A quarter of a century ago today, Apple introduced a brand new operating system to the world as a successor to Mac OS 9, the press release for this is still up on Apple’s website to this day. It replaced the base code and entire underlying system which all Mac OS versions were previously based […]
Category Archives: Apple History
Back in the days of late PowerPC, Apple released a DTK which looked like a Power Mac G5 on the outside, but was actually a modified Intel Pentium 4 machine. Fast forward to the Apple Silicon transition, Apple released another one to developers on a loan-basis, with an A12Z chip in it. If you were […]
Once upon a time (for those somewhat new to the Mac platform), there was this innovative connection that showed up in the late 1990s – early 00s called FireWire that came around shortly after the advent of USB (at least in terms of the consumer world – FireWire had been in development since the mid […]
Prior to the September 1986 introduction of the Apple IIGS, every Apple II computer ran an 8-bit 1 MHz 6502 processor, used 5-1/4″ floppy disks, had a very limited color palette, and sound was nothing to write home about. The Apple IIGS changed all of that.
The Apple II family was known for its expansion options – eight slots for adding capabilities. Inevitably one held a floppy controller, typically one held a parallel printer card, and another might have a serial card for a modem or printer. Some bought Microsoft’s Z-80 SoftCard to run CP/M. But for most users, most slots remained empty.
The Apple II and II Plus had been a runaway success for Apple, establishing it in the home, the school, and, thanks to VisiCalc, the workplace. Even though that was true, these models had some shortcomings that were addressed when the Apple IIe was introduced in January 1983.
Although the Apple 1, introduced in April 1976, had been a big success among the hobbyist crowd, people who didn’t mind assembling their own computer and designing a case for it, it was not part of the ready-to-go personal computer revolution of the late 1970s. That’s where the Apple II comes in.
Apple has a very impressive track record. It is the only personal computer company to have survived from the early days of 8-bit computing while once mighty Commodore, Radio Shack, and Atari no longer exist or long ago stopped making personal computers.
The first computer worthy of the name “computer” was produced more than 60 years ago. It was a monstrous machine, covering more than 136 square meters and used 18,000 vacuum tubes (the predecessors to the transistor). It was capable of computing the sum of 5,000 numbers ten digits in length per second. It’s name was ENIAC, […]
In 1992, Apple decided that the education and design markets weren’t enough – it wanted to target mass market consumers. Rather than develop new computers for this market, Apple created a new brand and renamed three existing Macs as Performas.
I recently installed every version of Apple’s operating system that is compatible with the 1999 Blue & White G3 Power Mac – 11 major Mac operating systems: 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, and Mac OS X Server 1.2.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, computing made a great leap forward with the advent of 16-bit microcomputers like the Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST. The Apple II, introduced in 1978, was a phenomenally successful platform, eventually coming to possess a 20% share of the personal computer market in the US. But by […]
As a computer manufacturer, Apple gets a strangely distorted press. Its position as the only serious commercial competitor to Microsoft guarantees that every move the company makes is documented – and often distorted.
Realizing that the Apple II would not sustain Apple forever, the Sara project began. The main idea of Sara was to create a more powerful and capable Apple II. It would include 128 KB of RAM, an integrated floppy drive, and a high resolution display – 80 columns wide instead of the Apple II’s 40.
If you think the original Macintosh was an impressive piece of design and engineering, you may find Apple’s Lisa even more innovative.
For most Mac users, Apple’s Lisa isn’t even a footnote in Mac history. The $10,000 computer is rarely remembered as the Mac’s mother – and those who do remember it also tend to recall how Apple dumped thousands upon thousands of unsold Lisas in a Utah landfill when the computer was discontinued.
I ran across images of some Apple prototypes created during the early years of Macintosh design – things like a cube-shaped Mac, a MacBook notebook, and a table-like device among them.
2014 – If you were on the Mac Web in July 2007, you probably saw Fudder’s article, The Very First iPhone – or at least stories about the article or links to it. The mock-up (below) was created by Frog Design, built by Hertmut Esslinger, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the Apple IIc.
Apple made the biggest change in Macintosh history with the introduction of the Macintosh II and SE in 1987.
With the Motorola 680×0 architecture running out of steam and Motorola’s 88000 making haste slowly, Apple had to look a bit further afield for its next processor architecture. Here’s how IBM’s RISC project became the heart of the Mac.
John Sculley, who had once been hailed as Apple’s savior for huge sales increases and good PR (like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Steve Jobs rolled in one) had presided over the splintering of the product line and a sharp decline in market share. The same trends continued after Sculley was forced out, and the […]
2005.11.15 From the day of his appointment as Apple CEO in February 1996, Gil Amelio presided over an ailing company. After the near-disastrous reign of Michael Spindler, Amelio promised to change the corporate ethos of Apple.
Apple Corps was founded as a tax haven for the Beatles’ considerable cash reserves in January 1968. Apple Corps would finance a record label and other pet projects of the band members while also providing a “front” for their financial activities to reduce personal liability and taxes.
Apple had transformed from a small three man venture in the late 1970s into a huge, multinational corporation in the late 1980s. With these changes came troubles.
The first Apple proposal to move the Macintosh to Intel hardware did not begin with Mac OS X. It began in 1985, shortly after Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple. The project was quickly nixed by Apple’s management, but it would be revived several years later in a joint effort by Novell and Apple to port the […]
On January 24, 1984, Apple announced the Macintosh to its Board of Directors and to the world – and the computer world has never been the same.
Over the summer of 1997, Apple brought the era of authorized Macintosh clones to an end to keep Apple solvent.*
Apple became a household name in the third quarter of SuperBowl XVIII when it aired the enormously popular 1984 ad promoting the upcoming release of the Macintosh.
Well, hi there. As a new contributor to Low End Mac, I would just like to extend my hand and offer you the warmest of welcomes. I know a lot of you have been avid readers and followers of Low End Mac, and I don’t want to disappoint!
Jef Raskin founded the Macintosh project at Apple, which led to the development of the Apple Mac and the popularisation of the graphical user-interface. He was Apple employee #31 and left the Macintosh team in mid-1981 after Steve Jobs took over the project.
Michael Spindler was born during the last throes of Nazi Germany. The family was split up before Spindler was born, because his father was forced to work at a munitions plant. The absence of his father during his early childhood appeared to make Spindler even more motivated to prove himself. He excelled in school and […]
Apple started 1984 with a bang. The Macintosh was finished, and it was well received by the general public, largely due to a highly successful advertising campaign beginning with the 1984 ad.
Despite an enormous launch campaign, the Macintosh was a failure. Steve Jobs had predicted that Apple sell 500,000 Macs the first year, but by 1985.03.11 the company had sold only 10% of Jobs’ original prediction.
More than any other product from Apple, the iPod has changed the company and the world. Before its introduction, MP3 players were the realm of small companies with limited budgets that were unable to provide content. After the iPod, the entire industry has evolved and grown to the point where the largest computer companies in […]
In the months following Steve Jobs’ dramatic return to Apple on 1996.12.20, the press lost interest in the end of Apple’s eleven year interregnum. Instead, they were interested in Apple’s brand new build to order online store, a first for a major computer industry player, and (to Apple’s embarrassment) Umax’s updated S900 Mac clone that […]
