The Macintosh Story Part 3

history of the Macintosh computer. This is part three of that series, and it's going to be a little shorter than parts one and two, because, honestly, once we get toward the end of this saga, really all that I would be saying is how the next generation of the Macintosh is x amount more powerful than the last generation, and just kind of being a specs podcast, and that's

not really interesting to me. I really want to talk about the big innovations, the big changes, the big design implementations that have happened throughout the course of Apple's line of Macintosh computers, rather than just be a laundry list of all the specifications of every mac that has ever ever come out. That would just be boring and I

don't want to do that. So if you don't remember, Part one of this series covered the people responsible for launching the first Macintosh, which came out in nineteen eighty four. The second part largely focused on the mac from about nineteen eighty five up through the point where Steve Jobs returned to Apple. So between five and nine seven Steve Jobs was effectively forced out of the company he had co founded, and then in nineteen seven he returned to Apple.

So this third part we're going to pick back up right around that time, which requires me to do a little backtracking just so that we're all on this on the same page. So it's nineteen seven. Uh. The Apple CEO at the time, at the big getting of was Gil Emilio, and he was in charge during the time where Apple started looking at developing the next generation of

operating systems. It had been developing operating systems in house, trying to develop a brand new operating system for the power PC microchip as a a partnership with Motorola and IBM. It became known as the AIM project because it was Apple, UH, IBM and Motorola, and it was meant to be a

competitor to Intel and the Windows operating system. And how well that partnership was working, UH, they were looking at acquiring a company in order to get a new operating system on board, and they were looking at two different companies that were each founded by a different former member of the Apple team. One of those two companies was called Next. Next was a company that Steve Jobs founded

after he had left Apple. Uh. He was trying to create a new computer standard, a new type of computer for the educational industry, and Next was the computer system he developed. It was not really a super success. It was modest in its successes. It was a very expensive machine. Again, like many of the stories I've told about the Macintosh, not only was it expensive, but it was hard to get developers to make software for it. So it was

not a bad idea. It just didn't have a lot of support and it was really expensive, so it didn't get a huge number of of of purchases out there. Well. Apple acquired Next, and as a result, they also kind of acquired Steve Jobs. He came along with the the company. Jobs would then convince the board of directors that Amelio needed to go. I mean, he had led the charge about acquiring Next, but he had also of made some decisions that Steve Jobs viewed as being incredibly negative for

the health of Apple as a company. Apple stocks were at a twelve year low when Gil Emilio was CEO. The board agreed with Steve Jobs and removed Gil Emilio from the position of CEO, and then Steve Jobs essentially became the CEO of Apple, although originally he was just called the interim CEO. He would later become the permanent CEO, but in the meantime he was the interim CEO, which would mean that he was just keeping the seat warm for somebody else. It just turned out he was keeping

the seat warm for himself. He didn't turn the company around instantly, but he did get to work right away. The day after he was named interim CEO of Apple, he launched a new project that would really pay off at and that was the iMac uh. He started that the day at September seven. He started that iMac project, so he didn't waste any time once he stepped into that role. Now was also the year that Apple decided

to rename the operating system for the Macintosh. If you remember in our last episode, they had started calling the operating system a pretty simple name. The name was System, So the first mac operating system was just System one point oh. The last version of System using this naming style was System seven point five point five or seven dot five dot five. Of you prefer starting with version seven dot six, they decided to rename it and they

went with Mac OS eight. Now, what's more, this version of the operating system wasn't compatible with the Mac Plus. It was the first of the operating systems that Apple had designed that would not work on the old Mac Plus computer. If you remember, Mac Plus was the longest lived Macintosh on the market. It had been developed by Apple and manufactured for four years. That's a long time in the computer business to keep making the same model of computer. But the they had stopped making Mac Plus

is for a long time. They just continued to support it by developing operating systems that could still run on a Mac Plus. You just would update your Mac Plus to the latest operating system and you're good to go. Well, Mac OS eight was the first operating system that would not run on a Mac Plus. So this was sort of the mark of Mac Plus marching into the sunset. It was over. It was an obsolete form at that point. You could run old stuff on it, but you couldn't

run anything new on it. Now you might wonder why they changed the name of the operating system from system to mac OS And I'll explain that in just a minute. But another thing that Apple discontinued continued at this point was it's licensing program, or at least it really change that licensing program that had been rather disastrous for Apple

over the last couple of years. So what had happened was Apple had, before Steve Jobs came back on board, Apple had started to license out its technology to other computer manufacturers, which meant that other companies could make computers that were Mac compatible. Essentially, they were called Mac clones, and there were several companies that were doing this, and they were making cheaper versions of Macintosh hardware. It was

in a totally different form factor. It didn't look the way a Macintosh looked, but it ran Macintosh operating systems and programs. So you could go out and buy a clone from one of these companies that was fully licensed. They were they were not breaking the law or anything, and you could run that Mac operating system and software on your Mac clone for much less money than it would cost for you to buy an official Macintosh, which

meant that ultimately Apple was undercutting its own sales. Why why would you go out and buy an official Apple Mac if you could get a comparable system for much less money somewhere else. Steve Jobs didn't really care for this. He thought it was a terrible idea, and so he

wanted to renegotiate all those licensing agreements. So once the term was coming up, you wanted to renegotiate where the royalty fees would be much higher, so that every sale of a macclone would guarantee Apple a certain percentage of the revenue. Now, of course, that doesn't make the manufacturing companies all that eager to sign a new agreement. It means cutting into their profit margin, and it would mean that they would have to start raising the prices of

their computers to regain that lost profit margin. But that would mean that the higher price computers would be in direct competition with the Apple computers. It would just mean a lot of tough decisions on the part of these licensed companies. So there was a lot of resistance on that, and that's when Steve Jobs decided to really make a move.

You see, the agreement that they Apple had with these clone companies was that they could continue to make clones of Mac computers as long as they were in the system seven range. If they were in that system seven range, then you could continue to make mac clones. But once they renamed the operating system from system to mac os that probably the agreement no longer was valid because it was a different operating system at least in name. And that's what the agreement had said that as long as

it was system, they could continue to make them. It meant that all the macclone companies could not make the most up to date version of the Macintosh. They couldn't include the most the latest version of the operating system without paying another hefty license fee, and as a result, one by one these licensed companies began to get out of the macclone business, until by the middle of nineteen

none of them were doing it anymore. So within about a year Steve Jobs stopped this cloning program that was going on from his predecessor. Now that, in in full was a pretty good decision, at least from a sales perspective for Apple. Back in Apple had sold four and a half million MAX. So at four and a half million MAX, but then it started this clone program where it began to license the technology to competitors, and in nine sales of MAX dropped to four million units, so

five units fewer than a year before. Now, you never want to see the number go down. When you are in a company, you always want that that graph to go up into the right, not down into the right. That's a bad graph if you're in a sales department. It was worse the following year in nine, and the writing was on the wall because sales had dropped to two point eight million units. So two point eight million

from four point five is awful now. To be fair, there were other mitigating factors that were also affecting this. For example, Microsoft launched Windows five and that really affected sales at the end of ninety five and throughout ninety six and ninety seven. It was a very powerful operating system.

It was much friendlier than previous versions of Windows. People said, oh, this is more like what I expect from Apple, and so people began to become more uh happy with Microsoft's approach to a graphic user interface or gooey operating system. So there were other factors besides the fact that there were cheaper clones on the market than Apple computers. But all of this together meant that UH getting rid of that clone program made sense, and that's exactly what Steve

Jobs was able to do through this renegotiation process. And then by changing the operating system name. Now I'm gonna keep talking about Steve Jobs because his history and mac history are so closely tied together. Remember, the Macintosh started not as one of Steve jobs as projects. It was an Apple project, but it wasn't headed by Steve Jobs. It wasn't until Steve Jobs was removed from a Lisa project, and then he decided to get involved with the Macintosh project.

But from that point forward, the Macintosh was really affected by Steve Jobs. Even when he was away from the company, a lot of his decisions would end up finding their way into the Macintosh generation after generation. He made some more big changes to Apple. In n For one thing, Steve Jobs shut down the Newton project. The Newton was a personal digital assistant that had become the butt of a lot of jokes thanks to uh inconsistent, let's say,

imperfect design and implementation. It had a handwriting recognition feature that frequently did not work very well and was made fun of on The Simpsons. Among other things, Steve Jobs also decided to streamline the product lines in the computer and printer divisions. He started to eliminate some of the

types of computers they were selling. He thought that they needed to refocus and start selling a more narrow band of computers and make sure that they got that right as opposed to selling a wide variety of computers that are of varying degrees of quality. UH Now, one of the lines of computers that survived this process was the Mac. He decided that the Mac had some value to it. It did not need to be completely done away with

or replaced with some other name. He wanted to reinvigorate it, but not to UH to completely scrap it and start over. So the biggest jump for Apple was the introduction of the iMac. This was a new attempt for Apple to push into the consumer market in a really big way, and the basic iMac was a pretty decent machine for

its era. It had a two hundred thirty three Mega Hurts G three CPU, had thirty two megabytes of RAM, a four gigabyte hard drive, a CD ROM drive, and an a t I rage to see graphics card with two hold megabytes of video memory. Now, Apple originally stated that the iMac could support up to a hundred twenty

megabytes of RAM, which users could upgrade. So this was one of the times where you could actually boost the performance of your machine by adding in extra memory to the device yourself, something that Apple would eventually get away from to the point where if you wanted anything upgraded, you're really stuck. Often you don't have an option at all unless you just go out and buy a new computer.

Which I mean, if you're selling computers, if that's the business you're in, if you could convince your users to just buy a new computer every time they needed something a little more powerful, that's lucrative. If there's enough people

who will actually do it. Well, the iMac you could upgrade, and again, Apple originally said that you could upgrade up to a hundred megabytes RAM, but people found out that you could actually upgrade it beyond that, depending upon the RAM you bought, because not all RAM chips were compatible, but some were, And in fact, some users found out that depending upon the chip they bought, they could get up to five hundred and twelve megabyte modules working on

an iMac, which meant that you could get a maximum amount of RAM of around a gigabyte. Now that was pretty impressive by standards. The computer and display of the iMac were paired together, so the computer and display were one big unit that you would plug a keyboard and mouse into, and it looked a lot like a television set. The display was a fifteen inch display. Uh, it did not have the basic one anyway, did not have a

floppy disk drive. In fact, this marked a trend for Apple where it began to get away from including floppy drives in their computers, and eventually other computer manufacturers began to follow suit and stopped including floppy drives in their machines. So this was the beginning of the end for the floppy disk drive as a storage medium. It began to go into obsolescence. But the display on the iMac was

a cathode ray tube display, a CRT UM. I talked a lot about c r t s in the History of TV podcasts, So if you want to know how a cathode ray tube works, listen to my History of Television podcasts because I talked about in detail there. But the thing to remember is that these machines are take up a lot of space. So these are those big, clunky TVs from yesterday that you might have seen, not like flat screens. Those are you know, either l c

D or l E ED or plasma displays. But the original IMAX for CRT s, so they were a little hefty as a result. Uh they could support a resolution originally anyway of one thousand four by seven or seven sixty eight if you prefer now. Later in Apple introduced an updated version of the iMac that had better graphics card with more video memory, and the most recent version of the Mac operating system, which was at that point

Mac version Mac OS version eight point five. And on top of the iMac, Apple also introduced new power books in their laptop lineup, which included a curvy laptop that was called the Wall Street power Book. And I this every now and then Apple would come out with a product that I just don't get the aesthetics. If you don't know what a Wall Street power Book looks like, do an image search on Apple Wall Street power Book.

Because this thing just does not appeal to me. It was kind of funky and also suffered from a design flaw in The early models of the Hinges were a little weak, which meant that once they wore out, the laptop screen wouldn't stay in place anymore would start to fall over, which is pretty inconvenient for a laptop. So it wasn't the best product to ever come out of Apple. The Wall Street line also had a few other issues.

For one thing, it was it was noticeably slower than the desktop Power Max that were coming out at the time. And you'd expect that to a point. But when you're selling these laptops at a premium price and you're saying this is the field version of the desktops that you can get for your for your your basic home set up, it's not great when it works significantly slower than the desktop version. Alright, So we've come up to our first

little break here. Now after the break, we're going to talk more about some interesting developments from Apple, including some changes in ports systems, as well as some interesting aesthetic choices to really set Apple apart from the herd. But before we get into that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right. So around this time, Apple introduced a new protocol that really took a large part in the Macintosh from that point forward, and that

was FireWire. Uh Now, originally you had to get FireWire expansion cards so that you could get a FireWire port in your mac but but over time, FireWire would become a standard port in the Macintosh. Lines for several years. Uh. Now if you don't know what FireWire is, because it's it's largely been replaced at this stage. Uh. It is a protocol, a technology for moving data from one device to another, and it's meant to move a large amount

of data in a small amount of time. So it's really essentially similar to other types of ports that you would find on computers, like Scuzzy ports back in the day, or USB ports or USBC today USB three point oh style ports. Now, at the time, FireWire was a big advance from Scuzzy, at least your basic Guzzy. Unless you were using top of the line Scuzzy ports with the best cables that money could buy, you weren't maxing out

your speeds that high. In fact, Scuzzy Ultra had about ten megabytes per second top speed for data transfers, which is not bad except if you're trying to transfer very large files. Let's let's say video files are very high quality audio files. That was a little slow. And remember that the Mac line of computers was frequently being used by video producers audio producers for a lot of creative applications like that as opposed to your productivity software which

was typically viewed as a Windows machine. Duty Max. We're taking on all these really high end and very demanding applications when it comes to audio and video production, so they needed something that would allow you to transfer data at faster speeds. Now, FireWire's initial capabilities stretched up to the four megabits per second range. Now, megabits versus megabytes very different. Right, A bit is one single unit of information.

It's either a zero or a one. A byte is eight of those collectively, So foreigner megabits is equivalent to around fifty megabytes per second, but that's like five times faster than Scuzzy trub was. So Apple was looking at re inventing data transfers from device to device using the FireWire as their primary protocol. And also over time they had the plan and they implemented this to increase the capability of FireWire to move at greater and greater speeds.

So over the generations of the technology, it can move more information in a shorter amount of time. So it would become a standard port on max from about two thousand one to two thousand eight, and God's development in the late nineties, but really got wide rollout by about two thousand one, and over the next seven years, it was standard on almost every map that came out from Apple. Also in Apple discontinued quite a few machines from their lineup.

They officially stopped supporting all of the motor Rola processor MAX that preceded the switch to the power PC microchip. Now, remember to Rolla still had UH involvement in developing the power PC chips, but the chips that were in Macintosh computers prior to power pc chips were all Motorola chips. So at that point Apple said, well, we're not going to support those anymore. Uh, everything is gonna now depend upon this power PC microchip because that's what we're putting

in our MAX from this point forward. They also discontinued support for the Apple two line, which is pretty incredible that they had supported Apple two all the way up to nine. Now, they had discontinued manufacturing the Apple two long before that, but they continued to support it all the way until when they officially ended support. Uh that really tells you how long that Apple two's life was,

because remember that was introduced. Apple two came out like in the late seventies early eighties, So the fact that it lasted all the way to and at least some capacity in Apple support was amazing, So it's really the last hurrah for the Apple too. I still love the Apple too, and I wouldn't mind finding one just to mess around with one, but uh that I doubt that I could easily find one in good working order at this stage. I wish I could, because I loved the

Apple too. Now, the following year, Apple released some new Imax. Uh. Like the previous episodes, I'm not going to cover every single model Apple released, which would just make this episode incredibly dull. But one thing I want to mention is because the Imax came out in a selection of new colors. It wasn't just this beige computer that had been kind of Apple's trademark ever since the old Apple two days. You could get a selection of different colors which included blue, purple, orange, green,

or red, but Apple called them different names. You could get an iMac and blueberry, grape, tangerine, lime, and strawberry. And I gotta be honest with you guys, even though I'm the dude from tech stuff who from the beginning has been accused of having an anti Mac bias and even though these machines are woefully outdated by today's standards, I really still dig the designs of these early Imax, these nineteen nine Imax and these bright colors. They're really

appealing to me. Uh, I would love to have one in grape or lime. So I guess this episode is ultimately a Jonathan which list of old computers that are obsolete, that are no longer supported, that don't run any useful operating system or software at this point, but I still kind of one. So the Apple two and a nineteen iMac are on that list. There's just something really appealing

about those vibrant color schemes. So look up ninete Imax to get a look at what these these brightly colored machines look like back in the day, and maybe you'll agree that they're They've got a certain appeal to them. They are big, clunky machines because these are not flat panel displays. These are still CRT machines, But I don't know, they just seemed kind of friendly to me. Now. Apple also introduced a desktop tower style computer called the Yosemite

Power MACG three. Some people refer to this one as the Smurf, and the reason they do that is the case was uh blue. It also had white accents, and it had sort of a transparent cover over the white aspects.

The design included a drawbridge like door that could fold down to the right of the computer that would allow you to add expansions to the actual motherboard, and you could even open the computer while it was working, Like you could have the computer on and open it up and it would still run because all the modules were still connected to that hinged door. Um, it's kind of neat, not really any point of doing that, but it's neat

that you could do it. Apple offered a three hundred Mega Hurts version initially in this Yosemite computer, but by June so within a few months of introducing it, they discontinued the three hundred Mega Hurts version and instead relied on a more powerful four hundred fifty Mega Hurts model. They also used a similar design for their power Machine, like this was for their high end users who were hoping to use it for like video production and that

sort of stuff. This was Apple's power Mac G four, and the US government initially called this computer this desktop personal computer, high end personal computer but still a personal computer. They called it a supercomputer. Now, why did they call

a personal computer a supercomputer. Well, this was the first Mac that could perform one billion floating operations per second, or otherwise known as a giga flop, and at the time gigga flop was considered a capability was in the supercomputer range, so the US government said, technically, this power Mac is a supercomputer. The case was essentially identical to the Yosemite tower I just described, only this one was white,

graphite gray and had silver accents. And I guess this was meant to make it look more professional and business like and less sort of sleek and fun. I suppose it still was a very nice design. The top level Max in this model line introduced a new type of motherboard called the saw tooth, which allowed for a more powerful machine overall. You could fit more memory, you could fit a faster processor, you could fit a better graphics card to it, so it was a more powerful machine overall.

But there were various lines in this G four model, so the entry level did not have this saw tooth motherboard. It was only the higher end models that did. The entry level had a motherboard that was modeled after the Yosemite design, so it had a slightly less powerful approach,

which now this was a particularly potent machine. If you've got the top of the line G four power Mac, then you had a machine that was comparable or actually faster than a PENTTHEUM three processor computer from the IBM compatible lines and Pathium three's were known to be screaming fast back in the day. Today they're slow as a snail, But back in the day that was cutting edge if you were going the Intel slash Windows route. So the

Apple computers were no slouch. They could go head to head with the the fastest machines coming out from Intel's side. But Apple did do something that was kind of lu zy to their customers when they introduced this power Mac G four, and uh it was all because of a

supply chain issue. So one of the things that computer manufacturers in general have run into are these supply chain problem where one element, or maybe more than one element in some cases, is being held up by the the the suppliers of the specific components that are going into the computer. In this case, it was the microprocessors. Apple was finding that Motorola could not supply five hundred Mega

hurts processors at the rate that Apple needed them. Which was unfortunate because Apple had a bunch of orders for five hundred Mega Hurts Power MACG four computers. So Apple did something that a lot of people found a bit questionable. The company scaled back all their models by fifty Mega Hurts, so instead of selling a five hundred Mega Hurts machine as their top machine, they went with a four hundred

fifty Mega Hurts machine as their top machine. This refers to the processor speed, so how fast is the CPU inside the Powermax four or fifty Mega Hurts. Obviously fifty mega Hurts slower than a five hundred Mega Hurts machine. And then the four fifty Mega Hurts machines were scaled back to four hundred Mega Hurts, so on and so forth, so everything took like a half step back from where

it was supposed to be. But Apple did not change the prices of their models, so the top model was still the same price, even though it had a less powerful processor than what was originally planned. And Apple customers got a tiny bit peeved about this, understandably so that they were paying a premium price for something that was less powerful than what they were promised. So this was

a pretty nasty little situation. For Apple. Fortunately the company was able to rectify things in like a week, but it still was a rough week over at Apple Computers due to this little kerfuffle. And um, yeah, so people who talk about Apple being a company that that sets a premium price, it's stuff like this particular incident that reinforces that idea. Now, the Wall Street power Book ended up taking a bow. In nine, they discontinued the Wall Street and decided to launch a new model of power

Book that was code named Lombard. And this was the first power book Mac to have a USB port on it, so it was revolutionary at the time, and it was the fastest laptop line at the time of its debut, not not fastest for Apple. The power Book Mac that was code named Lombard was the fastest laptop on the market period when it came out. Uh. It also had a bronze translucent keyboard, which I think actually looks more brown than bronze and was in my mind really unattractive.

That's my own personal perspective on it. Maybe that's that anti Mac bias kicking in again. But the specs were really impressive, even though I found the aesthetic to be not terribly attractive. Taking a page from their success with the Mac, Apple also introduced a laptop for the education market called the Eyebook. This was a bit chunkier and more rugged than their power Book line. It was less powerful,

didn't need to be as powerful as the power Book. Uh, but it's still had a lot of curved lines in the design. I kind of dig the Eyebook. It does look a little unwieldy, especially compared to the laptops that Apple produces today, but it has again a kind of a friendly look to it. I think. Now. One thing that really helped Apple out at this time something that was completely outside of Apple's control. It was a little thing called the Y two K scare. And you may

owe my drugs not remember what this was about. Things changing so scory and people like to forget. But the Y two K bug or the Y two K Scare was all about how some lazy computer programmers and computer scientists had really made a terrible design decision that frightened the pants off a whole bunch of people back in the late nineties. So here's what it was all about. I'm gonna give you a quick summary because I could

do a full episode. In fact, I have done a full episode about Y two K. The problem was that programmers were a little lazy back in the day, and when some programmers were designing various architectures, they took a shortcut when it came to designating years, and they used a two digit method of designating the year. So if you put eight nine as the two digits, then the

computer knew you met nineteen nine. But you're probably already spotting the problem, which is that once you got to nineteen ninety nine, you're gonna roll over to two thousand. But computers only had two digit digits to tell what the year was going to be, so zero zero could be interpreted as nineteen hundred instead of two thousand, and

a lot of different computer processes could screw up. As a result, you had things that were pretty easy to imagine going haywire, like like, uh, financial software that is calculating stuff like interest, Well, if it rolls back a hundred years, that's really going to mess things up. But people were worried about all sorts of stuff, like computers just stop maybe they could stop working, and not just computers,

but other devices too that we're working on. Microchips that had this kind of architecture, so people were worried about getting stuck in elevators or what would happen on a plane. Well, Apple didn't have to worry about this because there programmers didn't use that convention when they were designating years, so they didn't have to worry about running out of time

with two digits. Uh So, with time continuing to pass as it does and two thousand coming along, people began to think, well, maybe we should get Apple computers because they don't suffer the same weakness as other computers that have this two digit problem. So, uh, yeah, it doesn't do you any good if your computer thinks it's nineteen hundred and suddenly decides to put on an Edwardian suit and start talking about the latest George Bernard Shaw play. That doesn't help you out if you want to do

some modern computing. And the mac Os didn't have that issue, so people started to look at Macintosh computers and sales uh increased or Apple. Now, whether or not that had anything to do with the Y two K bug is hard to say because there's so many other variables that play here, but it's probably something that factored into at least a few people's decision to switch over to the

Macintosh platform because it was why two K proof. In fact, power PC Max not the old Motorola ones, but the power Pc Max actually allow computers to keep good time up to the year twenty nine thousand ninety, So we're good for now. Even if you're using an obsolete mac you don't have to worry about the operating system suddenly thinking it's nineteen hundred, because it's gonna keep on chugging

along until the hardware breaks. Because I guarantee you that hardware will break before the year twenty nine thousand ninety. And if it doesn't, I'm guessing you won't be around. That's not a you know, that's not a slam against you. It's just i'm recording this in and I don't think people in the year twenty thousand are still listening to tech stuff. If you are, thanks for listening. You're awesome now. In case you were curious, the world did not end

in two thousand spoiler alert. But Apple did introduce some new stuff that year, like the Cube. This was a desktop computer that was shaped like a cube. It was five one cubic inches and it was a really powerful

machine for its time. This was also the year that Apple previewed the mac OS ten using the Roman numeral for ten, which is an X. Now that led me, the ignorant person that I was at the time, to call it mac os X, which got lots of people laughing at me for calling it mac os X. But if you are going to be using a bunch of letters in the name of your product, don't use a Roman numeral to designate its operating system number. So it's

macOS ten. Uh. And sometimes I still say mac OSX because sometimes I just like to have a little fun at my own expense. Now, moving ahead to two thousand one, Apple again boosted the power of its various computers. Nothing new there. Pretty much every year Apple would update its line of existing computers and increase their abilities by putting in more powerful processors, putting in more memory, giving it a few different ports. So again I'm not going to

cover all of those changes. I'm just going to cover the big, big differences. Uh. They also introduced some new color schemes in their iMac lines, so you could buy the Blue Dalmatian or Flower Power. These actually had designs, not just a solid color. They actually had you know, designs on them that I find almost but not quite completely unappealing. So I don't want either of those. If anyone's listening and they want to get me the which list of items I've talked about, like Apple two's and

the iMac you know lime or the iMac grape. That's cool, but don't get me a blue Dalmatian or flower Power. I don't need them. Um, They're just not for me. The company also released a lighter, more powerful eyebook sometimes called the ice Book, and Apple created the quicksilver version of its power Mac G four line. And they also opened up their first two Apple stores in two thousand one. Now there's hundreds of the things, but back in two

thousand one they were brand new. It was the first time Apple had opened up a retail space of its own, and of course that ends up being a popular destination for people all around the world. There's there are Apple stores that get crowds of tourists because they are particularly interesting in their design and layout. Oh, that's also your Apple launched the next product to help defind the company as its new identity. That would be the iPod. But we talked about the iPod in our History of MP

three players podcast. So I'm not going to cover it here, but just to say that two thousand one marked a real turning point in Apple's history, because that was the moment when Apple began to really expand beyond personal computers and printers and workstations. They began to get into personal electronics in a serious way. The Newton was kind of

a failure, but the iPod was totally the opposite. iPod was a runaway success, particularly once you've got a couple of generations in and really took off once iTunes became a real player in the in the data management or music management space. Now two it was more of the same with tweaked computer designs, some boosted performance, and not much else. Apple did create a new line of MAX for educational institutions. They called it the eMac E for education.

It was housed in an iMac like CRT style case. Uh, the stream was flat, it wasn't curve, but it still was a cathode ray tube that was providing the actual image that you saw in there. So big bulky case

in fact, really big and bulky. The basic model weighed fifty pounds, but it cost a little less than a thousand bucks, So Apple was really trying to price these computers in a way where education systems would be able to shell out the bucks to buy them, because again Max were pretty expensive and a lot of education systems just didn't have the budget to buy Macintosh computers. So this was Apple's attempt to kind of get into that

market with a slightly less powerful computer. In two thousand three, Apple began introducing Max that were no longer backwards compatible with the old classic Mac operating system, and this began the March of obsolescence for those old OS builds. The company continued its trend of updating machines, but again there

were no major revolutions that happened. In two thousand three, Apple did introduce the power Mac G five with the IBM power Pc NV CPU that gave the Mac a processor speed of between one point six to two point oh giga hurts, depending upon the model that you bought. This computer generated so much heat that it required nine cooling fans to manage it. Nine fans inside of this

computer so that it would not overheat. The case was also made out of aluminum, which is a very effective conductor of heat, which is good because a lot of heat gets generated inside the machine, it transfers out to the case, and the case transfers it out to the air around it. But yeah, these machines got pretty toasty. Well, we've got one last section to go through to talk about the history of the Macintosh and get up to present day. But before I jump into that, let's take

another quick break to thank our sponsor. Jumping into two thousand four, the big news that year for Apple was a redesign of the iMac. Now. The older CRT versions were replaced that year with a new flat panel display version. The computer was in the same housing as the display, with an optical drive to the right of the screen and all the ports helpfully on the back of the darn thing. I hated that design decision, by the way, to have all the ports on this computer on the back.

I understand it was necessary for the layout for the motherboard, but man, it was so irritating to have to plug everything into the back of the machine in order to use it, including stuff like your mouse and your keyboard that kind of thing. But this looked like a flat

panel television on a stand. The entire computer was housed inside of this thing, big, dramatic change from those big, bulky CRT sets of the iMac before, and a totally new design, brand new aesthetic move for Apple, and it kind of started Apple down the pathway of that smooth white two thousand one ish aesthetic that they became known for. A lot of Apple's products would end up following that same sort of design philosophy, but this was one of

the earliest ones. And I actually had an iMac in this style, although it wasn't a two thousand four iMac. It was a bit later. It might have been as late as two thousand six, but um, I definitely had one of these. Max was the only Mac I've ever owned. I liked it just fine. I just never bought another one. Um so kind of cool. This two thousand one ish approach very different from the lollipop colorful approach of the CRT Imax from just a few years earlier. And in

two thousand five, we got the Mac Mini. Now by we, I mean the general we I never owned a Mac Mini, but this was a really cool idea too. This was a desktop computer in miniature, and it didn't have a built in display. There was no display that came along with it, but you would get this tiny little computer, and I mean it was tiny. It was six and a half inches per side and two inches tall and

that was the whole desktop. And he would just connect that to an existing display using whichever port you needed. And uh it was bargain priced, at least as far as Apple is concerned. It was on sale for four dollars. That's dirt cheap with Apple. Uh. So it gave people the opportunity to own a Mac as long as they already had a display, or they didn't mind buying a display and a keyboard and all that other stuff for a bargain price compared to the other Max that were

on the market at that same time. One drawback to this design was that you couldn't expand it. You couldn't add more memory or or change it in any meaningful way because it was so small and everything was packed so tightly together that there was no room to expand it at all. So if you bought one, you were pretty much stuck with the initial specs that it came out with. That same year, Steve Jobs made a big announcement,

so this is again two thousand five. He said that future Max would move away from power pc chips that had provided Mac processing power for the last decade or so, and instead Apple would make a move to Intel. Intel would supply the future CPUs to all Macintosh computers that would be released after that point. Those first Mac Intel's would not go on sale until the following year, and that worried a lot of Mac users because not all

software is compatible with various uh microprocessor architecture. So if you have operating system and software that was designed to work on the power Pc platform, it might not work on the Intel platform. And if those programs are important to you and your business or or what you know, whatever you're using your Mac for, then upgrading to a

new Macintosh could be harmful to you. So, for example, here at how Stuff Works, we use very specific editing suites for our video and audio stuff like this podcast and video series. We use very specific types of software for that on Macintosh computers. If we were to upgrade to a new processor that could not run those old programs, we would be kind of stuck. Now, Apple solution for

this was to release a power Pc emulator. It's called Rosetta, named after the Rosetta stone, which of course was used to help translate Hiero glyphics back in the day. So the Rosetta was an emulator, which means it's a program that simulates another type of technology, in this case another type of microprocessor, the power PC style microprocessor, and this would allow you to continue to use some of that legacy software even on these in TELL powered machines. Also

in two thousand five, Apple introduced the Mighty Mouse. You can't see this audio listeners, but I'm making a very unimpressed face into the webcam I'm using for the Twitch stream of this episode. Remember, you can always go to twitch dot tv, slash techt stuff if you want to watch an episode live as I recorded. Well, the Mighty Mouse was a mouse that had more than just one

button capability. The Macintosh was famous for shipping with a mouse that only had one button, and if you wanted other types of functionality, you had to hold down a key on the keyboard while pressing down on the button. The Mighty Mouse actually had ability to use the left side of the mouse or the right side of the mouse, or you could squeeze both sides and create three different types of controls with this mouse, or three different types

of commands with one mouse. So it still felt like one button, but you could us the left side of the button down, or press the right side of the button down, or squeeze it, and that would allow you to execute different commands in various programs. Why not just make a mouse with extra buttons, with each button dedicated to a specific function. Because Johnny I've who's a chief designer over at Apple, and Steve Jobs hate buttons. I

guess they just don't like them. They like the ascetic of a smooth, buttonless type of device, even if it means that they are stressing form over functionality. Now, maybe again that's my anti Mac bias, but I like functionality over form. I want something to work first and then look nice. I don't want it to look nice and then just work. Okay, but that just shows the difference of approach I take to technology than Apple takes. Now, Apple would argue that they value both equal, that something

needs to look amazing and work perfectly. I would argue the Mighty Mouse does not quite achieve that. That's my own personal opinion as someone who had a Mighty Mouse and a and iMac and I despise that mouse a lot. But again, anti Mac bias, So don't pay too much attention to me. The company also began to ship dual core Power Max at this time, using dual core processors. This is part of a new era in computing at this point where we started to see these multi core

processors find their way into consumer computers. Now I'll likely do a full episode about what multi core core processors are and how they work and why it's important at a later date. I've covered it a little bit in previous tech Stuff podcasts, but just know that it would take a full episode to really explain this. But it

was a big advance for Macintosh computers at the time. Now, in two thousand six, the first Intel Max started to hit store shelves, and the biggest drawback for Mac users was that these machines wouldn't support any classic mac Os applications. So if you had those legacy apps you depended on, you couldn't run them on those machines. You had to keep an older Mac around or you had to create

an emulator to run them. And that's the problem in general with legacy systems is the hardware gets faster, sometimes you lose support for older software, and that's still a problem if you really depend on that older software to do something. Like I said before, with audio and video production. Here at how stuff works, that could be an issue.

Anyone who used garage Band with Macintosh computers knows that the various evolutions of the garage band software and the changes to the Mac operating system and Mac processors meant that sometimes you would end up losing features that you thought were absolutely important for you, and you had to stick with older, obsolete machines just to get stuff done. The company also introduced a new line in laptops. They called this new line the MacBook Pro, which of course

you can still find today. These are higher end Mac laptops, so these are meant for power users. They're more expensive, they have more features there, they've got faster processors. Uh. It's essentially, you know, they're your sports vehicle version of the Macintosh laptops. People really hated this name when it first came out. The MacBook Pro was replacing the old power Book line, and people really liked power Book and

they hated the name MacBook. But today MacBook is standard, and I think most people probably don't even remember the old power Books, and they probably don't remember that they put up a fuss when it went from power book to MacBook. The moral of that story is people hate change, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. Now, nothing of real significance happened in the Macintosh history in two thousand seven, other than Apple making flat screen Imax and brushed aluminum

instead of white plastic. So let's skip ahead to two thousand and eight. I'm not going to spend time on a year where not really anything happened. Now, this was the year that Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air, which was a big deal in a small package. It was the thinnest MacBook at that point, and at it was amazing. It was three quarters of an inch thick, which is incredibly thin for a laptop, especially one as powerful as the MacBook Air, and it weighed in at three pounds.

It had no optical drive, so you couldn't insert any kind of c D or DVD into it, but did have a sweet aluminum body. And it had one port on it, which was a single USB two point oh connector port, and that was behind a little door. You had to open the little door to access this port

because ports, I guess spoiled the computer's lines otherwise. Also, if you want to add more ports, it would have meant having to create a thicker version of the backbook Air, which was not what Steve Jobs had in mind when he actually, you know, when he launched this project to create a super thin MacBook. So it ended up having just one port. From that point forward, Max and their various lines received regular updates and a refresh to their appearances.

But that was mostly it. Right the future MacBooks would largely follow simple trends in that you'd get faster processors, better graphics. Uh, ports would change eventually, you would get better resolution on your displays as well. They'd get more expensive, they'd get thinner, and they get lighter. But that's pretty much the trend. There wasn't anything really revolutionary after this point, nothing that jumped completely out of the line of what you would come to expect from Apple. There were a

couple of exceptions, a couple of standouts. The MacBook Pro in two thousand twelve came in a model with a retina display that was the first MacBook Pro to actually have a retina display that's similar to the display you find in iPhones of that time. It's a very high definition,

high resolution display. And in two thousand thirteen, Apple introduced a cylindrical case for a new Mac Pro, so you suddenly had a tower that was a cylinder instead of a rectangle style, which was what was common at the time. And the cylinder was gorgeous. It looks like it belongs in some sort of science fiction film. It's kind of a high tech supercomputer sort of look to it. And this MacPro was really meant to work as a server or a workstation. It wasn't necessarily meant to be your

own personal computer. They were pretty darn expensive when they came out, um, and it was a really unique aesthetic something that stood out. However, I can tell you that some of the video team here at How Stuff Works have a few strong opinions about the performance of this specific model of the Mac row and they are not

entirely positive. May just be our own experiences with them, but something that they found somewhat frustrating is a good words trying searching for a word that wouldn't be too harsh. Frustrating is a good one. But this was another example of Apple taking a dramatic departure from the general esthetics that were prevalent in personal computers at the time, and trying to make it their own. M One thing else

I need to mention before we conclude, really uh. Obviously, a moment that really changed the direction of Apple overall and the mac in particular was the death of Steve Jobs. He passed away in two thousand eleven. We did an episode called One More Thing all about Steve Jobs where we talked about this, and this obviously had a monumental

impact on the company as a whole. He had already stepped down as CEO earlier before his passing, but he was still very much a presence at Apple up until a couple of months before his death, and he had handed the reins over to Tim Cook to become the new CEO. But it had been Jobs, along with a top tier level of designers like Johnny I've who had really set the direction of Apple and the the aesthetic direction for products like the Macintosh computer line and the

MAX that followed. It would be another couple of years before Jobs is direct influence would no longer be a major factor in MAX, and this is largely because the products that launch on any given year have been in development for a while behind the scenes. So while Steve Jobs passed away in two thousand eleven. It would be another year or two before his direct influence was no

longer a living component of the max that followed. But this did mean that Apple started having to produce computers without that guidance from Steve Jobs himself, and that uh some people ended up pointing out as being a an issue. Some people say that the changes to the Mac line post Steve Jobs haven't been terribly inspirational or innovative. Others have said that been more frustrating as Apple has continued

to change things up. Remember in two thousand and eight they stopped making FireWire a standard on all Macintosh computers. By a couple of years later they started moving toward well, actually really this year they started moving in last year they started moving towards USBC ports and abandoning things like

the thunderbolt connectors. So there have been changes. A lot of them have been changes that some Apple users have been very upset about because they feel like Apple is ignoring consumer needs uh and as instead demanding that consumers follow in the footsteps that they are forging, which is mixing metaphors. But never mind it. But I would say that that's been Apple's history all along Apple has made very strong decisions to go in certain directions that require

users to follow suit or they get left behind. That's the history of Apple. It might be frustrating, but it's not out of character. It is something that has been part of the company culture from the earliest days. I would argue, now, ultimately you can start classifying Max by their specs and they're disappearing ports. Uh. But again, it would just turn into a laundry list at this point,

so we're really going to leave off here. I will say that Macintosh computers continue to be really powerful machines. They're really beautiful machines. The aesthetic design on them tends to be top not much, and they're really expensive machines. And you might argue whether or not the expense is justified, but that's outside the scope of my own episode. And this kind of brings us to a close on the Macintosh saga, keeping in mind that will probably see more

changes to the line in the near future. Maybe we'll even see some dramatic departures from what we've seen before, maybe introduction of new models of Macintosh computers. But I can't predict the future because I don't work for Apple and they won't let me in the building. Now. What I really hope to do in the future is look at some other Apple products stuff for other episodes. I would love to do a full episode on their Flying Saucer headquarters building, which should be opening up really soon

and looks phenomenal from the photos I've seen. Apple. If you want to invite me out to see your headquarters, I would love to check it out because it looks phenomenal and I wouldn't mind getting lost in the Flying Saucer for a while, But I expect that invitation will get lost in the mail. In the meantime, If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, why don't you send a message to me. You can

send me an email. The address for the show is text Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for the show at both of those is text Stuff H s W. And let me know if there's a subject you want me to cover, or someone you want me to interview, or even a guest you want me to have on as sort of a guest host to talk with me, send me a note, and as always, you can go to twitch, dot tv, slash tech stuff

to see me record these shows live. There is a schedule up on the websites, and sometimes I even stick to it. I got a little bit of a late start today, so big kudos for those of you watching live right now. And that's all for me. I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics is at how stuff works dot com. Wh