From the beginning, when Steve Wozniak chose the 6502 microprocessor
for the original Apple computer, Apple has been the "think different"
computer company. In fact, it was the Apple II series of computers with
its 8 expansion slots that was the model IBM copied when it entered the PC market
in Sept. 1981.
Like the Apple II, the IBM 5150 PC was built from off-the-shelf
components. It had two full sized drive bays for 160 KB floppy drives,
five 8-bit expansion slots, and had room for 256 KB of memory on the
system board. Like the Apple II, it had a very primitive speaker and a
cassette tape interface: If you wanted to use a floppy drive, a serial
port, or a parallel port, you had to add a card.
Unlike the Apple II, the IBM PC had no built-in video. You could
choose from a crisp text display on a green screen monitor or a 4-color
320 x 200 CGA display - or both, if you were so inclined and had the
budget. You even had your choice of operating systems: The UCSD
P-system, CP/M-86 from industry leading Digital Research, and PC-DOS, a
less costly CP/M copycat from Microsoft, a company known primarily for
their version of the BASIC programming language (standard on most
personal computers) and games.
Because IBM used off-the-shelf parts and licensed PC-DOS from
Microsoft nonexclusively, the way was paved for the PC compatibles -
and the world of Windows as we know it today.
What if, after developing the Macintosh and after the departure of
the two Steves, Apple had followed the conventions of the PC clone
industry? How different would the Macintosh be today?
680x0 Forever
Perhaps the biggest difference is that Apple never would have
switched to Intel CPUs - or had a hand in creating the PowerPC
architecture with IBM and Motorola. Just as the PC industry has never
abandoned the x86 architecture, today's Macs would be running 2.0 GHz
dual-core Freestyle 680150 Extreme CPUs.
There would have been no PowerPC, no G4, and no switch to Intel.
Apple would have embraced the 68060 in 1992 - and been stuck at 450 MHz
in 1999 as Motorola was unable to produce 680100 CPUs at 500 MHz in
quantity. And today's Mac Pro would have two dual-core CPUs at 2.0 GHz,
perhaps with a 2.33 GHz option for power users.
System 6 Forever
And since Macs would still be using the same family of CPUs, they
would retain compatibility with the 24-bit System 6 operating system
forever. Just as Windows lets you emulate DOS, even the most modern Mac
would include a 24-bit compatibility mode for System 6 software.
Apple would guard its proprietary designs, never licensing the Mac
operating system to cloners. And there would have been no change from
calling it System 7.5.5 to Mac OS 7.6. And no silly jump from 7.6.1 to
8.0 just to stick it to the cloners.
What we call Mac OS 8.1 would have been released as System 97, and
our Mac OS 9 would have been called System 2000 on its release in
October 1999. There would be no NeXT acquisition and no OS X, but
we'd still have cats: With System 2003 sounding terrible, they'd
probably call it System 10 "Jaguar" or "Panther", followed by System 11
"Tiger in 2005 and System 12 "Leopard" in 2008.
And every one of them would include System 6 mode for legacy
software.
NuBus Forever
And just as every move to a new expansion bus in the PC world saw
the creation of some systems supporting both the new and old standards,
when Apple decided to adopt the industry standard PCI bus in 1995, it
would have produced motherboards with one or two NuBus slots in
addition to the "new" PCI slots. It would be more than five years
before Apple dropped the legacy NuBus slot, as there would always be a
few cards that never made the transition to PCI.
You can't abandon those legacy expansion cards!
Floppy Drives Forever
Apple never would have bought NeXT and brought Steve Jobs back, so
there never would have been an iMac - or a desktop Mac without a
built-in 3.5" floppy drive. After all, you need a way to install that
legacy System 6 software and drivers for those legacy NuBus cards!
SCSI Forever
With no iMac, there would be no reason to abandon the legacy SCSI
port found on the back of practically every Mac desktop and notebook
computer since 1986. It would still be there today, supporting ancient
hard drives, scanners, tape drives, oddball printers, and other legacy
hardware.
But it wouldn't be alone on the back of the Mac. Although we'd have
FireWire and USB 2.0 support by now, there would also be a legacy ADB
port and a legacy AppleTalk/printer port. Gotta retain compatibility
with the Extended Keyboard and those pre-ethernet LaserWriters!
Beige Boxes
There would be no iMacs, no all-in-one Macs at all. And there would
be no Mac mini, as a plethora of expansion slots and drive bays are way
too important to successfully marketing a computer. Not that today's
Macs would look like today's PCs - they'd still be using the "Snow
White" design theme introduced with the Mac II, and today's Macs would
be squarish and made of beige plastic.
There would be no slot-loading drives on notebooks, let alone nice
covers to hide optical drives. Everything would be made with the lowest
cost quality components; no need to spend extra money on
aesthetics.
And let's not forget the greatest feature of modern Windows PCs:
Those ugly multislot memory card readers would have made their way to
the front of Macs years ago, along with poorly placed USB ports nearby.
(How many of you have struggled with slipping a flash drive into a USB
port so close to the floor that you could hardly position it
correctly?)
Windows Compatibility
Just as Apple encouraged AST to produce DOS cards for the Mac in
1987 and released its own Macs with DOS cards a few years later,
Windows PCs on a card would be a fully supported option today. Just
imagine dropping a 3.0 GHz dual Core 2 Duo card into your 2.0 GHz Mac
Pro Extreme!
Software emulation would also be an option - and every bit as
sluggish as we remember from the days of SoftPC and Virtual PC.
Owning Its Niche
In terms of ports, expansion, features, and legacy support, the Macs
would hold a back seat to no one. Which, of course, means that ATI and
Nvidia wouldn't be investing a lot of money in making graphics cards
that worked with the oddball Freestyle 680x0 family of CPUs and Apple's
proprietary operating system.
3D gaming on the Mac? What 3D gaming?
But the Mac would absolutely own the publishing world and be the
first choice of musicians both for scoring music and mastering it. We'd
still be debating PageMaker vs. Quark XPress, the same music
transcription programs would exist, and GarageBand would be every bit
as successful as it is today.
A 680x0-based Apple could be big in the video realm as well. After
all, it was Motorola which created AltiVec, the engine that gave the
Mac a jump start into digital video editing.
But most of all Apple would be a nice player if it had thought like
a PC company, had invested too much in backward compatibility and
legacy support, and had refused to change when the world left its CPU
family behind. And it would be lucky to sell 2 million computers a
year, let alone more than that in a single quarter.
Thank you, Apple, for taking risks and being innovative. They you
for thinking different!
