Macintosh

computer (Mac) A range of single user, 32-bit personalcomputers 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, magnetictape, 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, PowerMacs, were launched, and

in 1999, the iMac, updated on 2002-01-07. PowerMacs clocked

at over 1GHz were planned for 2002-01-22, to be followed by

dual 1GHz processors and "Superdrive" (combined DVD-ROM,

DVD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-RW).

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.

Brock Kyle's Macintosh Guide Book.

(2002-06-21)