Mac History

written by Christoph Dernbach \\ tags: book review, iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, Jeffrey S. Young, review, Steve Jobs, William L. Simon

Reprinted from Byte, issue 8/1984, pp. 238-251.

The Apple Macintosh computer

Few computers – indeed, few consumer items of any kind – have generated such a wide range of opinions as the Macintosh. Criticized as an expensive gimmick and hailed as the liberator of the masses, the Mac is a potentially great system. Whether it lives up to that potential remains to be seen.

Personally, I think the Macintosh is a wonderful machine. I use one daily at work, and then at night I play with the one I have at home. Or, at least, I try to play with it. You see, my wife – who for years resisted all my attempts to introduce her to computers – has fallen in love with the Mac (her words, not mine). She uses it to type up medical reports, notes on her clients, and personal letters. In fact, she’s suggested that we get a second Macintosh so that we won’t have to fight over the one we have.

The Macintosh is not without its problems. Resources are tight – it needs more memory and disk space – and software has been slow in coming to market. Many have criticized its price ($2495). In fact, there are indications that Apple considered a lower price ($1995) and then rejected it. It doesn’t seem to have hurt the Mac’s market – people are still buying them faster than Apple can make them – but there’s the potential for backlash if the machine doesn’t deliver on all its promises.

Whatever its problems and limitations, the Mac represents a breakthrough in adapting computers to work with people instead of vice versa. Time and again, I’ve seen individuals with little or no computer experience sit down in front of a Mac and accomplish useful tasks with it in a matter of minutes. Invariably, they use the same words to describe it: “amazing” and “fun.” The question is whether “powerful” can be added to that list.

In an industry rapidly filling up with IBM PC clones, the Macintosh represents a radical departure from the norm. It is a small, lightweight computer with a high-resolution screen, a detached keyboard, and a mouse (see photo 1). It comes with 128K bytes of RAM (random-access read/write memory), 64K bytes of ROM (read-only memory), and a 400K-byte 3½-inch disk drive. If you throw in an Imagewriter printer (see photo 2 and figure 1) the system costs $2990. The processor is a Motorola 68000, running a name-less operating system (see the text box, “A Second Opinion” on page 248 for a fit description). It has absolutely no IBM PC/MS-DOS compatibility, and it would appear Apple plans none.
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written by Christoph Dernbach \\ tags: Apple Macintosh, Byte, Mac, Macintosh, review

A sidebar to the Apple Macintosh review published in Byte, issue 8/1984, pp. 241-242.

At a glance

Name
Macintosh

Manufacturer
Apple Computer Inc.
20525 Mariani Ave.
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 996-1010

Components
Size: 13.5 by 9.7 by 10.9 inches (main unit)
2.6 by 13.2 by 5.8 inches (keyboard)
Weight: 19.5 pounds
Processor: Motorola 68000 (7,8336 MHz)
Memory: 128K bytes of RAM; 64K bytes of ROM
Display: 9-inch built-in monitor; high-resolution bit-mapped display (512 by 342 pixels); adjustable
Keyboard: 58 keys, detached, standard layout, no function keys, software-mapped
Mouse: single button, mechanical tracking, optical shaft encoding
Mass storage: built-in single-sided 3½-inch Sony drive (400K bytes)
Sound generator: four-voice sound
Interfaces: two RS-422A serial ports (230.4K bps transfer rate); external-disk interface for second (optional) disk drive; mouse interface; synchronous serial keyboard bus

Operating System
Proprietary unnamed

Optional Hardware
Imagewriter dot-matrix printer: $595
Numeric keypad: $99
Carrying case: $99
Modem (300 bps): $225
(300/1200 bps): $495
Security Accessory Kit: $49
Second floppy-disk drive: $495

Optional Software
See text box

Documentation
160-page user’s manual

Price
$2495 ($2990 with Imagewriter)

The Memory Size graph shows the standard and optional memory available for the computers under comparison. The Disk Storage graph shows the highest capacity of a single floppy-disk drive for each system. The Bundled Software graph shows the number of software packages included with each system. The Price graph shows the list price of a system with two high-capacity floppy-disk drives, a monochrome monitor, graphics and color-display capability, a printer port and a serial port, 256K bytes of memory (64K bytes for 8-bit systems), the standard operating system for each system, and the standard BASIC interpreter for each system. The Mac’s price includes 128K bytes of memory only.

The graph for Disk Access in BASIC shows how long it takes to write a 64K-byte sequential text file to a blank floppy disk and how long it takes to read this file (For the program listings, see “The Chameleon Plus,” by Rich Krajewski, June 1984, page 327.) The BASIC Performance graph shows how long it takes to run one iteration of the Sieve of Eratosthenes prime-number benchmark. In the same graph, the Calculations results show how long it takes to do 10,000 multiplication and division operations using single-precision numbers. The System Utilities graph shows how long it takes to transfer a 40K-byte file using the system utilities. The Spreadsheet graph shows how long the computers take to load and recalculate a 25- by 25-cell spread-sheet where each cell equals 1.001 times the cell to its left. The spreadsheet program used was Microsoft Multiplan. The time for the format/disk copy test on the Macintosh reflects using the disk-copy utility on a single-drive system. Four disk-swaps are required for the complete disk copy, the time for which is included in the benchmark.

* The Sieve benchmark couldn’t be run on the Mac (see text for details).
** The new Disk Copy program was not available at press time.

written by Christoph Dernbach \\ tags: Apple Macintosh, Byte, Mac, Macintosh, review