![]() Mac Serial, which debuted on the Mac Plus in 1986 and was the standard way to connect a Mac to printers and modems for a decade, would meet the same fate. Apple Desktop Bus, the venerable connection standard that debuted on the Apple IIGS and had been on every Mac since 1987, would not make it on the iMac. Jobs expected something completely different, and was willing to question every assumption about what made a computer a Mac to get it.īeyond the iconic and influential design, the iMac was a technical reset for the Mac. ![]() What Jobs did was set Jonathan Ive and the rest of the design team loose to provide a new take on the original concept of the Macintosh as an all-in-one “ Computer For the Rest Of Us.” And it’s clear from the result that both Ive’s team and the engineering group were told that there were no sacred cows. (You think Steve Jobs didn’t understand the urgency of Apple’s situation?) ![]() You don’t invent an entirely new computer in a matter of months-and it was only ten months between Jobs replacing Gil Amelio as Apple CEO and the announcement of the iMac. Throw it all awayĪ lot of the technical pieces that would become the iMac G3 were floating around Apple for a while. Sure, what it really needed was stability, but a hit wouldn’t hurt.Īnd a hit is exactly what Apple got. In the meantime Apple needed to start making money again, needed that infusion of cash that would allow Jobs to turn over the Mac product line and let Mac OS X come to fruition. That operating system became the foundation of the Mac’s renaissance and the basis of the iPhone, as well.īut Mac OS X wouldn’t ship for another two years, and it would be a painful years-long transition away from the classic Mac OS. In the end, as we all know, Steve Jobs returned to Apple and brought NextStep with him. Meanwhile, it was being stalked by other tech companies, with a serious report suggesting that Sun Microsystems was close to swallowing Apple whole. Imagine that sad state of affairs: Apple, a company that prided itself on an expert fusion of hardware and software engineering, was talking to Microsoft about licensing the Windows NT kernel, or to former employee Jean-Louis Gasseé about buying his upstart BeOS, or (in the most unlikely and yet dramatically obvious move) founder Steve Jobs about buying his post-Apple company. But Apple had failed in multiple attempts to reinvent Mac OS, and ultimately had to turn to outside companies to provide it with an answer. It needed to be replaced, and the arrival of Windows 95 had accelerated the Mac’s rapid fade into oblivion. Its product design lab created wild and creative prototypes that occasionally escaped, but most shipping products were so beige they were begging for reinvention. The Apple of the mid-1990s licensed the Mac to clonemakers and even allowed them to invent key technology. The first era of the Mac, begun in 1984, was ending as Steve Jobs returned to Apple. But perhaps the clearest line of demarcation is the mid-1998 release of the original iMac. You can divide Mac history in a bunch of different ways. They also generally include the Apple logo from the 1990s, which depicted an apple with colorful stripes and a bite taken out of it.Note: This story has not been updated since 2020. Macintosh Classic personal computers include the name “Macintosh Classic” in the bottom left-hand corner of the device’s display. The Classic was sold alongside the Macintosh Classic II, which was more powerful, in 1991. The comparatively low price of the Classic and the availability of education software led to the Classic’s popularity in education. ![]() The Classic was 25 percent faster than the Macintosh Plus computer and featured a standard Apple SuperDrive 3.-inch floppy disk drive. By not updating the Classic with newer technology, Apple ensured compatibility with Mac’s software base and enabled a lower price. The Classic’s system specifications are similar to the original Macintosh computers and include the same 9-inch monochrome CRT display, 512 by 342-pixel resolution, and 4-megabyte memory of the older Macintosh personal computers. The Macintosh Classic was produced because of the success of the Original Macintosh, the Macintosh Plus, and the Macintosh SE. “Classic Mac” is also the name for a series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers from 1984 to 2001 by Apple. The Macintosh Classic was the first Macintosh computer to sell for less than US$1,000. The Macintosh Classic was a personal computer produced by Apple Computer, Inc. ![]()
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