the last of which was the Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One, was re-branded the iMac
IMac
The 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....

, which persisted through the Intel transition to the present.

Advertising and marketing

Apple introduced the Power Mac series of high-end personal computers aimed at businesses and creative professionals in 1994 with an advertising campaign
Advertising campaign
An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication...

 consisting of several television commercials and print ads. The television commercials used the slogan "The Future Is Better Than You Expected", featuring the first three Power Macintosh computers to showcase special features such as networking and MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-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...

 compatibility.

See also

  • List of Macintosh models grouped by CPU type
  • Mac Pro
    Mac Pro
    The 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...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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