When the Apple Macintosh debuted in January 1984, it revolutionized personal computing with its intuitive graphical user interface and accessible creative tools. Among these, MacPaint stood out as a groundbreaking raster graphics editor. It empowered users to create digital art with unprecedented ease. Its journey from LisaGraf to QuickDraw to MacSketch, culminating in the iconic […]
Category Archives: Mac History
Precisely as the headline sounds, the Apple Silicon iMac almost ended up having this same design cue as the intel iMacs. First shared by Kosutami on X and first reported by 9to5Mac (as well as MacWorld), are some pictures from before the EVT stage of the M1 iMac. “Fun fact: before the EVT Stage development […]
Elefont was the initial name for the bitmap typeface designed by Susan Kare in 1983 for the Apple Macintosh’s operating system. It was later renamed Chicago after Steve Jobs suggested naming fonts after “world-class cities” rather than suburban Philadelphia train stops, which Kare and her colleague Andy Hertzfeld had initially used. The name “Elefont” was […]
This is an Apple-IBM DCTA-24090, a 4 GB internal hard drive that shipped with the PowerBook G3 WallStreet. I pulled it out of the ‘Book last week to test it with the 64 GB KingSpec SSD – the HDD was noisy and slow. See: SSD in a PowerBook: KingSpec PATA PA25-64 SSD.. yay or nay […]
Four years ago today, the world saw the first Apple Silicon Mac to come out after the initial set of three shipped alongside the transition to Apple Silicon. While the M1 Mac mini gets your foot in the door and lets you “BYOB”, some were looking for that familiar all-in-one which also provides a great […]
Camino is a port of Netscape specifically to Mac OS X. It began in late 2001 when Mike Pinkerton and Vidur Apparao launched a proof-of-concept project to embed Netscape’s Gecko rendering engine in a Cocoa application. Cocoa is Apple’s native object-oriented application programming interface (API) for Mac OS X and is rooted in NeXTstep, which […]
The Growing Windows Threat: Jean Louis Gassée, now the head of product development at Apple, predicted that Apple would maintain its lead in the personal computing world indefinitely. He oversaw the introduction of the critically acclaimed Mac IIci and System 7 (and also several flops) and felt that no company would be able to wrest […]
1986 marked the replacement of Mike Murray as head of marketing with Jean-Louis Gassée. Gassée started Apple’s French division and drove it in a few years to become one of the most successful divisions in Apple. Unlike Steve Jobs’ vision of an information appliance, Gassée hoped that the Macintosh would turn into an open platform […]
Even with the fabulous press reception given to the Macintosh upon its release (see my previous article), it did not sell well. There were a number of reasons for that.
There are three different business models in the PC, smartphone, and tablet industries. The most widely used model is for one company to make the operating system and license it to a host of hardware manufacturers. This has given us the Windows market where no matter how badly PC makers do, Microsoft remains profitable.
The Color Classic has been lauded by many Mac faithful as what the original Macintosh should have been. The computer was made available to the general public on February 10, 1993, and was received well by reviewers.
Prior to 2006, PowerBook was consistently one of the most respected and lusted after brands in the portable computing market.
While most early Mac clones depended on Macintosh ROMs to function, NuTek spent four years reverse engineering the ROMs in a clean room in its quest to produce a legal Mac clone. It didn’t exactly succeed.
One of the less well known Mac clone lines, MaxxBoxx was released in Germany in July 1997 to fill the needs of users with very demanding applications.
By the early 1990s, the Macintosh was moving away from its black and white roots and into the world of full color. The last of the compact black and white screen Macs, the Classic II, ceased production in 1992. A few years after that, Apple closed out the last production run of grayscale PowerBooks. With […]
The development of MacPaint 2.0 changed the way the average computer user used his or her machine for all time. Instead of just having a typewriter or number crunching machine, the Macintosh could do work in the visual area as well
Although it has been a while in terms of the life span of the typical child growing up in the computer age, the year 1984 was a highlight. Besides the fact that 1984 was the year the first Macintosh was introduced, the year marked a change in the way computers were used.
2008: Has it really been five years since Apple introduced the Power Mac G5? Yes, and the new enclosure introduced on June 23, 2003, lives on as the housing of the Mac Pro.
2005: With the release of the iMac G5 with Front Row earlier this month, many analysts have hailed Apple’s entry into the living room. However, Apple actually released its first Mac with a remote control in 1993, the Macintosh TV.
Andy Hertzfeld was a key member of the Macintosh development team. He was the Software Wizard behind much of the Mac’s built-in ROM code and the user interface. His goal is to make computers easier and more fun to use. After leaving Apple, Hertzfeld helped co-found three companies: Radius, General Magic, and Eazel. He is […]
February 10, 1993 was one of the biggest days in Mac history. Apple introduced six new models at once.
After releasing the industry’s most radically fresh desktop design and the most popular computer in 1998, what do you do for an encore?
In 1999, I wrote, “Was it only last year that Apple went from beleaguered to industry darling? Released the amazing iMac? Ran a profit every quarter?”
Can you say beleaguered? That became the word most associated with Apple in 1997.
After 12 years making Macs using the Motorola 680×0 family of processors (and one year with Lisa before that), Apple discontinued that last 680×0-based Mac in 1996, marking the end of the Vintage Mac era.
In early 1995, Apple announced that it had shipped one million Power Macs within one year of their introduction, showing an overwhelming acceptance of the new technology.
1994 marked the 10th anniversary of the Macintosh, and in an unexpected development, Apple introduced its first DOS products that year.
Hold on to your hat: 1993 was the wildest year for model introductions in Apple’s history. Apple also passed the 10 million Mac mark in February 1993.
Apple addressed some little things with System 7.1, introduced in 1992. The biggest innovation was putting a Fonts folder inside the System Folder. An entire generation of Mac users has now grown up never having had to move fonts to or from the System file using Font/DA Mover.
After introducing the inexpensive Classic and LC, the workhorse IIsi, and the wicked fast IIfx in 1990, what could Apple do for an encore?
In March 1990, Apple extended its warranty from 90 days to a full year, finally bringing it to parity with the majority of the computer industry.
In January 1989 – January has always been one of Apple’s favorite months for new product releases – Apple unveiled the best ever compact Mac with a 9″ b&w display, the Macintosh SE/30.
1988 was not a year of breakthroughs for Apple. It was a year of evolution.
March 1987 was a milestone month for Apple: Apple built the one-millionth Macintosh, AppleShare file server software was introduced, the Mac SE and Mac II were introduced, ADB came to the Mac, and platinum replaced beige as the color for all new Mac gear.
After a whole year without a new model (unless you count repackaging the Lisa 2 as the Macintosh XL), Apple announced the Macintosh Plus, the first expandable Macintosh, on January 16, 1986.