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1976 Apr 1, Apple Computer founded
Steve Jobs,
Steven Wozniak (A1)
1976 Apple I (3)
1977 Apple II (3)
1979 summer Apple
- growing as private company
- needs $$
- 16 investors come up with $7M
- about $1M from Xerox
- investment is unrelated to PARC
- investment gives Apple access to PARC
1979 mid: Macintosh project originated
- idea of Jef Raskin
- early 70's @ UC San Diego
o visiting scholar at SRI's AI lab
o visits PARC in early 70's
- Mac an "information appliance"
- revolutionary design (whereas IBM PC is purposefully evolutionary)
- stand-alone
- easy to use
- small footprint
- Macintosh, Raskin's favorite apple
- Raskin on Mac
design (cites other articles)
1979 Dec: Steve Jobs visits Xerox PARC
- sees Xerox Alto
- "Why aren't you marketing this?"
- Xerox tries, but Star fails
- bring mouse into Mac design
1980 May: Jobs recruits Larry Tesler from PARC
- Tesler leads Lisa development
- successor to Apple II
1980 Dec: Apple "goes public"
- nets $100M from investors
- Lisa seen as was of repositioning Apple as a business machine company
- Jobs' management is deemed inadequate for Lisa
- Jobs turns to Macintosh
- Mac is consistent with Jobs' view of a computer as a consumer product
- leads to low cost computer
- Macintosh building flies the skull and cross bones
- Jobs and a team of eight young engineers
- "The journey is the reward."
1981: Microsoft builds some minor parts of MacOS
1982 summer: Raskin leaves Apple
1983 May - Lisa
launched for $10-17K (Screen
image)
- 2 yrs after Xerox
Star ($16.5K)
- Lisa is also a commercial failure
- Lisa
legacy
- Lisa emulator, etc.
- Mac inherits Lisa technology
- but at lower cost
- 1MB Lisa OS rewritten in raw machine code for ROM chip
- hardware and software tricks for performance
- lots of creativity
- reduce manufacturing costs with minimal chips and circuit boards
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These notes are taken primarily from (1) and (2). Need specific citations.
1983 summer: John Scully becomes Apple CEO (from Pepsi)
- IBM PC widely accepted
- slim profit margins
- need product differentiation
1984 Jan 22, Macintosh launch
- Super Bowl XVIII ad (A2)
- Aired just one time
- "On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh.
And you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984."
- part of $15M add campaign
- Macintosh
128K for $2500
- Motorola 68000
- GUI at a price of $2500
- PC's are still command line DOS
- elegant system software
- combined aesthetics and practical engineering
- e.g., graphics reflected files opening and closing
- more capability than Alto
- faster than Lisa
- software a fraction of Alto or Lisa
- "desirable" upgrades
- 512K "Fat Mac"
- second disk drive
- had a "paint" program (based on PARC work on DG Nova)
- word processor
- 1985 AppleTalk network
- 1985 Pagemaker from Aldus
- 1987 color
- 4MB memory (PC .64MB)
- ?date?, laser printer
Disadvantages
- no hard disk option
- can't set up a server
- "closed" rather than "open" system
- owners discouraged from getting inside
- application development is difficult
- graphics slowed down applications
- Mac: elegance and sophistication, simplicity of use
- PC: raw horsepower and access to the bits
- Mac doesn't fly as an information appliance
- $2000 is too much for video games, balancing a checkbook, filing
recipes
- not a good business machine either
- except where graphics were needed
- insufficient memory
- under powered
- corporate world likes the IBM label
- finds a market in
- desktop publishing
- education
- MS finds a way to make money on Mac software
- develops some Mac applications (which ones? Excel?)
- later converts some to PC
- gains GUI experience
- 1987 50% of MS revenue is from Mac software
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Notes
Selected Works of Apple Computer
A1. "apple-history.com," http://www.apple-history.com/frames/? (Apple Computer, accessed 2004 Nov 15).
A2. "20 Years of Macintosh: 1984 - 2004," http://www.apple.com/hardware/ads/1984/1984_480.html (Apple Computer, accessed 2004 Nov 17). This has a Quicktime movie of the TV ad that announced the first
Macintosh during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984 (Los Angeles
Raiders 38 - Washington Redskins 9). The ad ran only once. It has become a classic. From Alexander Stross, 2004 Nov 15.
1. Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray. Computer: A History of the Information Machine (Basic Books, 1996).
2. Paul E. Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
3. Steven Weyhrich, "Apple II History," http://apple2history.org/ (forethought.net, accessed 2004 Nov 27). This history includes the Apple I.
Bibliography
"The Original Mac," http://www.folklore.org/ (Folklore.org, accessed 2005 Jan 12).
Andy Hertzfeld, Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made (O'Reilly Media, 2004 Dec 1). The author is one of the co-creators of the Mac.
Scott Ard, "How the Mac was born, and other tales," Link (CNET, 2005 Jan 11, accessed 2005 Jan 12). Full URL is http://news.com.com{no space}
/How+the+Mac+was+born%2C+and+other+tales/2008-1082_3-5529081.html. An interview of Andy Hertzfeld.
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