40 Years of Macintosh — A Mini Documentary

The Macintosh landed in 1984 to a maturing microcomputer market that was starting to become consolidated

IBM dominated on the high end with its mainframes and business machines

with clients on the scale of banks, Fortune 500 companies, and governments

With less than three years on the market with the IBM 5150, its first microcomputer

Big Blue was sucking the air out of the room. Household names like Commodore would never have a more successful

financial year. The diverse world of different platforms and operating systems was crumbling in favor of

IBM compatible machines or PC clones. These were easy to manufacture with off-the-shelf parts

but they were impossible to use without extensive technical training. The industry was begging

for an easy-to-use, friendly computer that anybody could just pick up, a computer that nobody else

was willing to invest in building, except for Apple. The Macintosh was a computer, but it wasn't an unapproachable machine like other computers

It was a desktop appliance, just like your telephone or your calculator

All the software on the Mac worked the same way. You pointed and clicked

The app windows had a title bar with a close button on the left. You could click the scroll bar to move around

If you ever didn't know what to do, you could read through the menu bar, always present on the top of the screen

It showed you the keyboard shortcuts, so you could learn those over time. Contrast this with any other PC, where launching a program took over the entire screen

There was no visual affordance for what features were available or what you could do

so you had to keep a manual open next to you at all times. The keyboard was the only form of input, but each program could have wildly different keyboard commands for every basic function

The fundamental difference is that on the Macintosh, the operating system was always there

running below the application to help you with whatever you were trying to do

As a computer, the Macintosh was a bit weird. The keyboard and mouse are all really chunky, but you can see the family resemblance

They've all been designed as one cohesive collection. The mouse is actually more comfortable to hold than you'd think

You're supposed to wrap your hand around the bottom with your pointer finger centered on the button

It's just as comfortable to use left-handed as it is right-handed. This is a motif that stuck over the ears, even as taste in design changed

The jobs insisted that the original Macintosh keyboard didn't have any arrow keys on it

so even for stuff like selecting text, users would learn to use the mouse instead

While arrow keys were added in with the Macintosh Plus, designers still made them as inconvenient to use as possible

by arranging all four of them in a straight line rather than the natural inverted T arrow shape

Thankfully, later in the 90s, they gave up on this dumb crusade

Revisions of the Macintosh were rushed out the door. The pinching point was obviously the small amount of memory it came with, only 128K

So later the same year, the Macintosh 512K quadrupled the amount of memory

And another year later, the Macintosh Plus doubled it again to one megabyte, and for the first time it was user expandable to four megabytes

Hard drives were still very expensive, so none of these computers came with any built-in

permanent storage. Out of the box, you were expected to boot the computer by inserting a floppy

disk that would take you to the finder. You then swapped it for a different floppy disk to launch an

application, swap it back and forth a few times as it loads. Then as you do your work, you swap in

a personal floppy disk where you save all your documents, swap back to the application floppy disk to

finish and quit, then you swap back with your finder floppy disk a few times to get back to the finder

Needless to say, external floppy disk drives were a very popular edition

The Apple 2 line was still the company's breadwinner for much of the 1980s

The IBM had taken over the business world and was encroaching on the home computer market

but the Apple 2E was untouchable in education. By the late 80s, the Macintosh was starting to find its footing

Price of memory was falling, applications were being written for it, on a customer base was starting to grow

A company called Microsoft, whose biggest claim to fame was writing the crude operating system that ran on those IBM PCs

They started making applications for the Macintosh, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel

They also had a version that ran on their own crude graphical environment called Windows, but nobody used that yet

While the Apple 2 hit its stride in education, the Macintosh catalyzed a new field of desktop publishing

with its high display its powerful new software Aldous Pagemaker and Cork Express and its ease of use made it the perfect fit for newsrooms big and small Even an expensive Macintosh was a drop in the bucket compared to the price of the

type-setting machines that preceded it. What would an even higher-end Macintosh be like

The Macintosh 2. This monster of a Mac came with the internal space for two floppy disk drives

or one floppy disk drive and one 40 megabyte hard drive, and six new bus expansion slots that could drive six big high-resolution color monitors simultaneously

It had a new 68020 processor that was twice as fast, and it had a new line of accessories that used ADB, Apple desktop bus

for plugging in printers, networking, mice, or keyboards. All of this came with a hefty

price tag, the computer alone was double the cost of the Macintosh Plus at $5,498. Its innovations

trickled back down over time. The Macintosh SE30 also had the ADB connector, a built-in hard

drive, a single expansion slot with an even faster 68030 processor, but in the familiar and cheaper

all-on-one form factor with a 9-inch black-and-white display. The Macintosh Classic was a paired-down

model that removed the expansion slot and retained the original 68K processor, but at the cheapest

price yet, only 99. In the 1980s, a portable computer meant one of two things. An all-in-one

computer, complete with a CRT display and floppy drives, weighing around 25 pounds without a battery

with a handle on the back for convenience. Or a tiny machine with a footprint no larger than

its own keyboard, an LCD matrix display that could show around four lines of text, very little

compute power, but some modicum of battery life. These machines don't have a built-in floppy

disk drive, so moving files on and off them is not easy. Apple briefly attempted to make

the best of both worlds, a full-size, desktop class, flat screen, portable computer with the

highly imaginative name Macintosh Portable. It was swiftly removed from. the market. Talk about a glow-up. Just two years later, Apple releases the Powerbook

and it gets the formula perfect. Hinge in the far back, so it folds like a book

the pointing device below the keyboard, so it's comfortable to use and you have a wrist-rest

with a backlit screen. Compared to modern laptops, the biggest anachronism is the fact that it

has a track ball instead of a track pad. And this was a hit product. The Powerbook is what Apple needed

to break into the business world. In the 90s, the Macintosh lineup starts to get out of hand

Apple replaces the compact Mac all-in-one lineup with a horrible abomination of design

the Macintosh LC-500 series. For reasons, no one remaining on this mortal plane of earth understands

Apple also sells identical computers under a different name the Macintosh Performa 500 series

At the high end, Max with the new 68040 chip were called Macintosh Quadra

except for the Macintosh LC-575, which also had a 68040 series chip, but wasn't called Quadra

And it was also called the Macintosh Performa 575. To end this confusion, Apple introduced a new line of mid-range computers

fittingly named Macintosh Centrist. Did I say end? No, it actually made it worse

These computers didn't replace anything else in the computer. lineup they only added to it. They also ran the same low-cost version of the 68040 that you could

buy on the LC line or the performer line, but all of the centrist computers were also sold under

the name Quadra to help understand, just look at this simple graph. Apple then transitioned from

the 68K processors to the new power PC chips that it developed in a joint venture with IBM and

Motorola. They called these new computers Power Macintosh. Would this be a clean break from the confusing naming conventions before

No, the numbers got longer and the names got worse. The range now started at the Macintosh Performa 5200, which was identical to the Power Macintosh 5200 LC

which was identical to the Power Macintosh 6200 in a different case

This only got more confusing as you add in the 7,000, 8,000, and 9,000 series Macintoshes

And that before we even touch the Macintosh clones That a story for another time Meanwhile Apple was dipping its toes and a personal electronics

PDAs, CD players, even digital cameras. All of these devices got the same design treatment

organic, smooth, flowing lines, black plastic that still looks surprisingly tasteful and modern to this day

The most notable of these scattered side projects was the Apple Newton

flat screen, stylus touch input displays were becoming just high resolution and cheap enough

to make a sort of handheld computer. You could write notes with handwriting recognition

check your calendar, keep an address book, and more. It was all made possible by this

experimental new processor called the arm chip, which was incredibly power efficient. You could

run the Newton unplugged for hours and hours at a time. Later models of the Newton, like the

message pad 2000 and the E-Mate 300 were actually really good, but ultimately it was a product made

six years too soon. Wi-Fi and modern touchscreens would have taken it to the next level

but the technology just wasn't on the table in the 90s. When Apple killed the Newton to focus on

reinventing the Macintosh, it pulled out of the Arm partnership as well. Arm would continue making

low power chips for things like cell phones and other integrated devices, small applications, but

But surely you could never just scale up one of these chips to power a full desktop computer, right

That'd be ridiculous. So Apple's hardware lineup was crumbling under its own weight, but don't worry, its software was too

Unable to put together a modern successor to Mac OS, its software was still being held back

by the technical limitations of 1984. You could run multiple applications at once, but only the active application could do anything

Everything in the background was frozen. App memory was poorly managed and it wasn't properly siloed or sandboxed

Any app could read the memory of any other app or the operating system itself

It was shaky, it was unreliable, and it was a house of cards

When any one app crashed, the entire operating system crashed. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was running on fumes

An entirely new Apple computer would have to be built from the ground up

new hardware, new software, new corporate culture, simultaneously with keeping their existing products on life support

The pressure was on for Apple's first big move after its change in management

And that came in the form of the IMac. There was a growing fervor that hit its peak in the late 90s

over this new thing called the internet. There was internet shopping, internet sports, internet newspapers

internet cartoons, internet chat, internet chat, internet radio, and the iMac was the internet Mac

Suddenly, a computer was more than just a complicated, expensive way of playing games or typing

letters or balancing your checkbook. A computer was what you used to get on the internet

and the iMac was the computer you wanted. Technically speaking, the iMac had a lot in common

with the power macintosh G3 that had arrived a year prior. The iMac wasn't unimpressed

computer. You could turn that into a cynical take about how all of Steve Jobs and Apple's successes

are down to marketing and design veneer. You wouldn't be the first to make that argument

But I think it means something more. It proves that people aren't interested in buying technology

People want to buy a product. And designing a good breakthrough product that changes the course

of design that shakes an entire industry takes just as much genius

Then came the Power Mac G3, with just as clever a design

No screws to take out or metal panels to remove. Just flip down this door, and you have, in seconds, access to the entire computer

Then came the iBook, an iMac to go. Using a new technology called Airport, based on some Wi-Fi engineering standard

you could use the internet from a laptop without any wires plugged in, no Ethernet cable

Leveraging technology from Next that Apple had acquired, the next-generation operating system

wouldn't be built on classic MacOS anymore. OS10 was a clean break

After years of developer previews, betas, and tests, MacOS 10 finally shipped in 2001

And every app had to be rewritten largely from the ground up

but this was a long-term investment that paid off because to this day every Apple product still runs on the same software foundation And by now Apple design studio was going crazy throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick What if you made a computer shaped like a sunflower What if everything was brushed metal What if he shrunk down the Power Mac G4 into an 8 inch cube What if you installed OS10 on a rack mountable server This couldn go on forever Apple had made its statement but now it was time for more practical designs to take over The Powerbook made its second big leap

Easing into the design that effectively holds to this day, an aluminum makeover, a widescreen 16 by 10 display

speaker grills to the left and right of the keyboard, a glass track pad that would continue to grow over time

and starting in 2006, a MagSafe connector. The Power Mac G5 adopted a serious and imposing aluminum case

In a taller and broader tower design, it had ample room for a big power supply

and even liquid cooling. The iMac G5 from a year later was able to cram the same chip

into a slim all in one case. But a crack was starting to show

The iMac G5 line never got as powerful a chip as the Power Mac G5

maxing out at 2.1 gigahertz, a big step down from 2.7. When it came to updating the Mac Mini

the PowerBook, and iBook, the G5 was simply a lost cause. Designing a low power machine

is always a balancing act between speed, energy consumption, and heat. The G5 chips ran too hot and drew too much power to offer any

meaningful increase in speed over the G4. With no other options on the table, it was time for a

wild card. Intel was on a roll in the mid-2000s. After the Pentium success from the 90s was

beginning to plateau, the core two duo chips were the latest and greatest. In one of the most

dramatic moments in Apple keynote history, Steve Jobs revealed that MacOS10 was compiled to run on both

power PC chips and Intel all along. And with the transition complete just a year later

every Mac started to get a radical makeover. Laptops in 2008 were generally about an inch thick

and weighed about five pounds, even Apple's own MacBooks, until the MacBook Air. So thin it fit

inside a manila envelope, laptops would never be the same. And the MacBook Air would never have

been possible on a power PC processor. The MacBook and MacBook Pro were themselves refreshed

with a slimmer unibody design. This changed the design from dozens of stamped metal pieces and

frames into one machine shell with a lid and a bottom plate. The IMac was redressed in aluminum

and in 2012 got a similar radically thin redesign. In just 10 years, Apple would go on

to launch four transformative new products, none of which had anything to do with the Mac

The iPhone, the iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods. lässt. Apple's stock would increase tenfold

making it the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. Meanwhile, Apple forgot

how to make decent laptop keyboards or pro-dusctop computers, and Intel forgot how to make

faster processors, rumor has it that at one low point, the executive plan was to develop the iPad

into the modular computer of the future and let the Mac fade away as a legacy platform

But thankfully, that didn't happen. Thanks to Apple Silicon. What happens if you do spin up a silly little arm chip into a desktop class computer

You get something incredible. Laptops with unimaginable batteries. life. Computers that just don't quit. IMac's so thin, you have to put the headphone jack on the

bottom. When Apple Silicon came to the Mac, the Mac learned how to coexist with the rest of the

product lineup. The M-Series chips and the Mac showing an architecture with the A-series chips and the iPhone

and the iPad bridging the gap between the two. On the software side, even as the world trends

towards lowest common denominator web apps, truly native Mac apps are making a comeback

Swift and Swift UI are the latest technologies to rapidly build software interfaces faster and easier than ever before

And for the first time ever, the same codebase can compile a native app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac alike

So much technology is shared between these platforms that you might think Apple is only a few years away from merging them all into one

But I don't think that's true. If anything, Apple is building a common foundation to strengthen them all

I'm DeGriven Jones with Cult of Mac