'Macintosh', commonly known as 'Mac', is a
brand name which covers several lines of
personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by
Apple Inc. Named after the
McIntosh variety of apple, the
original Macintosh was released on
January 24,
1984. It used a
graphical user interface (GUI) and
mouse instead of the then-standard
command line interface. The current range of Macs varies from Apple's entry level
Mac mini desktop, to a mid-range server, the
Xserve. Mac systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. Production of the Mac is based upon a
vertical integration model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its hardware and creates its own operating system that is pre-installed on all Macs. This is in contrast to most
IBM compatible PCs, where one vendor provides the operating system and multiple vendors create the hardware. In both cases, the hardware can run other operating systems; modern Macs, like other PCs, are capable of running operating systems such as
Linux,
FreeBSD,
Windows, etc.
Original Macintosh computers used the
Motorola 68k family of
microprocessors, but later models switched to
Motorola and
IBM's
PowerPC range of
CPUs in 1994. Apple began a transition from the PowerPC line to
Intel's
x86 architecture in 2006, which for the first time allowed Macs to run native operating system binaries for the x86 architecture. Current Macs use the
Intel Core 2 and
Intel Xeon 5100 series microprocessors.
All current Mac models come pre-installed with a native version of the latest
Mac OS X, which is currently at
version 10.4.10 and is commonly referred to by its code name of "Tiger". Apple has announced that
Mac OS X v10.5, codenamed "Leopard", is set to be released in October of
2007.
History
Main articles: History of Apple
1979 to 1984: Development
The Macintosh project started in late 20th century with
Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. In September 1979, Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype.
Bill Atkinson, a member of Apple's
Lisa team (which was developing a similar but higher-end computer), introduced him to
Burrell Smith, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year as Apple employee #282. Over the years, Raskin assembled a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh
hardware and
software; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith, the team included
Chris Espinosa,
Joanna Hoffman,
George Crow,
Jerry Manock,
Susan Kare,
Andy Hertzfeld and
Daniel Kottke.
Smith’s first Macintosh board was built to Raskin’s design specifications: it had 64
kilobytes (KiB) of
RAM, used the
Motorola 6809E
microprocessor, and was capable of supporting a 256×256
pixel black-and-white bitmap display. (The final product used a 9-inch, 512x342
monochrome display.)
Bud Tribble, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisa’s graphical programs on the Macintosh, and asked Smith whether he could incorporate the Lisa’s
Motorola 68000 microprocessor into the Mac while still keeping the production cost down. By December 1980, Smith had succeeded in designing a board that not only used the 68000, but bumped its speed from 5 to 8
megahertz (MHz); this board also had the capacity to support a 384×256 bitmap display. Smith’s design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which made production of the board significantly more cost-efficient.
[1] The final Mac design was self-contained and had far more programming code in
ROM than most other computers; it had 128 KiB of RAM, in the form of sixteen, 64
kilobit (Kb) RAM chips
soldered to the
logicboard. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 KiB by means of soldering sixteen 256 Kib RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips.
The innovative design caught the attention of
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, he began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and the final Macintosh design is said to be closer to Jobs’ ideas than Raskin’s.
[2] After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being developed at
Xerox PARC, Jobs negotiated a visit to see the
Xerox Alto computer and
Smalltalk development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were partially influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh group's own ideas.
[3] Jobs also commissioned industrial designer
Hartmut Esslinger to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the
"Snow White" design language; although it came too late for the earliest Macs, it was implemented in most other mid- to late-1980s Apple computers.
[4] However, Jobs’s leadership at the Macintosh project was short-lived; after an internal power struggle with new CEO
John Sculley, Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, went on to found
NeXT, another computer company, and did not return until 1997. CEO John Sculley raised the price from
US$1,995 to US$2,495 to pay for a massive marketing campaign.
1984: Introduction
The announcer's dialogue in Apple's
1984 ad, as it appears on the screen
The Macintosh was officially announced on
January 22,
1984, with the now-famous
1984 Super Bowl commercial directed by
Ridley Scott. This commercial showed a woman, played by
Anya Major, who defiantly throws a sledgehammer at a Big Brother-like video screen (which represented
IBM). This symbolized Apple's challenging of the text-based computers that dominated the market at the time.
The
Mac itself went on sale for US$2,495, two days after the ad aired. It came bundled with two programs designed to show off its interface:
MacWrite and
MacPaint. Although the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, it was too radical for some. Because the machine was entirely designed around the GUI, existing text-mode and
command-driven programs had to be redesigned and rewritten; this was a challenging undertaking that many
software developers shied away from, and resulted in an initial lack of software for the new system. Many users, accustomed to the world of command lines, labeled the Mac a mere “toy.”
1985 to 1989: The desktop publishing era
In 1985, the combination of the Mac, Apple’s
LaserWriter printer, and Mac-specific software like Boston Software’s
MacPublisher and
Aldus PageMaker enabled users to design, preview, and print page layouts complete with text and graphics, an activity known as
desktop publishing. Desktop publishing was unique to the Macintosh, but eventually became available for IBM users as well. Later, programs such as
Macromedia FreeHand,
QuarkXPress,
Adobe Photoshop, and
Adobe Illustrator strengthened the Mac’s position as a graphics computer and helped to expand the emerging desktop publishing market.
The limitations of the first Mac soon became clear: it had very little memory, even compared with other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily; and it lacked a
hard drive and the means to attach one easily. Although by 1985 the Mac’s base memory had increased to 512 KiB, and it was possible, although inconvenient and difficult, to expand the memory of a 128 KiB Mac, Apple realized that the Mac needed improvement in these areas. The result was the
Macintosh Plus, released on
January 10,
1986 for US$2,600. It offered one
mebibyte of RAM, expandable to four, and a then-revolutionary
SCSI parallel interface, allowing up to seven peripherals—such as hard drives and scanners—to be attached to the machine. Its
floppy drive was increased to an 800
KB capacity. The Plus was an immediate success and remained in production until
October 15,
1990; on sale for just over four years and ten months, it was the longest-lived Mac in Apple's history.
Other issues remained, particularly the low processor speed and limited graphics ability, which had hobbled the Mac’s ability to make inroads into the business computing market. Updated Motorola CPUs made a faster machine possible, and in 1987 Apple took advantage of the new Motorola technology and introduced the
Macintosh II, which used a 16 MHz
Motorola 68020 processor. This marked the start of a new direction for the Macintosh, as now, for the first time, it had open architecture with several expansion slots, support for color graphics and a modular break out design similar to that of the IBM PC and inspired by Apple’s other line, the expandable Apple II series. Alongside the Macintosh II, the
Macintosh SE was released, the first
compact Mac with an internal expansion slot (a
processor direct slot) specific to the machine. The SE shared the Macintosh II's “Snow White” design language, as well as the new
Apple Desktop Bus mouse and keyboard that had first appeared on the
Apple IIGS some months earlier.
With the new
Motorola 68030 processor came the
Macintosh IIx in 1988, which had benefited from internal improvements, including an on-board
MMU. It was followed in 1989 by a more compact version with fewer slots (the
Macintosh IIcx) and a version of the Mac SE powered by the 16 MHz 68030 (the
Macintosh SE/30, breaking the existing naming convention to avoid the name 'SEx'). Later that year, the
Macintosh IIci, running at 25 MHz, was the first Mac to be “
32-bit clean,” allowing it to natively support more than 8 MiB of RAM, unlike its predecessors, which had “32-bit dirty” ROMs (8 of the 32 bits available for addressing were used for OS level
flags).
System 7 was the first Macintosh operating system to support 32-bit addressing. Apple also introduced the
Macintosh Portable, a 16 MHz 68000 machine with an active matrix
flat panel display. The following year the 40 MHz
Macintosh IIfx, starting at US$9,900, was unveiled. Apart from its fast processor, it had significant internal architectural improvements, including faster memory and a pair of dedicated 6502 CPUs for I/O processing.
1990 to 1998: Growth and decline
Microsoft Windows 3.0, which began to approach the Mac in both performance and feature set, was released in May 1990 and was a usable, less expensive alternative to the Macintosh platform. Apple's response was to introduce a range of relatively inexpensive Macs in October 1990. The
Macintosh Classic, essentially a less expensive version of the Macintosh SE, sold for US$999, making it the least expensive Mac until the re-release (and subsequent price cut) of the 400 MHz iMac in February 2001. The 68020-powered
Macintosh LC, in its distinctive “pizza box” case, was available for US$1800; it offered color graphics and was accompanied by a new, low-cost 512×384-pixel monitor. The
Macintosh IIsi, essentially a 20 MHz IIci with only one expansion slot, cost US$2500. All three machines sold well, although Apple’s profit margin was considerably lower than on earlier machines.
1991 saw the much-anticipated release of
System 7, a 32-bit rewrite of the
Macintosh operating system that improved its handling of color graphics, memory addressing, networking, and
co-operative multitasking, and introduced
virtual memory. Later that year, Apple introduced the
Macintosh Quadra 700 and 900, the first Macs to employ the faster
Motorola 68040 processor. They were joined by improved versions of the previous year’s hits, the
Macintosh Classic II and
Macintosh LC II. The latter was upgraded to use a 16 MHz 68030 CPU.
At the same time, the first three models in Apple’s enduring
PowerBook range were introduced—the PowerBook 100, a miniaturized Macintosh Portable; the 16 MHz 68030 PowerBook 140; and the 25 MHz 68030 PowerBook 170. They were the first portable computers with the keyboard behind a palm rest, and with a built-in pointing device (a
trackball) in front of the keyboard.
In 1992, Apple started to sell a low-end Mac, the
Performa, through nontraditional dealers. At Apple dealers, a mid-range version of the Quadra series called the
Macintosh Centris was offered, only to be quickly renamed Quadra when buyers became confused by the range of Classics, LCs, IIs, Quadras, Performas, and Centrises. Apple also unveiled the miniaturized
PowerBook Duo range. It was intended to be docked to a base station for desktop-like functionality in the workplace. The PowerBook Duo was dropped from the Apple product line in early 1997.
The next evolutionary step in Macintosh CPUs was a switch to the
RISC PowerPC architecture developed by the
AIM alliance of Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola. Since its introduction, the
Power Macintosh line proved to be highly successful, with over a million units sold by late 1994, three months ahead of Apple’s one-year goal. In the same year, Apple released the second-generation PowerBook models, the
PowerBook 500 series, which introduced the novel
trackpad.
Despite these technical and commercial successes,
Microsoft and
Intel began to rapidly lower Apple's
market share with the
Windows 95 operating system and
Pentium processors respectively. These significantly enhanced the multimedia capability and performance of IBM compatible PCs, and brought Windows still closer to the Mac
GUI. In response, Apple started the
Macintosh clone program to regain its foothold in the desktop computer market. This succeeded in increasing the Macintosh's market share somewhat, but at the cost of undermining Apple's bottom line. The company saw regular losses over the period when clones were manufactured. As a result, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he stopped the whole operation, reasoning that despite the machines often providing more value to the consumer, Apple was losing a lot of money in the clone market. This decision caused significant financial losses for companies like Motorola which had invested substantial resources in starting up their own Mac-compatible lines.
1998 to the present: New beginnings
The original "Bondi Blue" iMac G3.
In 1998, a year after Steve Jobs had returned to the company, Apple introduced an all-in-one Macintosh that was similar to the original Macintosh 128K: the
iMac, a new design that did away with most Apple standard connections, such as
SCSI and
ADB, in favor of two
USB ports. It featured a new design; its translucent plastic case, originally
Bondi blue, and later many other colors, is considered an
industrial design hallmark of the late 1990s. The iMac proved to be phenomenally successful, with 800,000 units sold in 1998, making the company an annual profit of US$309 million — Apple's first profitable year since
Michael Spindler took over as CEO in 1995. At MacWorld 1999, San Francisco, Steve Jobs stated that they had sold over 1.35 million iMacs the previous quarter. The Power Macintosh was redesigned with a similar 'blue and white' aesthetic.
In 1999, Apple introduced a new operating system,
Mac OS X Server 1.0 (codenamed Rhapsody), with a new GUI and powerful Unix underpinnings. Its NeXT-like GUI left many Mac users disappointed, and wondering what the next generation of the Mac OS GUI would look like. Mac OS X was based on
OPENSTEP, the operating system developed by Steve Jobs’ post-Apple company, NeXT. Mac OS X was not released to the public until September 2000, as the
Mac OS X Public Beta, with an Aqua interface, much different from Mac OS X Server 1.x. It cost US$29.99 and allowed adventurous Mac users to sample Apple’s new operating system and provide feedback to the company on what they wanted to see in the actual release. The initial release of OS X,
10.0 (nicknamed Cheetah), was released on
March 24,
2001. Subsequent releases were
10.1 Puma, (
September 25,
2001),
10.2 Jaguar, (
August 24,
2002),
10.3 Panther, (
October 24,
2003), and
10.4 Tiger, (
April 29,
2005). Version
10.5 Leopard is scheduled to be released to the public October 2007.
The
MacBook Pro is the first Mac notebook to use an Intel processor. It was released at Macworld 2006.
In mid-1999, Apple introduced the
iBook, a new consumer-level, portable Mac that was designed to be similar in appearance to the iMac that had been introduced a year earlier. Six weeks after the iBook’s unveiling, more than 140,000 orders had been placed, and by October the computer was as much a sales hit as the iMac. Apple continued to add new products to their lineup, such as the
eMac and
PowerBook G4, as well as make two major upgrades of the iMac. On
January 11,
2005, Apple announced the release of the Mac mini priced at US$499, the least expensive Mac to date. In 2006, Apple
switched from PowerPC microprocessors to microprocessors manufactured by Intel.
In recent years, Apple has seen a significant boost in sales of Macs. Many claim that this is due, in part, to the success of the
iPod, a
halo effect whereby satisfied iPod owners purchase more Apple equipment. The iPod
digital audio players have recaptured a brand awareness of the Mac line that had not been seen since its original release in 1984. From 2001 to 2007, Mac sales increased continuously on an annual basis. On
July 25,
2007, Apple released its third quarter results, reporting shipment of 1,764,000 Macs— exceeding the previous company record for quarterly Mac shipments by over 150,000.
Current product line
Main articles: Comparison of Macintosh models
{|{|border="2" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;"
|-bgcolor="#f7f7f7"
|-
!Image
!Name
!Type
!Market
!Description
|-
|style="text-align:center;background-color:white"|
The Mac mini
|
Mac mini
|Desktop
|Low-End
|The Mac mini is the least expensive Mac currently in production. It ships without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse. It comes in two versions, both with
Core 2 Duo processors.
|-
|style="text-align:center;background-color:white"|
The iMac
|
iMac
|Desktop
|Consumer
|The iMac is Apple’s current flagship consumer desktop computer, powered by the mobile version of the Intel
Core 2 Duo CPU. It is an all-in-one unit with screen sizes available at 20" and 24".
|-
|style="text-align:center;background-color:white"|
The Mac Pro
|
Mac Pro
|Desktop
|Professional
|The Mac Pro, Apple’s most expensive, high-end workstation computer, replaces the
Power Mac G5. The current models feature two dual-core
Intel Xeon ('Woodcrest') CPUs or two quad core
Intel Xeon ('Clovertown') CPUs. They do not include displays.
|-
|style="text-align:center;background-color:white"|
The white MacBook
|
MacBook
|Portable
|Consumer
|The MacBook is Apple’s consumer portable. It uses an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at slightly slower speeds (2.0 GHz or 2.16 GHz) than the CPUs in the MacBook Pro line. It replaces both the
iBook G4 and the 12-inch
PowerBook G4.
|-
|style="text-align:center;background-color:white"|
The MacBook Pro
|
MacBook Pro
|Portable
|Professional
|The MacBook Pro is a high-end portable workstation computer, available in two 15.4-inch widescreen models with 2.2 or 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors or a 17-inch widescreen model with the 2.4 GHz processor
|-
|style="text-align:center;background-color:white"|
The Xserve
|
Xserve
|Server
|Enterprise
|The Xserve is an enterprise-grade
1U rack-mount server, specifically marketed towards mission-critical data centers and enterprise client services, is mostly used in clusters, for distributed computing (e.g., protein analysis). It uses Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors.
|}
Hardware
The current Mac product family uses Intel
x86 processors. All Mac models ship with at least 1 GB RAM as standard. Current Mac computers use an
ATI Radeon,
nVidia GeForce or
Intel GMA graphics processor and include either a
Combo Drive, a DVD player and CD burner all-in-one; or the
SuperDrive, a dual-function DVD and CD burner. Macs include two standard data transfer ports:
USB, standardized in 1998 with the iMac; and
FireWire, a technology developed by Apple to support higher-performance devices; while USB is ubiquitous today, FireWire is mainly reserved for high-performance devices such as hard drives or video cameras.
The majority of Mac computers have historically shipped with a single-button
mouse. This changed in August 2005,
[5] when Apple released the four-button
Mighty Mouse (a wireless version was made available on July 25, 2006) and began to ship it with new desktop Macs. Starting with a new iMac G5 released in October 2005,
[5] Apple started to include built-in
iSight cameras to appropriate models, and a media center interface called
Front Row that can be operated by
remote control for accessing media stored on the computer.
In 2007 a new form-factor development, not supported by Apple, is a Mac turned into a
tablet PC by aftermarketers.
Axiotron is introducing the
ModBook, a tablet PC running
Mac OS X that is created by re-engineering a standard
MacBook.
Processor architecture
The original Macintosh used a
Motorola 68000, a 16/32-bit (32-bit internal)
CISC processor that ran at 8 MHz. The Macintosh Portable and PowerBook 100 both used a 16 MHz version. The Macintosh II featured a full 32-bit
Motorola 68020 processor, but the Mac ROMs at the time contained software that only supported 24-bit memory addressing, therefore using only a fraction of the chip's memory addressing capabilities unless a software patch was applied. Macs with this limitation were referred to as not being “32-bit clean.” The successor Macintosh IIx introduced the
Motorola 68030 processor, which added a
memory management unit. The 68030 did not have a built-in
floating point unit (FPU); thus, '030-based Macintoshes incorporated a separate unit—either the
68881 or
68882. Lower-cost models did without, although they incorporated an FPU socket, should the user decide to add one as an option. The first “32-bit clean” Macintosh that could use 32-bit memory addressing without a software patch was the IIci. In 1991, Apple released the first computers containing the
Motorola 68040 processor, which contained the floating point unit in the main processor. Again, lower-cost models did not have FPUs, being based on the cut-down
Motorola 68LC040 instead.
After 1994 Apple used the PowerPC line of processors, starting with the
PowerPC 601, which were later upgraded to the
603 and 603e and
604, 604e, and 604ev. In 1997, Apple introduced its first computer based on the significantly upgraded
PowerPC G3 processor; this was followed in 1999 with the
PowerPC G4. The last generation of PowerPC processor to be introduced was the 64-bit
PowerPC 970FX ("G5"), introduced in 2003. During the transition to the PowerPC, Apple’s “Cognac” team wrote a 68030-to-PowerPC
emulator that booted very early in OS loading. Initially the emulation speed wasn't stellar, but later versions used a
dynamic recompilation emulator which boosted performance by caching frequently used sections of translated code. The first version of the OS to ship with the earliest PowerPC systems was estimated to run 95% emulated. Later versions of the operating system increased the percentage of PowerPC native code until OS X brought it to 100% native.
The PowerPC 604 processor introduced
symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) to the Macintosh platform, with dual PowerPC 604e-equipped
Power Macintosh 9500 and
9600 models. The G3 processor was not SMP-capable, but the G4 and G5 were, and Apple introduced many dual-CPU G4 and G5 Power Macs. The top of the range Power Macintosh G5 uses up to two
dual core processors, for a total of four cores.
On
June 6,
2005, Steve Jobs announced that the company would begin transitioning the Macintosh line from PowerPC to Intel microprocessors (transition completed as of
August 7,
2006) and demonstrated a version of Mac OS X running on a computer powered by an Intel
Pentium 4 CPU. Intel-powered Macs are able to run Macintosh software compiled for PowerPC processors using a
dynamic translation system known as “
Rosetta.”
The first Macs with Intel processors were the iMac and the 15-inch MacBook Pro, both announced at the
Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2006. Throughout the year the Mac mini was transitioned to the Intel architecture, with users having choice of either
Core Solo or
Core Duo CPUs. The
iBook product line was phased out by the
MacBook and on
August 7,
2006, the
Power Mac G5 was discontinued in favor of the
Mac Pro, based on the new Intel Xeon "Woodcrest". The
Xserve was also transitioned to an Intel Xeon "Woodcrest". In the second half of 2006 Apple launched new iMac and MacBook lines using the Core 2 Duo processor.
Expandability and connectivity
A typical
Universal Serial Bus ("USB") Type A cable; the USB has become standard on modern Mac computers.
Apple detractors have always criticized the fact that Macs cannot be upgraded, as can most PCs. While most PC's use an
ATX-formfactor logic board, power supply, and case, Apple has eschewed the popular standards as to give their design team maximum flexibility. However, Apple does use
Intel processors, as well as industry-standard memory, drives, and peripherals.
Historically, Macs were not designed to be taken apart. Ever since the original closed-box
Macintosh in 1984, Apple has always preferred that upgrades take place outside the case. While PC users would open up their computer to install a second hard drive, Mac users would simply plug an external hard drive into their computer; this adds slight cost, but is easier for the average user to perform.
Due to the Macs' unique designs, most tasks that involve opening the computer are relegated to Apple-certified technicians; otherwise, the machine's warranty is null and void. However, Apple
towers (such as the Mac Pro) allow the user access to all of the system's internals, and in these models, Apple has no problem with users adding or replacing common items such as memory, drives, or expansion cards.
Internal Slots
The earliest form of internal Macintosh expandability was the
Processor Direct Slot (PDS), present from the SE onwards. It was basically a shortcut to the
CPU socket, not a bus—which also meant that parts for the PDS slot were tied to a specific Macintosh model, with the notable exception of the LC PDS slot, which was standardized across the entire LC line. The PDS slot could be used for processor upgrades,
Ethernet cards, the
Apple IIe Card, or video cards. The last line of Macintoshes to have PDS slots was the first generation of the Power Macs.
The first Macintosh to feature a bus for expansion was the Macintosh II, in the form of six
NuBus (parallel 32-bit bus) slots. The NuBus was abandoned in favor of
PCI in the second-generation Power Macs, and the G4 introduced 64-bit PCI slots as well as an
AGP slot for video cards. The Power Mac G5 quickly introduced
PCI-X slots, which were short-lived, as the final G5's and the Mac Pro use
PCI Express for graphics and expansion.
Out of the current models (as of August 2007), only the Mac Pro and
Xserve feature PCIe slots and standard hard drive bays for easy upgradability. The PCIe slots allow addition of (for example)
RAID controllers, video cards, or specialty audio cards. The MacBook Pro features a PCIe slot, in the form of a single
ExpressCard/34 slot.
Processors
The Mac mini, iMac and Mac Pro all feature upgradeable Intel processors,
[7] although Apple does not officially support this.
The Power Mac G3, as well as the very first Power Mac G4, had a socketed processor which could be upgraded. From then on, the Power Macs had their processor(s) on a daughtercard. All other Macs, including the Mac mini, most iMacs, and all of Apple's notebooks, have the processor permanently soldered to the logic board. Nevertheless, this did not stop companies such as
Daystar and
Sonnet from marketing processor upgrades for almost every system.
Memory
For memory, Apple has used standard
SIMM's (30 and 72-pin), proprietary 168-pin
DIMMs, and later, industry-standard
SDRAM and
DDR. Current Macs use regular
DDR2, and
Fully_Buffered_DIMM's for the Mac Pro and Xserve.
All current Macs, save for the Mac mini, allow the user to upgrade the memory via an access door or removable panel.
Disks
The earliest Macintoshes used a proprietary serial port (a 19-pin
D-subminiature connector) for external floppy or hard drives, until
SCSI was introduced with the
Macintosh Plus. SCSI remained the Macintosh drive medium of choice until the mid-1990's, when less expensive
ATA drives were introduced, first on budget models, then across the whole range. Current Macs use
Serial ATA for internal hard drives, ATA for internal optical drives, and
FireWire or
USB 2.0 for external drives.
Only the Power Macs, Mac Pros, Xserves, and MacBook have user-accessible drive bays to allow one or more hard drives to be installed internally. All other machines have one dedicated space for one hard drive.
All Macs have one optical drive. The Mac Pro has room for either one or two.
Mac OS X, naturally, understands the
Mac OS Standard and
Mac OS Extended file systems. It is also capable of using disks formatted with Windows's
FAT or
NTFS file systems, as well as the
Unix File System. Currently, Mac OS X Leopard betas have read-only support for
ZFS, while paid members of Apple Developer Connection get access to an in-development read-write ZFS driver.
Peripherals
The very first Macs (the Macintosh and the Macintosh 512K) used proprietary connectors for the keyboard and mouse. The
Apple Desktop Bus was introduced with the Macintosh II and Macintosh SE. It was the standard input connector for keyboards and mice until USB was introduced with the iMac. The last Macintosh to have ADB was the
Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White), alongside USB.
Other legacy Macintosh peripheral connectors include the RS-432 serial ports, the
GeoPort, and the
AAUI port for networking.
Networking
Early Macs used the built-in serial ports for
LocalTalk, which set up a fast (at the time) network between two machines. Later, an
AAUI port was added. Eventually,
Ethernet replaced everything, and emerged as the standard for networking not just Macs, but all computers.
Fibre Channel adapters are also available for the Mac Pro and the Xserve.
Apple introduced
802.11 wireless networking in 1999, with
AirPort technology built into the
iBook. Three years later, it was refined into the
802.11g-compatible
AirPort Extreme. All current Macs, except for the Mac mini, have
802.11n-capable
AirPort Extreme cards.
All Macs with FireWire support IP over 1394, which allows for two machines to create a high-speed network with only a single cable, perhaps a nod to the earlier
LocalTalk.
Video
For connecting displays, Apple used a
DA-15 connector on all models prior to the
Power Macintosh G3 (Blue & White), which used a
VGA connector. The original
AGP-based
Power Mac G4 used VGA, complemented by a
DVI port; almost all later Macs, however, used the
Apple Display Connector in addition to a VGA or
DVI port, until the last revisions of the
Power Mac G5 came standard with two DVI ports. All current Macs now have one or more DVI ports. Apple includes DVI-to-VGA adapters with its computers.
Video cards can be replaced by the user in a Power Mac (which used PCI; later, AGP; finally, PCIe) or the Mac Pro (which has four PCIe slots). While not user-accessible, the 24-inch iMac features an
MXM-formfactor video card; however, there are no upgrades available for it. In all other Macs, the video card is integrated with the logic board and cannot be replaced.
PowerPC-based Macs, for the most part, required compatible video cards. The current Intel-based Macs can use any
EFI-compatible video card; normal PC video cards will work only if the user boots into
Microsoft Windows. Some hackers, however, have found success "flashing" PC cards to work with Mac OS X in Apple's hardware.
[8]
Software
Operating system
Main articles: Mac OS history
System 7 was the first major upgrade of the Macintosh operating system.
The
Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard” desktop. Although the interface has undergone many changes, some aspects remain, such as the
menu bar at the top of the screen.
The Macintosh operating system was originally known as the ''System Software'' or more simply ''System''. With the release of System 7.6, the official name became Mac OS. From 2001, the “classic” Mac OS was phased out in favor of the new BSD Unix-based Mac OS X. Apple had offered another UNIX system,
A/UX, for its Macintosh servers earlier, but without much success. The Mac OS operating system is widely considered one of the main selling points of the Mac platform, and Apple heavily touts its releases with large release-day special events. Apple has generally chosen to stick with some loose user-interface elements in all of its releases, and many similarities can be seen between the legacy Mac OS 9 and the modern Mac OS X.
Mac OS was the first widely used operating system with a graphical interface. No versions of the “classic” Mac OS featured a
command line interface. It was originally a single-tasking OS with limited background execution ability, but optional
co-operative multitasking was introduced in System Software 5. The next major upgrade was System 7 in 1991, which featured a new full-color design, built-in multitasking,
AppleScript, and more user configuration options. Mac OS continued to evolve up to version 9.2.2, but its dated architecture—though retrofitted a few times (for example, as part of the PowerPC port, a
nanokernel was added and later in
Mac OS 8.6 was modified to support
Multiprocessing Services) —made a replacement necessary.
In March 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X, a modern and more secure Unix-based successor, using
Darwin,
XNU, and
Mach as foundations. Mac OS X is directly derived from NeXTSTEP, the operating system developed by Steve Jobs’ company NeXT before Apple bought it. Older Mac OS programs can still run under Mac OS X in a special
virtual machine called Classic, but this is only possible using Apple software on Macs using PowerPC processors; Macs using Intel processors need third party software to run older code. A program similar to Classic called “Rosetta” will allow PowerPC programs to run on Intel machines. Mac OS X remains the most common UNIX-based desktop operating system,even though Mac OS X, up to the current version 10.4 (released on
April 29,
2005), code-named ''Tiger'', was never originally certified as a UNIX implementation. The next version,
Mac OS X v10.5, code-named ''Leopard'', whose Intel version, as well as Apple's next server release
[9], has received certification as a UNIX implementation by
The Open Group, is scheduled to be released in October of 2007.
Non-Apple operating systems for today’s Macs include
Linux,
NetBSD, and
OpenBSD. With the release of Intel-based Mac computers, the potential to natively run Windows-based operating systems on Apple hardware without the need for emulation software such as
Virtual PC was introduced. In March of 2006, a group of hackers announced that they were able to run
Windows XP on an Intel based Mac. The group has released their software as open source and has posted it for download on their website.
[10] On
April 5,
2006 Apple announced the public beta availability of their own
Boot Camp software which will allow owners of Intel-based Macs to install Windows XP on their machines. Also, later versions of the beta gained support for
Windows Vista. Boot Camp will be a standard feature in Leopard.
Software history
Since its introduction, the Mac has been criticized for the lesser range of software titles available for its operating system in comparison to DOS and Windows-based PCs. In 1984 it was apparent that a wider range of software was available for the
IBM PC, because it used the most popular operating system of the time,
MS-DOS. Apple struggled to encourage software developers to port software titles to the Macintosh; however,
Bill Gates at Microsoft realized that the
GUI would become an industry standard, and that his software would sell in large quantity if it were available for the Macintosh. In 1984
Microsoft Word and
Microsoft MultiPlan were available, and were a large selling point for the Mac. However, it lacked other business software and games. In 1985,
Lotus Software introduced
Lotus Jazz after the success of
Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC, although it was largely a flop.
[11]
In 1987, Apple spun off its software business as
Claris. It was given the code and rights to several programs that had been written within Apple, notably MacWrite, MacPaint, and
MacProject. In the late 1980s, Claris released a number of revamped software titles; the result was the “Pro” series, including MacPaint Pro, MacDraw Pro, MacWrite Pro, and FileMaker Pro. To provide a complete office suite, Claris purchased the rights to the
Informix Wingz spreadsheet on the Mac, renaming it
Claris Resolve, and added the new presentation program
Claris Impact. By the early 1990s, Claris programs were shipping with the majority of consumer-level Macintoshes and were extremely popular. In 1991, Claris released
ClarisWorks, which soon became their second best-selling program. When Claris was later folded back into Apple, ClarisWorks was renamed AppleWorks beginning with version 5.0 (hence the ".cwk" extension at the end of names of AppleWorks documents to this day).
All new Macs now come with a suite of consumer-level applications, sometimes known as the "iApps". In 1999, a digital video editing application,
iMovie, was released for use on the
iMac DV. Next came
iTunes, a digital jukebox designed to work with Apple’s iPod digital music player, and on
January 7,
2002, Apple released
iPhoto, an easy-to-use digital photo organizer. In 2004, Apple began to market these applications, along with
iDVD and
GarageBand, as a US$49 suite called
iLife which also comes packaged with every new Apple computer. It is intended to make the Mac versatile out of the box by providing several high-value consumer media applications. The most popular tool in the suite, iTunes, now has a Windows version, and has spawned the most popular online music store, the
iTunes Store. iLife '05 was notable for the addition of support for
High Definition video and the
RAW image format, and for its price increase to US$79.
[5] In January 2006, iLife '06 was released;
iWeb, a new website creation application, was added to the suite.
To complement the Mac, Apple has built up a portfolio of digital media applications, as well as three applications that are geared towards productivity (the
iWork suite and
FileMaker Pro).
Advertising
Page 1 of the 1984 “Macintosh Introduction” brochure published in ''
Newsweek'' magazine.
Ever since the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984 with the
1984 Super Bowl commercial, Apple has been recognized for its efforts towards effective advertising and marketing for the Macintosh. A “Macintosh Introduction” 18-page brochure was included with various magazines in December 1983, often remembered for the presence of Bill Gates on page 11.
[13] For a special post-election edition of ''
Newsweek'' in November 1984, Apple spent more than US $2.5 million to buy all of the advertising pages in the issue (a total of 39).
[14] Apple also ran a “Test Drive a Macintosh” promotion that year, in which potential buyers with a credit card could trial a Macintosh for 24 hours and return it to a dealer afterwards. It began to look like a success with 200,000 participants, and ''Advertising Age'' magazine named this one of the 10 best promotions of 1984. However, dealers disliked the promotion and supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many computers were returned in such a bad shape that they could no longer be sold.
In 1985 the
“Lemmings” commercial aired at the
Super Bowl; Apple went as far as to create a newspaper advertisement stating “If you go to the bathroom during the fourth quarter, you'll be sorry.” It was a large failure and did not capture nearly as much attention as the 1984 commercial did. Many more brochures for new models like the Macintosh Plus and the Performa followed. In the 1990s Apple started the “What's on your PowerBook?” campaign, with print ads and television commercials featuring celebrities describing how the PowerBook helps them in their businesses and everyday lives.
In 1995, Apple responded to the introduction of Windows 95 with both several print ads and a television commercial demonstrating its disadvantages and lack of innovation. In 1997 the
Think Different campaign introduced Apple’s new slogan, and in 2002 the
Switch campaign followed. The most recent advertising strategy by Apple is the
Get a Mac campaign, with North American, UK and Japanese variants.
[15][16]
Today, Apple focuses much of its advertising efforts around “special events,” and
keynotes at conferences like the
MacWorld Expo and the
Apple Expo. The events typically draw a large gathering of media representatives and spectators. In the past, special events have been used to unveil its desktop and notebook computers such as the iMac and MacBook, and other consumer electronic devices like the
iPod,
Apple TV, and
iPhone.
Effects on the technology industry
Apple has introduced a number of innovations in direct relation to the Macintosh 128K that were later adopted by the rest of industry as a standard for the design of computers. Possibly Apple's number-one achievement was the first large-scale use of a graphical user interface in operating system software. Developed first by
Xerox, the Macintosh introduced innovations to the graphical user interface, such as the use of the “double click” and “drag and drop”, which are still in use in many operating systems. The Macintosh 128K also introduced software which allowed
WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get,” pronounced “whizzy-wig”) text and graphics editing alongside significant technical improvements such as:
3.5" floppy disk drives, long file names permitting
whitespace, not requiring a
file extension, 8-bit mono
audio, built-in speakers, and an output jack as standard features.
The Macintosh platform has introduced many innovations and ideas which have had significant effects on the computer industry, especially in the area of communications standards. One of the first was the Macintosh Plus, which successfully introduced the
SCSI interface in 1986. The Macintosh IIsi and the Macintosh LC introduced standard audio in and out ports in 1990—today these ports are standard on the large majority of computers. Beginning with the iMac in 1998, Apple made the Universal Serial Bus standard and introduced FireWire, a high-speed data transfer bus now popular in media-editing computers and almost all
digital video cameras. Apple also innovated in the area of networking, with heavy marketing and early implementation of the existing wireless networking standard
IEEE 802.11b (
AirPort) in the Macintosh portable lines in 1999. The iMac, debuting in 1998, was one of the earlier computers to have no floppy disk drive; today, almost no new computers come with one. The Macintosh was able to support multiple monitors as far back as 1988 - a full ten years before Windows 98 supported dual monitors. When Apple developed the iMac with dual monitors, it heavily influenced Bobby H. Green's development of the "DSDS" (Dual screen duo system). The Macintosh was also the first personal computer to have virtual memory, in 1989 using 'Virtual', a
Connectix product.
Apple has also contributed heavily to the field of mobile computing, and many features of its mobile computers have become the norm. The PowerBook 100, 140, and 170 set the ergonomic standard for the placement of the keyboard in 1991 by moving the keyboard behind a palm rest, rather than right at the bottom of the laptop. In 1991, the PowerBook 100 series featured the first built-in pointing device on a laptop: a trackball. The
PowerBook Duo also introduced the idea of a dock/port replicator in 1992. One of the most important features ever added to the Macintosh PowerBook lineup was the first true
touchpad as a pointing device on the PowerBook 500 in 1994; today, most laptops rely on it as their pointing device. More recently, the
PowerBook G4 became the first full-size laptop computer to feature a widescreen display, in 2003 it became the first laptop computer with a 17-inch display, and in 2004 it became the first laptop computer to provide dual-link DVI. Apple was first to deliver
Wi-Fi internet access using the
Wi-Fi Alliance's 802.11x standard in their
AirPort product line.
Market share and demographics
Ever since the introduction of the Macintosh, Apple has struggled to gain a significant share of the personal computer market. At first, the Macintosh 128K suffered from a dearth of available software compared to IBM's PC, resulting in disappointing sales in 1984 and 1985. Only 500,000 Macs had been sold by September 1985. Jobs had originally predicted that five million units would be sold within two years; sales eventually crossed the one million mark in March 1987 and the two million mark in 1988, and three years later, the
installed base finally reached five million. Mac computers are most widely used in the creative professional market, including in
journalism and
desktop publishing,
video editing and
audio editing, but have also made inroads into the educative and scientific research sectors
[1].
By 1997, there were more than 20 million Mac users, compared to an installed base of around 340 million
Windows PCs.
[17][18] Statistics from late 2003 indicate that Apple had 2.06% of the desktop share in the United States, which had increased to 2.88% by Q4 2004.
[19]
As of October,
2006, research firms IDC and Gartner reported that Apple's market share in the U.S. had increased to about 6%.
[20]
The latest figures, from December 2006, showing a market share around 6% (IDC) and 6.1% (Gartner) are based on a >30% increase in unit sale from 2005 to 2006.
The actual
installed base of Mac computers is extremely hard to determine, with numbers ranging from a conservative 3%
[21] to an optimistic 16%.
[22]
Whether the size of the Mac’s market share and installed base is actually relevant, and to whom, is a hotly debated issue. Industry pundits have often called attention to the Mac’s relatively small market share to predict Apple's impending doom, particularly in the late
1990s when the company’s future seemed bleakest. Others argue that market share is the wrong way to judge the Mac’s success, citing the following reasons:
★ Apple has positioned the Mac as a higher-end personal computer, and so it is misleading to compare a Mac with a low-budget PC.
[23]
★ Only within the computer industry does market share seem to be such a major concern. Rarely is the topic raised in the automobile or television industries, for example.
[24]
★ Too much emphasis is placed on the Mac’s worldwide market share at the expense of its United States market share, which as of 2006 stands at almost twice the corresponding worldwide figure.
★ Because the overall market for personal computers has grown so much and so rapidly, the Mac’s increasing sales numbers are effectively swallowed by the industry’s numbers as a whole. Apple’s small market share, then, gives the false impression that fewer people are using Macs than did (for example) ten years ago.
[25]
★ Market share numbers ignore the total
installed base of a particular platform, a statistic which is difficult to accurately determine. For example, if one platform is replaced less often than others, the number in use at any given moment would be higher than indicated by sales alone.
★ Regardless of the Mac’s market share, Apple has remained profitable ever since Steve Jobs’ return and the company’s subsequent reorganization.
[26]
Market research indicates that Apple draws its customer base from a higher-income demographic than the mainstream PC market. Higher income theoretically correlates with greater artistic, creative, and well-educated social behaviors, which may explain the platform’s visibility within certain youthful, avant-garde subcultures.
[27] However, this demographic may also be explained by the higher prices of Mac computers compared to other PCs with similar specifications. Steve Jobs speculates that “maybe a little less” than half of Apple’s customers are
Republicans, “maybe more Dell than ours.”
[28] This perception may or may not be accurate—-several prominent conservatives, including
George W. Bush and
Rush Limbaugh, are Mac users—-but it can only be reinforced by the company's pattern of political donations,
[29] by
Al Gore’s membership on its board,
[5] and surely not least by Jobs’ own personal history.
[31]
Advantages, disadvantages and criticisms
★ The Macintosh differs in several ways from other
x86-based personal computers, especially those that run the Windows operating system. Apple directly sub-contracts hardware production to Asian
OEM laptop manufacturers such as
Asus, maintaining a high degree of control over the end product. In contrast, Microsoft supplies its software to
original equipment manufacturers, including
Dell,
HP/
Compaq, and
Lenovo, who make the hardware using a wider range of components. This less-common operating system means that a much smaller range of third-party software is available, although suitable applications, such as
Microsoft Office, are available in most areas. However, following the release of Intel-based Mac, third-party virtualization software such as
Parallels Desktop,
VMware Fusion, and
Crossover Mac began to emerge, allowing users to run much of the previously Windows-only software on a Mac. Apple also released a public
beta version of
Boot Camp, which allows users to run
Microsoft Windows natively on any Intel-based Macs.
★ The
Macintosh operating system enjoys a near-absence of the types of
malware and
spyware that affect Microsoft Windows users.
[32][33][34] This is largely due to both the
UNIX roots of Mac OS X, and the smaller user base. Both of these factors drive malware creators to develop for
Microsoft Windows. However, viruses as well as potential vulnerabilities were noted in February 2006, which led some industry analysts and anti-virus companies to issue warnings that Apple's Mac OS X is not immune to viruses, as is commonly misconceived.
[35][36] Regardless, there has not been a major outbreak of Mac malware, and Apple routinely issues security updates for its software.
★ Apple has a history of innovation that is met by a strong uptake of software upgrades, which would often leave older programs behind. Rather than waiting for developers to upgrade their applications, Apple included interim provisions for older applications. When Apple switched from the 68K series of processors to PowerPC processors, they included an
emulator, so that 68K code could run on PowerPC. Likewise, when Apple switched from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X,
Classic allowed users to run
Mac OS 9 applications under Mac OS X. Again, during the
Apple Intel transition, Apple introduced
Rosetta, an emulator which allows Intel Macs to run PowerPC code.
★ Early in its history, up until the PCI-based Power Macs, Macintosh hardware was notoriously closed. Connectors were often proprietary, requiring specialized peripherals or adapter cables. However, since the introduction of the original iMac in 1998, Apple computers have used standard USB and FireWire connections (among others), which allow users a greatly expanded choice of peripherals.
★ Originally, the hardware architecture was so closely tied to the Mac OS that it was impossible to boot an alternative operating system; the most common workaround, used even by Apple for
A/UX, was to boot into Mac OS and then to hand over control to a program that took over the system and acted as a
boot loader. This technique is not necessary on
Open Firmware-based PCI Macs, though it was formerly used for convenience on many
Old World ROM systems due to bugs in the firmware implementation. Now, Mac hardware boots directly from
Open Firmware or
EFI, and Macs are no longer limited to running just the Mac OS. Intel-based Macs are capable of running
Windows XP,
Windows Vista,
Linux, and more.
★ Apple was initially reluctant to embrace mice with multiple buttons and scroll wheels. This had been done for historical reasons, as when the mouse was first invented, surveys showed that users were unsure of which button to use. Although Microsoft's
IntelliMouse, featuring two buttons and a scroll wheel, was introduced in
1995 to great success, Macs did not support more than one mouse button until Mac OS X arrived in
2001. In
2005, Apple capitulated and introduced the
Apple Mighty Mouse, which looked like a traditional one-button mouse, but actually had four buttons and a scroll ball. Apple's only remaining one-button mouse was replaced in
2006 by the wireless Mighty Mouse.
Litigation
The user interface of the
GEM 1.1 desktop was an almost direct copy of the Macintosh's; Apple sued on charges of “look and feel,” and eventually won.
There have been many lawsuits centered around the Macintosh. These generally involve
copyright infringement of the computer’s
look and feel. After the Macintosh was released, several companies began to imitate it. Apple had some success in early lawsuits, making
Digital Research alter basic components in its
Graphical Environment Manager (pictured), the user interface of which was almost a direct copy of the Macintosh’s.
The most notable case of this sort, however, was
Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp.. In 1988, Apple sued Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on the grounds that they infringed Apple’s copyrighted GUI, citing (among other things) the use of rectangular, overlapping, and resizable windows. After four years, Apple lost — the decision was under appeal for several years and litigation did not end until Microsoft bought a 10% stock share in Apple in the late '90s — in part because of a vaguely worded contract they had signed with Microsoft when Bill Gates threatened to stop development of Microsoft Office for the Mac. Apple’s actions were criticized by some in the software community, including the
Free Software Foundation (FSF), makers of the
free GNU operating system. The FSF characterized the lawsuits as an attempt by Apple Computer to prevent anyone from making a user interface similar to the Macintosh, and called for a boycott of GNU software for the Macintosh platform.
[37] (The FSF ended its boycott in 1995,
[38] and a year later
NeXT Computers and its
OpenStep OS was acquired, and the GNU compiler
gcc is an integral part of OpenStep's (and later Mac OS X's)
Project Builder (and later
XCode) development platform.)
In 1999, Apple successfully sued
eMachines, whose
eOne resembled the then-new iMac very closely.
See also
★
History of computing hardware (1960s-present)
★
List of Macintosh models grouped by CPU
★
List of Apple Macintosh models by case type
★
List of Macintosh software
★
Mac gaming
★
Apple rumors community
★
iPod
Further reading
★
Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, Apple & Raskin, Jef, , , Addison-Wesley Professional, 1992,
★
The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, Deutschman, Alan, , , Broadway, 2001,
★
Revolution in the Valley, Hertzfeld, Andy, , , O'Reilly Books, 2004,
★
The Cult of Mac, Kahney, Leander, , , No Starch Press, 2004,
★
The Macintosh Way, Kawasaki, Guy, , , Scott Foresman Trade, 1989,
★
Macintosh... The Naked Truth, Kelby, Scott, , , New Riders Press, 2002,
★
Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything, Levy, Steven, , , Penguin Books, 2000,
Notes
1. Five different Macintoshes
2. The father of the Macintosh
3. On Xerox, Apple and Progress
4. History of computer design: Snow White
5.
6.
7. Upgrade Your iMac to a Core 2 Duo Processor
8. Mac Elite Wiki An independent project devoted to "flashing" PC cards into Macs.
9. Apple - Leopard Server Sneak Preview Apple Computer, Inc.
10. Hackers get Windows XP to run on a Mac Associated Press
11. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1636333,00.asp
12.
13. Apple Macintosh 18 Page Brochure Apple Computer
14. 1984 ''Newsweek'' Macintosh ads Apple Computer
15. Get a Mac advertisements Apple
16. Get a Mac Apple
17. Apple Developer News, No. 87 Apple Computer
18. Nearly 600 Million Computers-in-Use in Year 2000 Computer Industry Almanac Inc.
19. Apple desktop market share on the rise; will the Mac mini, iPod help?
20. Apple's Mac market share tops 5% with over 30% growth
21. Analysis of Google's Zeitgeist reports
22. 16-percent of computer users are unaffected by viruses, malware because they use Apple Macs MacDailyNews
23. Market Share
24. Apple, Market Share, and Who Cares?
25. What Will It Take To Put Apple Back on Top?
26. Apple Posts Profit of million; Revenue Jumps 30 Percent
27. Are Mac users smarter?
28. Politics Beyond Platform and Browser for Apple CEO?
29. Apple Computer, Inc
30.
31. Berkshire's Buffett, Apple's Jobs Join Kerry Advisers
32. Review: Mac OS X Shines In Comparison With Windows Vista John Welch
33. Linux vs. Windows Viruses Scott Granneman
34. Broken Windows
35. Mac OS X: The new target William Eazel
36. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1929342,00.asp
37. Special Report: Apple's New Look and Feel, Free Software Foundation, , , GNU's Bulletin,
38. End of Apple Boycott, Free Software Foundation, , , GNU's Bulletin, January 1995
References
★
MacTracker Macintosh model database
★
folklore.org: Macintosh stories
★
Apple History
★
A History of Apple's Operating Systems
★
Macintosh History: 1984
★
Apple Confidential 2.0, , Owen, Linzmayer, No Starch Press, 2004,
External links
★
Apple's Web site
★
The 1984 introduction of the Macintosh (
QuickTime movie)
★
Articles by Jef Raskin about the history of the Macintosh
★
Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley
★
The history of each model of every apple product
★
Guide to used Mac
★
The Vintage Mac Museum: 1-bit Screenshot of Vintage Mac Software
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