Monday, January 26, 2004
Macintosh Turns Twenty, Apple is turning Twenty-Seven
The Macintosh turned 20 this month (officially it was two days ago). Here is Apple's original press release. A couple of things to note fro the press release. It mentions that MacWrite and MacPaint were bundled applications. Bundling these applications was key to the early success of the Macintosh. An equally important move by Apple was the subsequent release of the Apple LaserWriter which finally moved us many of away from crappy printed output. The press release also mentions Microsoft Multiplan which failed miserably on the Macintosh as well as Lotus 1-2-3 (which became Lotus Jazz) -- which also failed miserably. Microsoft Excel was released first on the Macintosh in 1985.
The other day while digging through some boxes in my home office, I found an ancient copy of Scientific American (September 1977). It has one of the first Apple ads, a two page color ad for the Apple II . (Here's the print copy). It's pretty amazing to compare the early "milestone" hardware with what you can buy in the same price range today. For comparison, here are the basic specs of the original Apple II and Macintosh compared to a reasonably configured eMac at the same price point as the Apple II.
The other day while digging through some boxes in my home office, I found an ancient copy of Scientific American (September 1977). It has one of the first Apple ads, a two page color ad for the Apple II . (Here's the print copy). It's pretty amazing to compare the early "milestone" hardware with what you can buy in the same price range today. For comparison, here are the basic specs of the original Apple II and Macintosh compared to a reasonably configured eMac at the same price point as the Apple II.
Comparing raw processor speed doesn't really tell the full story. The 6502 in the Apple II was an 8-bit processor. The early Mac used a 68000. The eMac runs a PowerPC G4 chip. The eMac could probably emulate a Classic Mac emulating the 6502 and still run substantially faster than the Apple II
1977 Apple II
1984 Macintosh
2004 eMac
RAM
4K
128K
1GB
ROM
8K
64K
Who cares?
Processor
1MHz
8Mhz
1GHz
Storage
Cassette tape
400K floppy
160 GB disk
US Price
$1298
$2495
$1299
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