Macintosh

Macintosh

A family of desktop and laptop computers from Apple and the first computer to popularize the graphical user interface (GUI). Over the years, Apple has dropped using the name "Macintosh" in favor of simply "Mac."

The combination of Mac hardware and software has been consistent over the years, providing an ease of use that Mac users have enjoyed. Starting in 2006, Macs began using Intel x86 chips and can run Windows natively either as an alternative OS or simultaneously side by side in the same machine (see Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion). Prior to the switch to Intel chips, Windows and DOS applications could run in a Mac using a Windows emulator such as Virtual PC.

For an overview of Apple's Mac line, see Macintosh models.

Since the mid-1980s, it has been essentially a Mac vs. PC world for personal computers, with Linux-based PCs gaining a little ground after the millennium.

The First Macs
The original Macintosh, introduced in 1984, contained one floppy disk drive and 128KB of memory. Its "high-rise" cabinet design and built-in 9" monochrome screen were unique. Maintained for a number of years and streamlined in its Classic model, the high-rise gave way to more traditional cabinetry for a while. Starting in the late 1990s, Apple returned to its roots by introducing the iMac and restoring its flair for distinctive cabinetry.

Hardware Evolution
The first Macs were powered by Motorola's 32-bit 68K family of CPUs. In 1994, Apple introduced the Power Macs, which used the higher-performance PowerPC chip designed by Apple, Motorola and IBM. Power Macs ran native PowerPC applications and emulated traditional Mac 68K applications. Over the years, PowerPC chips provided substantial increases in performance.

In 2006, Apple began to switch the Mac line to Intel's x86 CPUs. The first Macs powered by Intel chips were the iMac desktop and MacBook Pro laptop (see Mactel). See G3, G4, G5, HFS, Mac OS X and Apple.

The First Mac

The original Mac was a self-contained unit with a 9" monochrome screen and a unique silhouette. (Image courtesy of Apple Inc.)

Always the Innovator

Apple has created many original designs. For example, this PowerBook was the first laptop with a wide screen and titanium body.

The History of the Mac Interface
The graphical user interface (GUI) was actually developed by Xerox and introduced on its Star workstation in 1981. Apple borrowed heavily from the Star, and subsequently, others copied the Mac, moving the GUI down the line to Windows, OS/2, Unix and Linux.

The Mac interface was immediately popular with non-technical people. Instead of typing in a command to delete a file as in DOS, you could drag it to an on-screen trashcan. Although common today, it was a breakthrough to have such capability on a personal computer in the 1980s.

The Mac also used consistent menus, and Apple's guidelines for application design were generally followed by developers. In operation, the operating system and applications were, and still are, somewhat indistinguishable, and Apple has always tried to keep technical jargon to a minimum.

The First Mac GUI

This is a screen shot of MacPaint on the first Macintosh. The Mac's graphical ability made it a natural for graphics shops and desktop publishing. It might have been slow, but it was far more affordable than the workstations used for such purposes in the 1980s. (Image courtesy of Apple Inc.)

The Macintosh GUI

This screen shot shows the typical elements on a Macintosh desktop. Power Dude (upper right) is the name of this user's hard disk. (Screen shot courtesy of Peter Hermsen.)

Why Aren't There More Macs?
The Mac came out in 1984, three years after the DOS-based PC. Although its graphical interface was simple to use, and it eliminated the technical quagmire DOS users faced when adding a new device to their PCs, there were several reasons why the Mac did not overtake the PC.

DOS Was Faster
DOS PCs were much faster. It takes much more CPU power to display graphics than text, and the Mac's hardware was too underpowered at that time for such a sophisticated operating system.

Too Much Mousing
The command languages that could automate a myriad of tasks in DOS were woefully absent in the Mac. There was sound reason for the expression, "real programmers don't use mice."

In addition, Apple initially overemphasized the mouse so much that it gave little thought to intelligent keyboard commands. This was hardly a way to gain acceptance in the business world where keyboard-intensive word processing was the largest application.

It Was Too Late
Mac applications were eventually enhanced, and speed was dramatically increased, but the DOS world was simply too entrenched by the time those improvements came. Windows 3.0, which offered a graphical interface with some of the Mac's advantages, ran as an extension to DOS and was its natural successor. Windows 95 added more graphical features found in the Mac, and by this time, the world was buying Windows.

Macs Cost More
The Mac was always pricier than a PC, which purchasing agents found hard to justify. Although many corporate users bought their own Macs due to their aversion to PCs, technical personnel were not fond of supporting them. They sweated bullets dealing with DOS and Windows. Supporting yet another environment was not met with enthusiasm.

Proprietary Technology
Unlike the PC, the Mac is Apple's proprietary technology, and except for a brief period, Apple prevented a Mac clone industry from developing and growing (see Macintosh clone). Apple maintained its sole source vendor status while the PC industry had thousands of vendors.

In Summary
As a result, the Mac was used sporadically in the corporate world, but due to its natural bent, became popular in desktop publishing and graphics design. The Mac quickly became the de facto standard in the graphics arts industry.

Since Apple moved to Intel chips in 2006, many people have switched from Windows to Mac. With the Mac's ability to run Windows applications at a decent performance level, combined with the ever-increasing use of Web-based applications, which tends to decouple users from their dependency on a particular computer platform, there are many new Mac users. Nevertheless, with an estimated 7.5% of the personal computer market in 2010, according to Gartner, the Mac still remains, as Apple put it in an earlier ad campaign, "the computer for the rest of us." See Mactel.

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(computer)

Macintosh - (Mac) The name of a product line and operating system platform manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc., originally based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor family and a proprietary operating system. The Mac was Apple's successor to the Lisa. The project was proposed by Jef Raskin some time before Steve Jobs's famous visit to Xerox PARC. Jobs tried to scuttle the Macintosh project and only joined it later because he wasn't trusted to manage the Lisa project. The Macintosh user interface was notable for popularising the graphical user interface, with its easy to learn and easy to use desktop metaphor. The Macintosh Operating System is now officially called Mac OS. The first Macintosh, introduced in January 1984, had a Motorola 68000 CPU, 128K of RAM, a small monochrome screen, and one built-in floppy disk drive with an external slot for one more, two serial ports and a four-voice sound generator. This was all housed in one small plastic case, including the screen. When more memory was available later in the year, a 512K Macintosh was nicknamed the "Fat Mac." The standard Macintosh screen resolution is 72 dpi (making one point = one pixel), exactly half the 144 dpi resolution of the ancient Apple Imagewriter dot matrix printer. The Mac Plus (January 1986) added expandability by providing an external SCSI port for connecting hard disks, magnetic tape, and other high-speed devices. The Mac SE (March 1987) had up to four megabytes of RAM, an optional built-in 20 megabyte hard disk and one internal expansion slot for connecting a third-party device. The Mac II (March 1987) used the faster Motorola 68020 CPU with a 32-bit bus. In 1994 PowerPC based Macs, Power Macs, were launched, and in 1999, the iMac, updated on 2002-01-07. The Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver 2002) was the first Power Mac to clock at 1GHz and "Superdrives" (combined DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-RW) appeared in the iMac in 2002. In mid 2003 the first G5 Power Mac was released, the first Mac to be based on a 64-bit architecture. IBM and not Motorola manufactured the CPU for this new generation of Power Macs. The clock speed was initially 1.6GHz but a dual 2GHz system was available in September. Mac OS X is the successor to Mac OS 9, although its technological parent is the NEXTSTEP OS from Next, Inc., founded by Steve Jobs after he left Apple the first time. OS X is based largely on the BSD UNIX system. The core of the OS X operating system is released as free source code under the project name Darwin. If "Macintosh" were an acronym, some say it would stand for "Many Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs". While this was true for pre Mac OS 9 systems, it is less true for Mac OS 9, and totally incorrect for Mac OS X, which has protected memory, so even if one application crashes, the system and other applications are unaffected. See also Macintosh file system, Macintosh user interface. Apple Home.