- lack of software, and
- lack of software.
Happy Birthday Macintosh
By Mark Thacker, CWIS Coordinator thacker@unt.edu
In this ever evolving world of technology, it's refreshing to look
back on significant milestones to get a perspective of where we are and
where we might be going. Today, I bring you a living example of a
milestone - the Macintosh personal computer. January 1994 marks the
Macintosh's 10th birthday, and its time to celebrate one of the unique
developments in the computer industry.
So, I now give you a brief synopsis of the history of the Macintosh.
It is both amusing and sobering. The most interesting part however, is
that the next ten years promise to be just as the last.
The Early/Teething Years
In late 1983, people began seeing odd commercials on TV, commercials
which promised a new kind of computer. One that promised (borrowing
from the Orwell novel) 1984 won't be like Nineteen Eighty-Four."
This computer was the Apple
Macintosh. It was the first popular consumer market computer featuring
a graphical user interface (GUI). Until then, there had been a few
prototype systems, including the
Xerox PARC Star and Appley 's own Lisa. The Lisa was touted as a
"rethinking of what a computer should be." However, it was very
expensive for the time (the figure of $10,000 comes to mind) and was
very underpowered. The Lisa later resurfaced as the Mac XL for a brief
time (it emulated a weak Mac 512K) then was quietly buried in a virtual
silicon grave. So what about the Macintosh thing?
The Mac brought a new attitude toward using a computer, writing
programs, and thinking about computing in general. The entire interface
and use were based upon the use of a mouse with a single button. To
enforce the use of a mouse, the first Mac keyboard did not have a
function, arrow, or scrolling keys. Gosh, they were serious about this
whole point-and-click think!
The original Mac was also a very compact design, integrating the
monitor, disk drive and CPU together into one compact case. The only
externalcables were the power, keyboard and mouse cables. The monitor
was a 9" monochrome that featured an easy-to-read, black-on-white format
for documents. The slow decay amber/green monitors commonly used on
other machines looked a bit anemic compared to the crisp Macintosh
monitor. Truly, as this was a computer like no other at the time.
However, you can still see the original Mac's design evident in today's
Macintosh ColorClassic II and the Performa series, Compaq's Presario, and IBM's PS/1 computers.
The first Mac also introduced the idea of putting most of the
operating system into ROM so that programmers could spend time and space
writing their program, not writing the interface to their program.
Programmers also had to rethink the way they wrote software for personal
computers. Everything was event driven and the program responded to
what the user did, not what particular prompt was on the screen. This
method of programming is now considered the standard way of producing
applications on microcomputers.
Sales of the Mac were slow at first because of two reasons:
The price wasn't much of a factor as one might think. A new 128K
Mac cost $2,495, not bad when compared with the $4,995 price tag of an
IBM
PC-XT or the $5,469 of an IBM PC AT
introduced one year later. The Mac had only a single, nonstandard
(then) 3.5" disk drive onto which you had to run either your operating
system or an application. Because programs took longer to write for the
Mac than they did for character based machines (the IBM PC), software
pickings were slim. Apple introduced Mac 512K to solve the problem of
not enough memory in the original Mac, but that didn't really help. In
fact, Apple had a one-year supply of the Mac 512K by 1986 and had sold
their entire supply of 3.5" disks back to Sony because of lack of
interest.
However, companies like Lotus,
Microsoft and Software
Applications eventually brought out software for the Mac. With a
whopping 400K of disk storage on the single drive, it was a wonder that
programs like
Microsoft Word
or Excel could run at all. However, programmers hacked on the code,
lived with the fact that the first Macs couldn't boot from the hard
drive, even if you did hook it to the modem port as required.
Programmers also had to write programs for the Motorola 68000 microprocessor differently than for the 8088 and
8086 in the IBM-PC systems.
As software support rose and
people realized that this unusually designed machine could be usuefil as
more than just a toy, the Mac community began to grow. The introduction
of the Macintosh Plus addressed many problems of the earlier Macs. It
included one whole megabyte of RAM. What an ocean of memory!
It also finally introduced the Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI)
for connecting the hard drive. This interface is also considered a
standard for microcomputers now
One other development was so basc that I almost forgot it. The Mac
introduced the first consumer based What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get
(WYSIWYG) interface for printing. Now, when you saw a 10 point italic
Times Roman character on your screen, you could be assured that the
printed version would be the same size and be on the same place on paper
as it was on screen. Mac, Windows and OS/2
users take this for granted now, but it's hard to remember that the
average computer did not have WYSIWYG capabilities in 1984, and some
still don't! Looking back on these early Macs, it is interesting that
the Apple could be on both the leading and trailing edge of technology
at the same time!
The Mac Grows Up
In 1987, Apple released the Mac SE and II
to establish a new line of performance and minimum requirements for
future Macintosh computers. The Mac II in particular was the first to
use the 68020, open slots for future expansion and a choice of monitors.
It was an absolute powerhouse for the Mac line. IBM-PC makers however
were talking about and using the brand new Intel 80386 chip, which was
more powerful in terms of processing power. The Mac began playing a
game of cat and mouse with Intel based machines.
The expansion capabilities for the Mac came with quite a few
goodies. The SE contained and expansion slot that surfaced later as
"processor direct slots" (PDS) in other Macs. Note that Intel based
machines are just now appearing with something called "local bus," which
effectively is like the PDS on Macs. The NuBus expansion capability is
carried on to this day, where you plug an expansion board into your
machine without having to configure a single DIP switch, jumper, or
worry about memory addresses. IBM does that with Microchannel, which
shipped two to three years after NuBus appeared on the Mac II.
Color was also introduced with the Mac II. The Mac was capable of
256 colors out of a palette of 16.8 million. This was much better than
most machine of its time. As people began to use the Mac for photo
work, the demand for greater capability in color display grew. Apple
finally decided on a standard way of doing 32-bit color and began
encoding it for the Macintosh ROMs shortly after that. Most modern Macs
can display thousands or millions of colors by simply adding more video
memory to the built-in display card.
More importantly than just revolutions in the capability of the CPU,
the Apple LaserWriter was introduced in 1985. For the first time, the words
"PostScript laser printer" and "scalable typeface" became part of
the standard vocabulary of Macintosh users. Many people realized that
they could now produce their own newsletters and not have to worry about
jagged fonts or multiple point sizes of fonts installed in their
computer. Adobe Systems owes much
of their success to the success of the Apple LaserWriter and the shift
in perception of what was possible for publishing with a desktop
computer.
With the LaserWriter came one other item, AppleTalk networking.
Macintosh users could use simple phone cable connectors (called
PhoneNet) to wire their own network between Macs and LaserWriters. With
the recent deregulation of the phone company, it became legal for
consumers to wire their own house and phone based networks. So, Apple
now had computers that were truly network aware right out of the box.
Sound capabilities were also included and expanded on slowly during
this time. The Mac II featured the Apple Stereo Sound Chip. At 8 bit,
22KHz resolution, it wasn't exactly CD quality, but a heck of a lot
better than the simple "beep" that was typical of other machines. It
was long before people began sampling all sorts of sounds to play on the
Mac. Even back in 1987, you would often hear Macintosh computers in
campus labs laughing, screaming or quoting a line from your favorite
movie.
The Modern Mac
One of the most important recent developments in the Macintosh was
the introduction of System 7, which shipped in 1991. This operating system finally
made the Mac a true workstation-like computer and allowed Apple to take
advantage of modular system extensions. Let's say that you wanted to
add a new way of operating your computer, perhaps speaker-independent
voice recognition. Don't rewrite the whole operating system, simply
include an extension that makes new capabilities available to almost all
existing applications. It also allows you to distribute the
modifications to only those users who need it.
System 7 also included several other technologies that are just now
beginning to make their rounds to other computer systems. Cooperative
multitasking was not really new to the Mac, but was much refined,
allowing a user to run multiple programs at once and cut & paste and
even send certain messages among them. TrueType font technology allowed
variable WYSIWYG fonts on non-PostScript printers (side note: Apple
also licensed this technology to Microsoft for the use of Windows and
Macintosh machines). Built-in file sharing means that an organization
interested primarily in sharing files or E-mail need not purchase a file
server. The system can share files with other Macintoshes very easily.
Apple has also adopted a flexible design philosophy that allows them
to manufacture similar motherboards and cases that are upgradeable for
future use. Previously, all Macs up to the IIfx has essentially been
designed from scratch every time. The modular nature of the operating
system also allows Apple to modify designs and jus ship a new extension
to make the hardware usable. In fact, in 1993, Apple shipped out seven
different machines all based upon the 68040 CPU alone! This doesn't
even include the other models of Macintosh.
Systems are also faster now. The standard processor in the
Macintosh line is quicky becoming the 68040, a chip comparable to
Intel's 486 series. The original Mac ran a 68000 CPU at 8 MHz; the
fastest production Mac now runs a 68040 at 40 MHz. With all of this
extra speed comes extra capabilities such as color processing, digital
video, and better sound capabilities. The built-in networking
capability of the Mac is now high-speed Ethernet rather than slower
LocalTalk.
Speaking of new capabilities, the Mac that I am writing this on, a
Macintosh Quadra 660AV, has the following built-in: speaker-independent (no
training) voice recognition, digital audio (16 bit, 44.8 KHz - better
than CD qualitiy) input and output, S-video and regular NTSC video input
and output (dump your presentation directly to video tape on the Mac),
Ethernet networking, Cd-ROM with playthrough to speakers without any CPU
time used, high density 1.44MB disk drive, file sharing, 32,000 color
display capability, 8 MB of RAM (expandable to 68 MB), 230MB hard drive,
an AT&T 32-bit Digital Signal Processor, capability to act as a
telephone/answering machine/fax modem, and 25MHZ 68040 processor. (For
additional information on this computer, see the article on page 6 of
this issue of Benchmarks.)
Compatibility with DOS based machines is also quite common through
file translation software and through DOS emulators. This article was
written using WordPerfect for Macintosh which can save files in
WordPerfect 5.1 DOS format, for example. For those wanting to run DOS
software on their Mac, you can either purchase a coprocessor board that
fits into you Mac and acts as a DOS machine, or you can run emulation
software (SoftPC from Insignia Solutions) that allows your Mac to run
DOS/MS-Windows software in a window on your Macintosh. (For additional
information, see the article on page 10 of this
issue of Benchmarks.)
The New Genesis of the Mac
Where is the Mac headed? In
1991 Apple asked this question and came up with a unique answer:
PowerPC. Apple signed a deal with IBM and Motorola to manufacture and
market a new CPU designed from the IBM RS/6000 chips to be known as
PowerPc. This new chip is totally different from the modern Motorola
680x0 chip; it uses a different intruction set or language; it is RISC
based; it runs at a different motherboard; and the Macintosh operating
system must be translated to work on it.
Essentially, Apple and IBM have agreed that their future lies the
the PowerPC processor. It has the advantaged that it is a brand new
chip that is more powerful than Intel's Pentium (whose technology is
really at the end of it's lifetime). There are already two additional
models of the PowerPc chip planned (the first is the 601, followed by
the 604, and the 610). A variety of major vendors support the chip,
including Apple, IBM, Sun, Cray Supercomputers, WordPerfect, Microsoft
and others.
Beginning sometime in April, Apple will ship its first PowerPC-based
Macintoshes. Eventually, PowerPC will allow you to run Macintosh, UNIX,
OS/2, MS-DOS and MS-Windows
NT all on the same machine (in some cases, at the same time in
multiple windows). Apple will ship a version of System 7 for use with
the PowerPC that will allow modern programmers to run unchanged on the
new systems. The PowerPC runs so quickly it will actually emulate a
Motorola 680LC40 in software!
The future of the Mac is bright indeed. There is so much
information about the PowerPC that it could fill a book. In fact, you
can call Motorola at 1-800-845-MOTO for more general information about
the PowerPC. Apple has announced upgrade paths for some existing
Macintosh users and promises thid-party upgrades for others. Call Apple
at 1-800-732-3131, ext. 150 for additional PowerPC Macintosh
information.
For now, it is safe to say that the Apple Macintosh has had a very
interesting 10-year history and that it promises to be just as
interesting over the next 10 years. When the original Mac was
introduced, no one really thought that we would be directing our
computers to do things with voice command (and that they would talk back
to us), playing CDs in the background and making movies, not in 10 at
least. Who knows what we will do in the next 10 years as we move to
even faster processors and the Macintosh picks up more capabilities.
Hack, you will probably be listening to this article being read to you
by some hand-held wireless system while you compose (using voice or pen
and maybe a keyboard) your commentery on the 20th birthday of the Mac.
Please be kind when commenting on how shortsighted thoses of us in the
90's were!
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