Macintosh Computers
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Introduction
Macintosh computers are a product of Apple computers. Apple computers were once the largest "minicomputer" manufacturer in the world. One of the founders, a man named Steve Jobs, aquired a graphical user interface (or GUI) opperating system from the xerox corperation. After modifying the "OS" and streamlineing it signifiganly, it was innitally intended for release on a computer named the Lisa (after Job's daughter). The Lisa was revolutionary for it's time, but never saw full production. Apple scraped the Lisa and released a modified Lisa and called it the Macintosh. Dispite being technically inferior to the Lisa, the Macintosh was a revolutionary machine. Many computer users were frightened by the ease of use the Macintosh was able to deliver. Many computer profesionals (which there wern't many at the time) felt that their jobs would be threatend and took an instant dislike to the Macintosh. However easy the "Mac" was, it has always been expensive making it inaccessable to the average computer buyer. Although usually remaining profitable, the platform was never universaly accepted. However, oddly the Macintosh has the highest loyalty among computer buyers over any other hardware manufacturer. During the late 1980's and early 1990's the platform stagnated and tried to sell itself as a high end PC and failed. (Oddly, although the Mac is a PC, it is never considered to be so, it is always a Mac.) Later Steve Jobs returned as a temporary CEO and gave the company back it's feel of a revolutionary machine by cosmetic upgrades and adopting some new hardware standards such as USB and FireWire. At the time of this writing, the Mac OS recived it's first ground up rebuild, but still remains rooted in the Xerox GUI. Will Apple truely become revolutionary again, or will it's compatition catch up with it. Only someone who reads this entry ten years from now will be able to answer that.
Early Innovations
3.5 in Floppy
SCSI interface
Universal control interface
Insanely Great
1976-1981
The major players in Apple Computers were Steven Wozniak and Steven Jobs. Wozniak designed the origenal Apple I and Jobs provieded the drive to sell the computer as a commercial venture. However the Apple didn't do well until the release of the Apple II, the first computer to come in a plastic case as we see computers today. In addition to being one of the most advanced personal computers, the Apple II was comparitively inexpensive. When the Apple III was released, sales did not go well. In order to run the already prolific Apple II software, an emulator needed to be run in a program called S.O.S. (sofisticated opperating system) not a good name for any piece of software. Although probably the most powerful 8bit system ever built, the case was poorly designed. So much so that it did not allow proper cooling and the motherboard would warp and cause chips to become unseated. There are reports of Apple technical support instructing customers to litterally pick the system a few inches off the desk and drop it to reseat the chips. Apple corrected the problems in latter versions, but IBM's personal computer had begun to supplant Apple.
In 1979 Steve Jobs made his historic trip to Xerox PARC. He and several others began to develop the Lisa. Jobs was deemed to be a poor project manager by Apple's president Mike Markkula and was taken off the project.
In 1981 Steve Wozniak was injured in a plane crash, and Jobs took over as chairman.
1981-1983
Between 1982-83 the Lisa was released and did poorly due to high cost. However the machine was astonishing at the time. With one meg of ram, and a ten meg hard drive, a 3.5 in floppy instead of a 5 in, and a modular design that would allow for easy upgrades.
Jobs began work on the Macintosh and in 1984 was released causing the death of the Lisa line. The Macintosh opperating system was so revolutionary that many argue IBM compatables only began to catch up with Windows 95 better than ten years later.
Job's persuaded John Scully of Pepsi-Cola to become president of Apple in 83.
1983-1985
Scully did not understand the computer industry. He and Jobs fought frequently.
On January 22nd 1984 during the third quarter of the super bowl, Apple introduced the Mac to the world. Innitally the Mac did very well, but one of the Lisa's features that the Mac did not have caused sales to suffer shortly after. Small amounts of ram and the lack of hard drive support caused many to loose interest in the platform.
In 1985 Jobs attempted a Coup to take over Scully's position. The board of directors sided unanimously with Scully and Jobs resigned.
1985-1993
Under Scully, Apple was forced to lay off a fifth of it's work force,and the company posted it's first quarterly loss. Confidance in Scully quickly eroded.
At the same time Windows 1.0 was released. In a long string of battles Bill Gates eventually signed an agreement that Microsoft would not use Mac technology in Windows 1.0. There was however, no restriction on future versions of Windows opperating systems, an oversight that would cost Apple it's exclusive rights to it's opperating system.
The introduction of the Laserwriter brought The Mac out of the hole by being the first affordable Laser printer. In addition, Pagemaker was introduced, the first ever desktop publishing program ever. The combanation of these two made the Mac the standard for desktop publishing. It seemed that it would be clear sailing for the Mac. However by 1990 the market was being flooded by PC clones. This brought about questions to licence the Mac OS, or even port the system over to intel based machines. At the time the plan might have worked, but Michael Spindler, the new CEO of Apple said it's "too late to license".
In 1991 Apple introduced the Powerbook, and in August 1993 released the Newton PDA the first ever of it's kind. Although the poor handwriting recognition of the first models is often blamed for the platform failing, the biggest complaint was that it was too expensive. (The less capable PalmPilot succeded not because of better hand writing recognition, but lower price.)
In 1993 Scully was removed as CEO and Spindler was put in his place.
1993-1996
Spindler did not do well. Many people did not like him and he didn't try to get approval. However during Spindler's term, the PowerPc was introduced. The chips were developed by IBM and Motorola. Some reacted with horror that IBM would be involved in anything Apple did and saw it as the beguining of the end, (there have been a lot of beginning of the ends for apple).
The processors were however very fast, and were able to exceed the speeds of Intel's processors.
Spindler also released a restricted licence for the Mac OS and a few companies beguan building Mac clones.
In 1995 Apple got into an odd practice. It was reciving more orders than it could fill. And even odder it seemed that this was also true of some of the companies Apple worked with. You couldn't buy a Mac if you wanted to. To further compound the situation, Windows released Windows 95, the first real threat to the Mac OS.
Apple failed to make a profit at the end of 1995 and in 96 Spindler was asked to resign and was replaced by Gil Amelio.
1996-1997
Dispite working very hard to make Apple profitable, Amelio was largely unsuccessful. One thing that Amelio did was to keep developers and customers better informed about the day to day affairs of the company. Apple bobbed in and out of profitability and at the very least Amelio reduced Apple's losses by a significant degree.
In 1996 Apple purchased Steve Jobs' company called NeXT. NeXTstep was to be the basis for Apple's new opperating system dubbed Rapsody which was intended for release in 1998.
In July 1997 Gil Amelio resigned following another quarterly loss. Many thought that Amelio had done the best he could for the company. No one took Amelio's place as CEO. Steve Jobs was given an "expanded role" as a interm CEO.
More to come!
Macintosh computers are a product of Apple computers. Apple computers were once the largest "minicomputer" manufacturer in the world. One of the founders, a man named Steve Jobs, aquired a graphical user interface (or GUI) opperating system from the xerox corperation. After modifying the "OS" and streamlineing it signifiganly, it was innitally intended for release on a computer named the Lisa (after Job's daughter). The Lisa was revolutionary for it's time, but never saw full production. Apple scraped the Lisa and released a modified Lisa and called it the Macintosh. Dispite being technically inferior to the Lisa, the Macintosh was a revolutionary machine. Many computer users were frightened by the ease of use the Macintosh was able to deliver. Many computer profesionals (which there wern't many at the time) felt that their jobs would be threatend and took an instant dislike to the Macintosh. However easy the "Mac" was, it has always been expensive making it inaccessable to the average computer buyer. Although usually remaining profitable, the platform was never universaly accepted. However, oddly the Macintosh has the highest loyalty among computer buyers over any other hardware manufacturer. During the late 1980's and early 1990's the platform stagnated and tried to sell itself as a high end PC and failed. (Oddly, although the Mac is a PC, it is never considered to be so, it is always a Mac.) Later Steve Jobs returned as a temporary CEO and gave the company back it's feel of a revolutionary machine by cosmetic upgrades and adopting some new hardware standards such as USB and FireWire. At the time of this writing, the Mac OS recived it's first ground up rebuild, but still remains rooted in the Xerox GUI. Will Apple truely become revolutionary again, or will it's compatition catch up with it. Only someone who reads this entry ten years from now will be able to answer that.
Early Innovations
3.5 in Floppy
SCSI interface
Universal control interface
Insanely Great
1976-1981
The major players in Apple Computers were Steven Wozniak and Steven Jobs. Wozniak designed the origenal Apple I and Jobs provieded the drive to sell the computer as a commercial venture. However the Apple didn't do well until the release of the Apple II, the first computer to come in a plastic case as we see computers today. In addition to being one of the most advanced personal computers, the Apple II was comparitively inexpensive. When the Apple III was released, sales did not go well. In order to run the already prolific Apple II software, an emulator needed to be run in a program called S.O.S. (sofisticated opperating system) not a good name for any piece of software. Although probably the most powerful 8bit system ever built, the case was poorly designed. So much so that it did not allow proper cooling and the motherboard would warp and cause chips to become unseated. There are reports of Apple technical support instructing customers to litterally pick the system a few inches off the desk and drop it to reseat the chips. Apple corrected the problems in latter versions, but IBM's personal computer had begun to supplant Apple.
In 1979 Steve Jobs made his historic trip to Xerox PARC. He and several others began to develop the Lisa. Jobs was deemed to be a poor project manager by Apple's president Mike Markkula and was taken off the project.
In 1981 Steve Wozniak was injured in a plane crash, and Jobs took over as chairman.
1981-1983
Between 1982-83 the Lisa was released and did poorly due to high cost. However the machine was astonishing at the time. With one meg of ram, and a ten meg hard drive, a 3.5 in floppy instead of a 5 in, and a modular design that would allow for easy upgrades.
Jobs began work on the Macintosh and in 1984 was released causing the death of the Lisa line. The Macintosh opperating system was so revolutionary that many argue IBM compatables only began to catch up with Windows 95 better than ten years later.
Job's persuaded John Scully of Pepsi-Cola to become president of Apple in 83.
1983-1985
Scully did not understand the computer industry. He and Jobs fought frequently.
On January 22nd 1984 during the third quarter of the super bowl, Apple introduced the Mac to the world. Innitally the Mac did very well, but one of the Lisa's features that the Mac did not have caused sales to suffer shortly after. Small amounts of ram and the lack of hard drive support caused many to loose interest in the platform.
In 1985 Jobs attempted a Coup to take over Scully's position. The board of directors sided unanimously with Scully and Jobs resigned.
1985-1993
Under Scully, Apple was forced to lay off a fifth of it's work force,and the company posted it's first quarterly loss. Confidance in Scully quickly eroded.
At the same time Windows 1.0 was released. In a long string of battles Bill Gates eventually signed an agreement that Microsoft would not use Mac technology in Windows 1.0. There was however, no restriction on future versions of Windows opperating systems, an oversight that would cost Apple it's exclusive rights to it's opperating system.
The introduction of the Laserwriter brought The Mac out of the hole by being the first affordable Laser printer. In addition, Pagemaker was introduced, the first ever desktop publishing program ever. The combanation of these two made the Mac the standard for desktop publishing. It seemed that it would be clear sailing for the Mac. However by 1990 the market was being flooded by PC clones. This brought about questions to licence the Mac OS, or even port the system over to intel based machines. At the time the plan might have worked, but Michael Spindler, the new CEO of Apple said it's "too late to license".
In 1991 Apple introduced the Powerbook, and in August 1993 released the Newton PDA the first ever of it's kind. Although the poor handwriting recognition of the first models is often blamed for the platform failing, the biggest complaint was that it was too expensive. (The less capable PalmPilot succeded not because of better hand writing recognition, but lower price.)
In 1993 Scully was removed as CEO and Spindler was put in his place.
1993-1996
Spindler did not do well. Many people did not like him and he didn't try to get approval. However during Spindler's term, the PowerPc was introduced. The chips were developed by IBM and Motorola. Some reacted with horror that IBM would be involved in anything Apple did and saw it as the beguining of the end, (there have been a lot of beginning of the ends for apple).
The processors were however very fast, and were able to exceed the speeds of Intel's processors.
Spindler also released a restricted licence for the Mac OS and a few companies beguan building Mac clones.
In 1995 Apple got into an odd practice. It was reciving more orders than it could fill. And even odder it seemed that this was also true of some of the companies Apple worked with. You couldn't buy a Mac if you wanted to. To further compound the situation, Windows released Windows 95, the first real threat to the Mac OS.
Apple failed to make a profit at the end of 1995 and in 96 Spindler was asked to resign and was replaced by Gil Amelio.
1996-1997
Dispite working very hard to make Apple profitable, Amelio was largely unsuccessful. One thing that Amelio did was to keep developers and customers better informed about the day to day affairs of the company. Apple bobbed in and out of profitability and at the very least Amelio reduced Apple's losses by a significant degree.
In 1996 Apple purchased Steve Jobs' company called NeXT. NeXTstep was to be the basis for Apple's new opperating system dubbed Rapsody which was intended for release in 1998.
In July 1997 Gil Amelio resigned following another quarterly loss. Many thought that Amelio had done the best he could for the company. No one took Amelio's place as CEO. Steve Jobs was given an "expanded role" as a interm CEO.
More to come!
