Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? It is time for another classic episode,
Speaker 1: and for the last two Fridays we have been publishing
Speaker 1: reruns from twenty seventeen of The McIntosh Story. It's a
Speaker 1: three part series.
Speaker 2: So this is the conclusion as of twenty seventeen of
Speaker 2: the Macintosh Story. So if you missed parts one and two,
Speaker 2: you can look back at the last two fridays and
Speaker 2: catch up. The original publication date for this episode was
Speaker 2: June ninth, twenty seventeen. So let's listen to The Macintosh
Speaker 2: Story Part three.
Speaker 1: So if you don't remember, Part one of this series
Speaker 1: covered the people responsible for launching the first macin Tosh,
Speaker 1: which came out in nineteen eighty four. The second part
Speaker 1: largely focused on the Mac from about nineteen eighty five
Speaker 1: up through the point where Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
Speaker 1: So between nineteen eighty five and nineteen ninety seven, Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs was effectively forced out of the company he had
Speaker 1: co founded, and then in nineteen ninety seven he returned
Speaker 1: to Apple. So this third part we're going to pick
Speaker 1: back up right around that time, which requires me to
Speaker 1: do a little backtracking just so that we're all on
Speaker 1: the same page.
Speaker 3: So it's nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: The Apple CEO at the time at the beginning of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven was Gil Emilio, and he was in
Speaker 1: charge during the time where Apple started looking at developing
Speaker 1: the next generation of operating systems. It had been developing
Speaker 1: operating systems in house, tried to develop a brand new
Speaker 1: operating system for the power PC microchip as a partner ship.
Speaker 3: With Motorola and IBM.
Speaker 1: It became known as the Aim Projects because it was Apple, IBM,
Speaker 1: and Motorola and it was meant to be a competitor
Speaker 1: to Intel and the Windows operating system.
Speaker 3: And how well that partnership was working, they.
Speaker 1: Were looking at acquiring a company in order to get
Speaker 1: a new operating system on board, and they were looking
Speaker 1: at two different companies that were each founded by a
Speaker 1: different former member of the Apple team.
Speaker 3: One of those two companies was called Next.
Speaker 1: Next was a company that Steve Jobs founded after he
Speaker 1: had left Apple. He was trying to create a new
Speaker 1: computer standard, a new type of computer for the educational industry,
Speaker 1: and Next was the computer system he developed. It was
Speaker 1: not really a super success. It was modest in its successes.
Speaker 1: It was a very expensive machine. Again, like many of
Speaker 1: the stories I've told about the Macintosh, not only was
Speaker 1: it expensive, but it was hard to get developers to
Speaker 1: make software for it.
Speaker 3: So it was not a bad idea.
Speaker 1: It just didn't have a lot of support and it
Speaker 1: was really expensive, so it didn't get a huge number
Speaker 1: of purchases out there.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Apple acquired Next, and as a result they also kind
Speaker 1: of acquired Steve Jobs.
Speaker 3: He came along with the company.
Speaker 1: Jobs would then convince the Board of directors that Emilio
Speaker 1: needed to go. I mean, he had led the charge
Speaker 1: about acquiring Next, but he had also made some decisions
Speaker 1: that Steve Jobs viewed as being incredibly negative for the
Speaker 1: health of Apple as a company. Apple stocks were at
Speaker 1: a twelve year low when gill Emilio was CEO. The
Speaker 1: board agreed with Steve Jobs and removed gill Emilio from
Speaker 1: the position of CEO, and then Steve Jobs essentially became
Speaker 1: the CEO of Apple, although originally he was just called
Speaker 1: the interim CEO. He would later become the permanent CEO,
Speaker 1: but in the meantime he was the interim CEO, which
Speaker 1: would mean that he was just keeping the seat warm
Speaker 1: for somebody else. It just turned out he was keeping
Speaker 1: the seat warm for himself. He didn't turn the company
Speaker 1: around instantly, but he did get to work right away.
Speaker 1: The day after he was named interim CEO of Apple,
Speaker 1: he launched a new project that would really pay off
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, and that was the iMac. He
Speaker 1: started that the day after September sixteenth, nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: He started that iMac project, So he didn't waste any
Speaker 1: time once he stepped into that role. Now, nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven was also the year that Apple decided to rename
Speaker 1: the operating system for the Macintosh. If you remember in
Speaker 1: our last episode, they had started calling the operating system
Speaker 1: a pretty simple name. The name was System. So the
Speaker 1: first mac operating system was just System one point zero.
Speaker 1: The last version of System using this naming style was
Speaker 1: System seven point five point five or seven dot five
Speaker 1: dot five if you prefer. Starting with version seven dot six,
Speaker 1: they decided to rename it and they went with macOS eight. Now,
Speaker 1: what's more, this version of the opering system wasn't compatible
Speaker 1: with the Mac Plus. It was the first of the
Speaker 1: operating systems that Apple had designed that would not work
Speaker 1: on the old Mac Plus computer. If you remember, Macplus
Speaker 1: was the longest lived Macintosh on the market. It had
Speaker 1: been developed by Apple and manufactured for four years. That's
Speaker 1: a long time in the computer business to keep making
Speaker 1: the same model of computer. But they had stopped making
Speaker 1: mac Pluss for a long time. They just continued to
Speaker 1: support it by developing operating systems that could still run
Speaker 1: on a Macplus. Just would update your Macplus to the
Speaker 1: latest operating system and you're good to go.
Speaker 3: Well, Mac OS eight was the first.
Speaker 1: Operating system that would not run on a Macplus. So
Speaker 1: this was sort of the mark of Macplus marching into
Speaker 1: the sunset. It was over. It was an obsolete form
Speaker 1: at that point. You could run old stuff on it,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't run anything new on it.
Speaker 3: Now you might wonder why.
Speaker 1: They changed the name of the operating system from system
Speaker 1: to macOS, and I'll explain that in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But another thing that Apple discontinued continued at this point
Speaker 1: was its licensing program, or at least it really changed
Speaker 1: that licensing program that had been rather disastrous for Apple
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years. So what had happened
Speaker 1: was Apple had, before Steed Jobs came back on board,
Speaker 1: Apple had started to license out its technology to other
Speaker 1: computer manufacturers, which meant that other companies could make computers
Speaker 1: that were Mac compatible. Essentially, they were called Mac clones,
Speaker 1: and there were several companies that were doing this, and
Speaker 1: they were making cheaper versions of Macintosh hardware. It was
Speaker 1: in a totally different form factor. It didn't look the
Speaker 1: way a Macintosh looked, but it ran Macintosh operating systems
Speaker 1: and programs. So you could go out and buy a
Speaker 1: clone from one of these companies that was fully licensed.
Speaker 1: They were not breaking the law or anything, and you
Speaker 1: could run that Mac operating system and software on your
Speaker 1: Mac clone for much less money than it would cost
Speaker 1: for you to buy an official Macintosh, which meant that
Speaker 1: ultimately Apple was undercutting its own sales. Why would you
Speaker 1: go out and buy an official Apple Mac if you
Speaker 1: could get a comparable system for much less money somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs didn't really care for this. He thought it
Speaker 1: was a terrible idea, and so he wanted to renegotiate
Speaker 1: all those licensing agreements. So once the term was coming up,
Speaker 1: you wanted to renegotiate where the royalty fees would be
Speaker 1: much higher, so that every sale of a Mac clone
Speaker 1: would guarantee Apple a certain percentage of the revenue. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, that doesn't make the manufacturing companies all that
Speaker 1: eager to sign a new agreement. It means cutting into
Speaker 1: their profit margin, and it would mean that they would
Speaker 1: have to start raising the prices of their computers to
Speaker 1: regain that lost profit margin. But that would mean that
Speaker 1: the higher priced computers would be in direct competition with
Speaker 1: the Apple computers.
Speaker 3: It would just mean a lot.
Speaker 1: Of tough decisions on the part of these licensed companies.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of resistance on that, and
Speaker 1: that's when Steve Jobs decided to really make a move.
Speaker 1: You see, the agreement that they Apple had with these
Speaker 1: clone companies was that they could continue to make clones
Speaker 1: of Mac computers as long as they were in the
Speaker 1: System seven range. If they were in that System seven range,
Speaker 1: then you could continue to make Mac clones. But once
Speaker 1: they renamed the operating system from System to macOS, that
Speaker 1: part of the agreement no longer was valid because it
Speaker 1: was a different operating system at least in name, and
Speaker 1: that's what the agreement had said, that as long as
Speaker 1: it was system, they could continue to make them. It
Speaker 1: meant that all the macclone companies could not make the
Speaker 1: most up to date version of the Macintosh, they couldn't
Speaker 1: include the latest version of the operating system without paying
Speaker 1: another hefty license fee, and as a result, one by
Speaker 1: one these licensed companies began to get out of the
Speaker 1: macclone business, until by the middle of nineteen ninety eight none.
Speaker 3: Of them were doing it anymore.
Speaker 1: So within about a year, Steve Jobs stopped this cloning
Speaker 1: program that was going on from its predecessor. Now that
Speaker 1: in full was a pretty good decision, at least from
Speaker 1: a sales perspective for Apple. Back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: Apple had sold four and a half million Max, so
Speaker 1: at four and a half million Max nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: but then it started this clone program where it began
Speaker 1: to license the technology to competitors, and in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six sales of Max dropped to four million units, so
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand units fewer than the year before. Now,
Speaker 1: you never want to see the number go down when
Speaker 1: you are in a company, you always want that graph
Speaker 1: to go up into the right, not down into the right.
Speaker 1: That's a bad graph if you're in a sales department.
Speaker 1: It was worse the following year, in ninety seven, the
Speaker 1: writing was on the wall because sales had dropped to
Speaker 1: two point eight million units. So two point eight million
Speaker 1: from four point five is awful.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: To be fair, there were other mitigating factors that were
Speaker 1: also affecting this. For example, Microsoft launched Windows ninety five,
Speaker 1: and that really affected sales at the end of ninety
Speaker 1: and throughout ninety six and ninety seven. It was a
Speaker 1: very powerful operating system. It was much friendlier than previous
Speaker 1: versions of Windows. People said, oh, this is more like
Speaker 1: what I expect from Apple, and so people began to
Speaker 1: become more happy with Microsoft's approach to a graphic user
Speaker 1: interface or guey operating system. So there were other factors
Speaker 1: besides the fact that there were cheaper clones on the
Speaker 1: market than Apple computers. But all of this together meant
Speaker 1: that getting rid of that clone program just made sense.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what Steve Jobs was able to do
Speaker 1: through this renegotiation process and then by changing the operating
Speaker 1: system name.
Speaker 3: Now I'm going to keep talking about Steve.
Speaker 1: Jobs because his history and mac history are so closely
Speaker 1: tied together. Remember, the Macintosh started not as one of
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs's projects. It was an Apple project, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't headed by Steve Jobs. It wasn't until Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: was removed from a Lisa project, and then he decided
Speaker 1: to get involved with the McIntosh project. But from that
Speaker 1: point forward, the Macintosh was really affected by Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: Even when he was away from the company, a lot
Speaker 1: of his decisions would end up finding their way into
Speaker 1: the Macintosh generation after generation. He made some more big
Speaker 1: changes to Apple.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: For one thing, Steve Jobs shut down the Newton project.
Speaker 1: The Newton was a personal digital assistant that had become
Speaker 1: the butt of a lot of jokes thanks to ah inconsistent,
Speaker 1: let's say, imperfect design and implementation. It had a handwriting
Speaker 1: recognition feature that frequently did not work very well and
Speaker 1: was made fun of on The Simpsons. Among other things.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs also decided to streamline the product lines in
Speaker 1: the computer and printer divisions. He started to eliminate some
Speaker 1: of the types of computers they were selling. He thought
Speaker 1: that they needed to refocus and start selling a more
Speaker 1: narrow band of computers and make sure that they got
Speaker 1: that right, as opposed to selling a wide variety of
Speaker 1: computers that are of varying degrees of quality. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the lines of computers that survived this process was
Speaker 1: the Mac. He decided that the Mac had some value
Speaker 1: to it. It did not need to be completely done
Speaker 1: away with or replaced with some other name. He wanted
Speaker 1: to reinvigorate it, but not to completely scrap it and
Speaker 1: start over. So the biggest jump for Apple was the
Speaker 1: introduction of the iMac. This was a new attempt for
Speaker 1: Apple to push into the consumer market in a really
Speaker 1: big way, and the basic iMac was a pretty decent
Speaker 1: machine for its era. It had a two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty three megahertz G three CPU, had thirty two megabytes
Speaker 1: of RAM, a four gigabyte hard drive, a CD ROM drive,
Speaker 1: and an Ati Rage two CS graphics card with two
Speaker 1: whole megabytes of video memory. Now, Apple originally stated that
Speaker 1: the iMac could support up to one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: eight megabytes of RAM, which users could upgrade. So this
Speaker 1: was one of the times where you could actually boost
Speaker 1: the performance of your machine by adding in extra memory
Speaker 1: to the device yourself, something that Apple would eventually get
Speaker 1: away from to the point where if you wanted anything upgraded,
Speaker 1: you're really stuck. Often you don't have an option at
Speaker 1: all unless you just go out and buy a new computer.
Speaker 1: Which I mean, if you're selling computers, if that's the
Speaker 1: business you're in, if you could convince your users to
Speaker 1: just buy a new computer every time they needed something
Speaker 1: a little more powerful, that's lucrative.
Speaker 3: If there's enough people who will actually do it.
Speaker 1: Well, the iMac you could upgrade, and again, Apple originally
Speaker 1: said that you could upgrade up to one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty eight megabytes of RAM, but people found out that
Speaker 1: you could actually upgrade it beyond that, depending upon on
Speaker 1: the RAM you bought, because not all RAM chips were compatible,
Speaker 1: but some were, and in fact, some users found out
Speaker 1: that depending upon the chip they bought, they could get
Speaker 1: up to five hundred and twelve megabyte modules working on
Speaker 1: an iMac, which meant that you could get a maximum
Speaker 1: amount of RAM of around a gigabyte. Now, that was
Speaker 1: pretty impressive by nineteen ninety eight standards. The computer and
Speaker 1: display of the iMac were paired together, so the computer
Speaker 1: and display were one big unit that you would plug
Speaker 1: a keyboard and mouse into and it looked a lot
Speaker 1: like a television set. The display was a fifteen inch display.
Speaker 1: It did not have the basic one anyway, did not
Speaker 1: have a floppy disk drive. In fact, this marked a
Speaker 1: trend for Apple where it began to get away from
Speaker 1: including floppy drives in their computers, and eventually other computer
Speaker 1: manufacturers began to follow suit and stopped including floppy drives
Speaker 1: in their machines. So this was the beginning of the
Speaker 1: end for the floppy disk drive as a storage media.
Speaker 1: It began to go into obsolescence. But the display on
Speaker 1: the iMac was a cathode ray tube display a CRT.
Speaker 1: I talked a lot about CRTs in the History of
Speaker 1: TV podcasts, So if you want to know how a
Speaker 1: cathode ray tube works, listen to my History of Television
Speaker 1: podcasts because I talk about in detail there. But the
Speaker 1: thing to remember is that these machines are take up
Speaker 1: a lot of space. So these are those big, clunky
Speaker 1: TVs from yesterday that you might have seen, not like
Speaker 1: flat screens. Those are you know, either LCD or LED
Speaker 1: or plasma displays. But the original IMAX for CRTs, so
Speaker 1: they were a little hefty. As a result, they could
Speaker 1: support a resolution originally anyway of oneenty twenty four by
Speaker 1: seven sixty eight or ten twenty four by seven sixty
Speaker 1: eight if you prefer now. Later in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: Apple introduced an updated version of the iMac that had
Speaker 1: better graphics card with more video memory, and the most
Speaker 1: recent version of the Mac operating system, which was at
Speaker 1: that point macversion Mac OS version eight point five.
Speaker 3: And on top of the iMac.
Speaker 1: Apple also introduced new power books in their laptop lineup,
Speaker 1: which included a curvy laptop that was called the Wall
Speaker 1: Street power Book. And I this every now and then
Speaker 1: Apple would come out with a product that I just
Speaker 1: don't get the esthetics. If you don't know what a
Speaker 1: Wall Street PowerBook looks like, do an image search on
Speaker 1: Apple Wall Street power Book. Because this thing just does
Speaker 1: not appeal to me. It was kind of funky. It
Speaker 1: also suffered from a design flaw. In the early models,
Speaker 1: the hinges were a little weak, which meant that once
Speaker 1: they wore out, the laptop screen wouldn't stay in place anymore.
Speaker 1: It would start to fall over, which is pretty inconvenient
Speaker 1: for a laptop. So it wasn't the best product to
Speaker 1: ever come out of Apple. The Wall Street line also
Speaker 1: had a few other issues. For one thing, it was
Speaker 1: noticeably slower than the desktop powermas that were coming out
Speaker 1: at the time. And you'd expect that to a point.
Speaker 1: But when you're selling these laptops at a premium price
Speaker 1: and you're saying this is the field version of the
Speaker 1: desktops that you can get for your basic home setup,
Speaker 1: it's not great when it works significantly slower than the
Speaker 1: desktop version. All Right, So we've come up to our
Speaker 1: first little break here. Now after the break, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk more about some interesting developments from Apple, including
Speaker 1: some changes in port systems, as well as some interesting
Speaker 1: esthetic choices to really set Apple apart from the herd.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 3: All right. So around this time.
Speaker 1: Apple introduced a new protocol that really took a large
Speaker 1: part in the Macintosh from that point forward, and that
Speaker 1: was FireWire.
Speaker 3: Now, originally you had to.
Speaker 1: Get FireWire expansion cards so that you could get a
Speaker 1: FireWire port in your mac but over time, FireWire would
Speaker 1: become a standard port in the Macintosh lines for several years. Now,
Speaker 1: if you don't know what FireWire is because it's largely
Speaker 1: been replaced at this stage. It is a protocol, a
Speaker 1: technology for moving data from one device to another, and
Speaker 1: it's meant to move a large amount of data in
Speaker 1: a small amount of time. So it's really essentially similar
Speaker 1: to other types of ports that you would find on computers,
Speaker 1: like Scuzzy ports back in the day, or us B
Speaker 1: ports or USBC today used to be three point zero
Speaker 1: style ports.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: At the time, FireWire was a big advance from Scuzzy,
Speaker 1: at least your basic Scuzzy. Unless you were using top
Speaker 1: of the line Scuzzy ports with the best cables that
Speaker 1: money could buy, you weren't maxing out your speeds that high.
Speaker 1: In fact, Scuzzy Ultra had about a ten megabytes per
Speaker 1: second top speed for data transfers, which is not bad
Speaker 1: except if you're trying to transfer very large files let's
Speaker 1: say video files are very high quality audio files.
Speaker 3: That was a little slow.
Speaker 1: And remember that the macline of computers was frequently being
Speaker 1: used by video producers audio producers for a lot of
Speaker 1: creative applications like that, as opposed to your productivity software,
Speaker 1: which was typically viewed as a Windows machine duty Max
Speaker 1: were taking on all these really high end and very
Speaker 1: demanding applications when it comes to audio and video production,
Speaker 1: so they needed something that would allow you to transfer
Speaker 1: data at faster speeds.
Speaker 3: Now, firewires initial.
Speaker 1: Capabilities stretched up to the four hundred megabits per second range.
Speaker 1: Now megabits versus megabytes very different.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: A bit is one single unit of information, it's either
Speaker 1: a zero or a one.
Speaker 3: A byte is.
Speaker 1: Eight of those collectively, So four hundred megabits is equivalent
Speaker 1: to around fifty megabytes per second, but that's like five
Speaker 1: times faster than Scuzy Ultra was. So Apple was looking
Speaker 1: at reinventing data transfers from device to device using the
Speaker 1: FireWire as their primary protocol, and also over time they
Speaker 1: had the plan and they implemented this to increase the
Speaker 1: capability of FireWire to move at greater and greater speeds,
Speaker 1: so over the generations of the technology, it could move
Speaker 1: more information in a shorter amount of time, so it
Speaker 1: would become a standard port on max from about two
Speaker 1: thousand and one to two thousand and eight and God's
Speaker 1: development in the late nineties, but really got wide rollout
Speaker 1: by about two thousand and one and over the next
Speaker 1: seven years, it was standard on almost every Mac that
Speaker 1: came out from Apple. Also, in nineteen ninety eight, Apple
Speaker 1: discontinued quite a few machines from their lineup. They officially
Speaker 1: stopped supporting all of the Motorola processor MAX that preceded
Speaker 1: the switch to the power PC microchip. Now, remember Motorola
Speaker 1: still had involvement in developing the power PC chips, but
Speaker 1: the chips that were in Macintosh computers prior to power
Speaker 1: PC chips were all Motorola chips. So at that point
Speaker 1: Apple said, well, we're not going to support those anymore.
Speaker 1: Everything is going to now depend upon this power PC
Speaker 1: microchip because that's what we're putting in our MAX from
Speaker 1: this point forward. They also discontinued support for the Apple
Speaker 1: two line, which is pretty incredible that they had supported
Speaker 1: Apple two all the way up to.
Speaker 3: Nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: Now, they had discontinued manufacturing the Apple two long before that,
Speaker 1: but they continued to support it all the way until
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight when they officially ended support. That really
Speaker 1: tells you how long that Apple two's life was, because
Speaker 1: remember that was introduced. Apple two came out like in
Speaker 1: the late seventies, early eighties. So the fact that it
Speaker 1: lasted all the way to nineteen ninety eight and at
Speaker 1: least some capacity in Apple support was amazing. So it
Speaker 1: was really the last hurrah for the Apple two. I
Speaker 1: still love the Apple two, and I wouldn't mind finding
Speaker 1: one just to mess around with one, but I doubt
Speaker 1: that I could easily find one in good working order
Speaker 1: at this stage. I wish I could, because I loved
Speaker 1: the Apple two. Now, the following year, nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: Apple released some new Imax. Like the previous episodes, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to cover every single model Apple released, which
Speaker 1: would just make this episode incredibly dull. But one thing
Speaker 1: I want to mention is nineteen ninety nine because the
Speaker 1: Imax came out in a selection of new colors. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just this beige computer that had been kind of
Speaker 1: Apple's trademark ever since the old Apple two days. You
Speaker 1: could get a selection of different colors which included blue, purple, orange, green,
Speaker 1: or red, but Apple called them different names.
Speaker 3: You could get an iMac.
Speaker 1: And blueberry, grape, tangerine, lime, and strawberry.
Speaker 3: And I gotta be honest with.
Speaker 1: You guys, even though I'm the dude from tech stuff
Speaker 1: who from the beginning has been accused of having an
Speaker 1: anti Mac bias. And even though these machines are woefully
Speaker 1: outdated by today's standards, I really still big the designs
Speaker 1: of these early Imax, these nineteen ninety nine Imax and
Speaker 1: these bright colors.
Speaker 3: They're really appealing to me. I would love to have
Speaker 3: one in grape or lime.
Speaker 1: So I guess this episode is ultimately a Jonathan wish
Speaker 1: list of old computers that are obsolete, that are no
Speaker 1: longer supported, that don't run any useful operating system or
Speaker 1: software at this point, but I still kind of want
Speaker 1: so the Apple two and a nineteen ninety nine iMac
Speaker 1: are on that list. There's just something really appealing about
Speaker 1: those vibrant color schemes. So look up nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: imas to get a look at what these these brightly
Speaker 1: colored machines look like back in the day, and maybe
Speaker 1: you'll agree that they're They've got a certain appeal to them.
Speaker 1: They are big, clunky machines because these are not flat
Speaker 1: panel displays. These are still CRT.
Speaker 3: Machines, but I don't know, they just seem kind of
Speaker 3: friendly to me. Now.
Speaker 1: Apple also introduced a desktop tower style computer called the
Speaker 1: Yosemite PowerMac G three.
Speaker 3: Some people refer to this one.
Speaker 1: As the Smurf, and the reason they do that is
Speaker 1: the case was blue, it also had white accents, and
Speaker 1: it had sort of a transparent cover over the white aspects.
Speaker 1: The design included a drawbridge like door that could fold
Speaker 1: down to the right of the computer that would allow
Speaker 1: you to add expansions to the actual motherboard, and you
Speaker 1: could even open the computer while it was working, like
Speaker 1: you could have the computer on and open it up
Speaker 1: and it would still run because all the modules were
Speaker 1: still connected to that hinged door. It's kind of neat,
Speaker 1: not really any point of doing that, but it's neat
Speaker 1: that you could do it. Apple offered a three hundred
Speaker 1: megahertz version initially in this Yosemite computer, but by June
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, so within a few months of introducing it,
Speaker 1: they discontinued the three hundred megahertz version and instead relied
Speaker 1: on a more powerful four hundred and fifty megahertz model.
Speaker 1: They also used a similar design for their Power Machine
Speaker 1: like this was for their high end users who were
Speaker 1: hoping to use it for like video production and that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. This was Apple's PowerMac G four, and
Speaker 1: the US government initially called this computer this desktop personal computer,
Speaker 1: high end personal computer, but still a personal computer. They
Speaker 1: called it a supercomputer. Now why did they call a
Speaker 1: personal computer a supercomputer. Well, this was the first Mac
Speaker 1: that could perform one billion floating operations per second, or
Speaker 1: otherwise known as a gigaflop, and at the time, gigaflop
Speaker 1: was considered a capability that was in the supercomputer range.
Speaker 1: So the US government said, technically, this PowerMac is a supercomputer.
Speaker 1: The case was essentially identical to the Yosemite tower I
Speaker 1: just described, only this one was white, graphite gray and
Speaker 1: had silver accents. And I guess this was meant to
Speaker 1: make it look more professional and business like and less
Speaker 1: sort of sleek and fun.
Speaker 3: I suppose it still.
Speaker 1: Was a very nice design. The top level Max in
Speaker 1: this model line introduced a new type of motherboard called
Speaker 1: the saw tooth, which allowed for a more powerful machine overall.
Speaker 1: You could fit more memory, you could fit a faster processor,
Speaker 1: you could fit a better graphics card to it, so
Speaker 1: it was a more powerful machine overall. But there were
Speaker 1: various lines in this G four model, so the entry
Speaker 1: level did not have this saw tooth motherboard. It was
Speaker 1: only the higher end models that did. The entry level
Speaker 1: had a motherboard that was modeled after the Yosemite design,
Speaker 1: so it had a slightly less powerful approach. Now, this
Speaker 1: was a particularly potent machine. If you've got the top
Speaker 1: of the line G four power Mac, then you had
Speaker 1: a machine that was comparable or actually faster than a
Speaker 1: pen Tum three processor computer from the IBM compatible lines,
Speaker 1: and PENDM three's were known to be screaming back in
Speaker 1: the day. Today they're slow as a snail, but back
Speaker 1: in the day that was cutting edge if you were
Speaker 1: going the Intel Slash Windows route. So the Apple computers
Speaker 1: were no slouch. They could go head to head with
Speaker 1: the fastest machines coming out from Intel's side. But Apple
Speaker 1: did do something that was kinda lousy to their customers
Speaker 1: when they introduced this PowerMac G four, and it was
Speaker 1: all because of a supply chain issue. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we will be back with
Speaker 1: more about the Macintosh story in just a moment.
Speaker 3: So one of the.
Speaker 1: Things that computer manufacturers in general have run into are
Speaker 1: these supply chain problems where one element or maybe more
Speaker 1: than one element in some cases, is being held.
Speaker 3: Up up by the.
Speaker 1: Suppliers of the specific components that are going into the computer.
Speaker 1: In this case, it was the microprocessors. Apple was finding
Speaker 1: that Motorola could not supply five hundred megahertz processors at
Speaker 1: the rate that Apple needed them, which was unfortunate because
Speaker 1: Apple had a bunch of orders for five hundred megahertz
Speaker 1: PowerMac G four computers. So Apple did something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people found a bit questionable. The company scaled
Speaker 1: back all their models by fifty megaherts, so instead of
Speaker 1: selling a five hundred megahertz machine as their top machine,
Speaker 1: they went with a four hundred and fifty megahertz machine
Speaker 1: as their top machine. This refers to the processor speed,
Speaker 1: so how fast is the CPU inside the powermax four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty mega hurts? Obviously fifty mega hurts slower
Speaker 1: than a five hundred megahertz machine. And then four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty mega hurtz machines were scaled back to four
Speaker 1: hundred megahurts, so on and so forth, so everything took
Speaker 1: like a half step back from where it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be. But Apple did not change the prices of
Speaker 1: their models, so the top model was still the same
Speaker 1: price even though it had a less powerful processor than
Speaker 1: what was originally planned. And Apple customers got a tiny
Speaker 1: bit peeved about this, understandably so that they were paying
Speaker 1: a premium price for something that was less powerful than
Speaker 1: what they were promised. So this was a pretty nasty
Speaker 1: little situation for Apple. Fortunately the company was able to
Speaker 1: rectify things in like a week, but it still was
Speaker 1: a rough week over at Apple Computers due to this
Speaker 1: little kerfuffle. And yeah, so people who talk about Apple
Speaker 1: being a company that sets a premium price, it's stuff
Speaker 1: like this particular incident that reinforces that idea. Now, the
Speaker 1: Wall Street power Book ended up taking a bow. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, they discontinued the Wall Street and decided
Speaker 1: to launch a new model of power Book that was
Speaker 1: code named Lombard. And this was the first power book
Speaker 1: Mac to have a USB port on it, so it
Speaker 1: was revolutionary at the time, and it was the fastest
Speaker 1: laptop line at the time of its debut, not fastest
Speaker 1: for Apple. The PowerBook Mac that was code named Lombard
Speaker 1: was the fastest laptop on the market period when it
Speaker 1: came out. It also had a bronze translucent keyboard which
Speaker 1: I think actually looks more brown than bronze and was
Speaker 1: in my mind, really unattractive. That's my own personal perspective
Speaker 1: on it. Maybe that's that anti Mac bias kicking in again.
Speaker 1: But the specs were really impressive, even though I found
Speaker 1: the esthetic to be not terribly attractive. Taking a page
Speaker 1: from their success with the iMac, Apple also introduced a
Speaker 1: laptop for the education market called the iBook. This was
Speaker 1: a bit chunkier and more rugged than their PowerBook line.
Speaker 1: It was less powerful, didn't need to be as powerful
Speaker 1: as the power Book, but it still had a lot
Speaker 1: of curved lines in the design. I kind of dig
Speaker 1: the eyebook. It does look a little unwieldy, especially compared
Speaker 1: to the laptops that Apple produces today, but it has
Speaker 1: again a kind of a friendly look to it.
Speaker 3: I think. Now.
Speaker 1: One thing that really helped Apple out at this time,
Speaker 1: something that was completely outside of Apple's.
Speaker 3: Control, was a little thing called the Y two K scare.
Speaker 1: And you may, oh, my drugs not remember what this
Speaker 1: was about things changing so scory and people like to forget,
Speaker 1: But the Y two K bug or the y two
Speaker 1: K scare was all about how some lazy computer programmers
Speaker 1: and computer scientists had really made a terrible design decision
Speaker 1: that frightened the pants off a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: back in the late nineties.
Speaker 3: So here's that's what it was all about.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a quick summary because I
Speaker 1: could do a full episode.
Speaker 3: In fact, I have done a full episode about Y
Speaker 3: two K.
Speaker 1: The problem was that programmers were a little lazy back
Speaker 1: in the day, and when some programmers were designing various architectures,
Speaker 1: they took a shortcut when it came to designating years,
Speaker 1: and they used a two digit method of designating the year.
Speaker 1: So if you put eight nine as the two digits,
Speaker 1: then the computer knew you meant nineteen eighty nine. But
Speaker 1: you're probably already spotting the problem, which is that once
Speaker 1: you got to nineteen ninety nine, you're going.
Speaker 3: To roll over to two thousand.
Speaker 1: But computers only had two digits to tell what the
Speaker 1: year was going to be, so ninety nine to zero
Speaker 1: zero could be interpreted as nineteen hundred instead of two thousand,
Speaker 1: and a lot of different computer processes could screw up.
Speaker 1: As a result, you had things that were pretty easy
Speaker 1: to imagine going haywire, like a financial software that is
Speaker 1: calculating stuff like interest, Well, if it rolls back one
Speaker 1: hundred years, that's really going.
Speaker 3: To mess things up.
Speaker 1: But people were worried about all sorts of stuff, like
Speaker 1: computers just stop maybe they could stop working, and not
Speaker 1: just computers, but other devices too that were working on
Speaker 1: microchips that had this kind of architecture. So people were
Speaker 1: worried about getting stuck in elevators or what would happen
Speaker 1: on a plane.
Speaker 3: Well, Apple didn't have.
Speaker 1: To worry about this because their programmers didn't use that
Speaker 1: convention when they were designating years, so they didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about running out of time with two digits.
Speaker 1: So with time continuing to pass as it does and
Speaker 1: two thousand coming along, people began to think, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we should get Apple computers because they don't suffer the
Speaker 1: same weakness as other computers that have this two digit problem. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't do you any good if your computer thinks
Speaker 1: it's nineteen hundred and suddenly decides to put on an
Speaker 1: Edwardian suit and start talking about the latest George Bernard
Speaker 1: Shaw play. That doesn't help you out if you want
Speaker 1: to do some modern computing. And the macOS didn't have
Speaker 1: that issue. So people started to look at Macintosh computers
Speaker 1: and sales increased for Apple. Now, whether or not that
Speaker 1: had anything to do with the y two K bug
Speaker 1: is hard to say because there's so many other variables
Speaker 1: that play here, but it's probably something that factored into
Speaker 1: at least a few people's decision to switch over to
Speaker 1: the Macintosh platform because.
Speaker 3: It was y two K proof. In fact, power PC.
Speaker 1: Max, not the old Motorola ones, but the power Pc
Speaker 1: Max actually allow computers to keep good time up to
Speaker 1: the year twenty nine and forty, so we're good for now.
Speaker 1: Even if you're using an obsolete Mac you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about the operating system suddenly thinking it's nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: because it's going to keep on chugging along until the
Speaker 1: hardware breaks. Because I guarantee you that hardware will break
Speaker 1: before the year twenty nine and forty, and if it doesn't,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing you won't be around. That's not a you know,
Speaker 1: that's not a slam against you. It's just I'm recording
Speaker 1: this in twenty seventeen, and I don't think people in
Speaker 1: the year twenty thousand are still.
Speaker 3: Listening to tech stuff. If you are, thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: You're awesome.
Speaker 1: Now, In case you were curious, the world did not
Speaker 1: end in two thousand spoiler alert. But Apple did introduce
Speaker 1: some new stuff that year, like the Cube. This was
Speaker 1: a desktop computer that was shaped like a cube. It
Speaker 1: was five hundred and eighty one cubic inches and it
Speaker 1: was a really powerful machine for its time. This was
Speaker 1: also the year that Apple previewed the macOS ten using
Speaker 1: the Roman numeral for ten, which is an X. Now
Speaker 1: that led me, the ignorant person that I was at
Speaker 1: the time, to call it MACOSX, which got lots of
Speaker 1: people laughing at me for calling it mac OSX. But
Speaker 1: if you're gonna be using a bunch of letters in
Speaker 1: the name of your product, don't use a Roman numeral
Speaker 1: to design its operating system number.
Speaker 3: So it's macOS ten.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I still say MACOSX because sometimes I just
Speaker 1: like to have a little fun at my own expense. Now,
Speaker 1: moving ahead to two thousand and one, Apple again boosted
Speaker 1: the power.
Speaker 3: Of its various computers. Nothing new there.
Speaker 1: Pretty much every year Apple would update its line of
Speaker 1: existing computers and increase their abilities by putting in more
Speaker 1: powerful processors, putting in more memory, giving it a few
Speaker 1: different ports, so again I'm not going to cover all
Speaker 1: of those changes, so I'm just going to cover the big,
Speaker 1: big differences. They also introduced some new color schemes in
Speaker 1: their iMac line, so you could buy the Blue Dalmatian
Speaker 1: or flower Power. These actually had designs, not just a
Speaker 1: solid color. They actually had you know, designs on them
Speaker 1: that I find almost but not quite completely unappealing.
Speaker 3: So I don't want either of those.
Speaker 1: If anyone's listening and they want to get me the
Speaker 1: wish list of items I've talked about, like Apple Two's
Speaker 1: and the iMac you know, lime or the iMac Grape,
Speaker 1: that's cool, but don't get me a blue Dalmati or
Speaker 1: flower Power.
Speaker 3: I don't need them. They're just not for me.
Speaker 1: The company also released a lighter, more powerful iBook sometimes
Speaker 1: called the Ice Book, and Apple created the quicksilver version
Speaker 1: of its PowerMac G four line, And they also opened
Speaker 1: up their first two Apple stores in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Now there's hundreds of the things, but back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one they were brand new.
Speaker 3: It was the first time.
Speaker 1: Apple had opened up a retail space of its own,
Speaker 1: and of course that ends up being a popular destination
Speaker 1: for people all around the world. There are Apple stores
Speaker 1: that get crowds of tourists because they are particularly interesting
Speaker 1: in their design and layout. Oh. That's also the year
Speaker 1: Apple launched the next product to help define the company
Speaker 1: as its new identity.
Speaker 3: That would be the iPod.
Speaker 1: But we talked about the iPod in our History of
Speaker 1: MP three P podcast, so I'm not going to.
Speaker 3: Cover it here, but just to say that two thousand.
Speaker 1: And one marked a real turning point in Apple's history,
Speaker 1: because that was the moment when Apple began to really
Speaker 1: expand beyond personal computers and printers and workstations. They began
Speaker 1: to get into personal electronics in a serious way. The
Speaker 1: Newton was kind of a failure, but the iPod was
Speaker 1: totally the opposite. iPod was a runaway success, particularly once
Speaker 1: you got a couple of generations in and really took
Speaker 1: off once iTunes became a real player in the data
Speaker 1: management or music management space. Now, two thousand and two
Speaker 1: was more of the same, with tweaked computer designs, some
Speaker 1: boosted performance, and not much else. Apple did create a
Speaker 1: new line of macs for educational institutions. They called it
Speaker 1: the eMac E for Education. It was housed in an
Speaker 1: iMac like CRT style case, the stream was flat, it
Speaker 1: wasn't curved, but it still was a cathode ray tube
Speaker 1: that was providing the actual image that you saw in there,
Speaker 1: so big bulky case, in fact, really big and bulky.
Speaker 1: The basic model weighed fifty pounds, but it cost a
Speaker 1: little less than one thousand bucks, So Apple was really
Speaker 1: trying to price these computers in a way where education
Speaker 1: systems would be able to shell out the bucks to
Speaker 1: buy them, because again Max were pretty expensive and a
Speaker 1: lot of education systems just didn't have the budget to
Speaker 1: buy Macintosh computers. So this was Apple's attempt to kind
Speaker 1: of get into that market with a slightly less powerful computer.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, Apple began introducing Max that
Speaker 1: were no longer backwards compatible with the old classic Mac
Speaker 1: operating system, and this began the March of Obsolescens for
Speaker 1: those old OS builds. The company continued its trend of
Speaker 1: updating machines, but again there were no major revolutions that happened.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, Apple did introduce the PowerMac
Speaker 1: G five with the IBM power Pc nine seventy CPU
Speaker 1: that gave the Mac a processor speed of between one
Speaker 1: point six to two point zero gigahertz, depending upon the
Speaker 1: model that you bought. This computer generated so much heat
Speaker 1: that it required nine cooling fans to manage it. Nine
Speaker 1: fans inside of this computer so that it would not overheat.
Speaker 1: The case was also made out of aluminum, which is
Speaker 1: a very effective conductor of heat. Which is good because
Speaker 1: a lot of heat gets generated inside the machine, it
Speaker 1: transfers out to the case, and the case transfers it
Speaker 1: out to the air around it. But yeah, these machines
Speaker 1: got pretty toasty. Well, we've got one last section to
Speaker 1: go through to talk about the history of the Macintosh
Speaker 1: and get up to present day. But before I jump
Speaker 1: into that, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 3: Jumping out into two thousand.
Speaker 1: And four, the big news that year for Apple was
Speaker 1: a redesign of the iMac Now. The older CRT versions
Speaker 1: were replaced that year with a new flat panel display version.
Speaker 1: The computer was in the same housing as the display,
Speaker 1: with an optical drive to the right of the screen
Speaker 1: and all the ports helpfully on the back of the
Speaker 1: darn thing. I hated that design decision, by the way,
Speaker 1: to have all the ports on this computer on the back.
Speaker 1: I understand it was necessary for the layout for the motherboard,
Speaker 1: but man, it was so irritating to have to plug
Speaker 1: everything into the back of the machine in order to
Speaker 1: use it, including stuff like your mouse and your keyboard,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But this looked like a flat
Speaker 1: panel television on a stand. The entire computer was housed
Speaker 1: inside of this thing. Big dramatic change from those big,
Speaker 1: bulky CRT sets of the iMac before, and a totally
Speaker 1: new design, brand new aesthetic move for Apple, and it
Speaker 1: kind of started Apple down the pathway of that smooth
Speaker 1: white two thousand and one ish aesthetic that they became
Speaker 1: known for. A lot of Apple's products would end up
Speaker 1: following that same sort of design philosophy, but this was
Speaker 1: one of the earliest ones. And I actually had an
Speaker 1: iMac in this style, although it wasn't a two thousand
Speaker 1: and four iMac it was a bit later. It might
Speaker 1: have been as ley as two thousand and six, but
Speaker 1: I definitely had one of these max. It was the
Speaker 1: only Mac I've ever owned. I liked it just fine.
Speaker 1: I just never bought another one.
Speaker 3: So kind of cool.
Speaker 1: This two thousand and one ish approach very different from
Speaker 1: the lollipop colorful approach of the crt Imax from just
Speaker 1: a few years earlier. And in two thousand and five
Speaker 1: we got the Mac Mini. Now by we, I mean
Speaker 1: the general Wei. I never owned Mac Minie, but this
Speaker 1: was a really cool idea too. This was a desktop
Speaker 1: computer in miniature, and it didn't have a built in display.
Speaker 1: There was no display that came along with it. But
Speaker 1: you would get this tiny little computer, and I mean
Speaker 1: it was tiny. It was six and a half inches
Speaker 1: per side and two inches tall and that was the
Speaker 1: whole desktop and you would just connect that to an
Speaker 1: existing display using whichever port you needed. And it was
Speaker 1: bargain priced, at least as far as Apple is concerned.
Speaker 1: It was on sale for four hundred and ninety nine dollars.
Speaker 1: That's dirt cheap with Apple. So it gave people the
Speaker 1: opportunity to own a Mac as long as they already
Speaker 1: had a display, or they didn't mind buying a display
Speaker 1: and a keyboard and all that other stuff, or a
Speaker 1: bargain price compared to the other Macs that were on
Speaker 1: the market at that same time. One drawback to this
Speaker 1: design was that you couldn't expand it. You couldn't add
Speaker 1: more memory or change it in any meaningful way, because
Speaker 1: it was so small and everything was packed so tightly
Speaker 1: together that there was no room to expand it at all,
Speaker 1: so if you bought one, you were pretty much stuck
Speaker 1: with the initial specs that it came out with. That
Speaker 1: same year, Steve Jobs made a big announcement, so this
Speaker 1: is again two thousand and five. He said that future
Speaker 1: Max would move away from power Pc chips that had
Speaker 1: provided Mac processing power for the last decade or so,
Speaker 1: and instead Apple would make a move to Intel. Intel
Speaker 1: would supply the future CPUs to all Macintosh computers that
Speaker 1: would be released after that point. Those first Mac Intel's
Speaker 1: would not go on sale until the following year, and
Speaker 1: it worried a lot of Mac users because not all
Speaker 1: software is compatible with various microprocessor architecture. So if you
Speaker 1: have operating system and software that was designed to work
Speaker 1: on the power Pc platform, it might not work on
Speaker 1: the Intel platform. And if those programs are important to
Speaker 1: you and your business or whatever you're using your Mac for,
Speaker 1: then upgrade to a new Macintosh could be harmful to you.
Speaker 1: So for example, here at how Stuff Works, we use
Speaker 1: very specific editing suites.
Speaker 3: For our video and audio stuff like this podcast and
Speaker 3: video series.
Speaker 1: We use very specific types of software for that on
Speaker 1: Macintosh computers. If we were to upgrade to a new
Speaker 1: processor that could not run those old programs, we would
Speaker 1: be kind of stuck. Now, Apple's solution for this was
Speaker 1: to release a power PC emulator. It's called Rosetta, named
Speaker 1: after the Rosetta stone, which of course was used to
Speaker 1: help translate hiro glyphics back in the day. So Rosetta
Speaker 1: was an emulator, which means it's a program that simulates
Speaker 1: another type of technology, in this case another type of microprocessor,
Speaker 1: the power PC style microprocessor, and this would allow you
Speaker 1: to continue to use some of that legacy software even
Speaker 1: on these Intel powered machines. Also in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: Apple introduced.
Speaker 3: The Mighty Mouse. You can't see this audio listeners, but.
Speaker 1: I'm making a very unimpressed face into the webcam I'm
Speaker 1: using for the Twitch stream of this episode. Remember you
Speaker 1: can always go to twitch dot tv slash tech stuff
Speaker 1: if you want to watch an episode live as I
Speaker 1: record it. Well, the Mighty Mouse was a mouse that
Speaker 1: had more than just one button capability. The Macintosh was
Speaker 1: famous for shipping with a mouse that only had one button,
Speaker 1: and if you wanted other types of functionality, You had
Speaker 1: to hold down a key on the keyboard while pressing
Speaker 1: down on the button. The Mighty Mouse actually had ability
Speaker 1: to use the left side of the mouse or the
Speaker 1: right side of the mouse, or you could squeeze both
Speaker 1: sides and create three different types of controls with this mouse,
Speaker 1: or three different types of commands with one mouse.
Speaker 3: So it still felt like one button, but.
Speaker 1: You could press the left side of the button down,
Speaker 1: or press the right side of the button down, or
Speaker 1: squeeze it, and that would allow you to execute different
Speaker 1: commands in various programs. Why not just make a mouse
Speaker 1: with extra buttons, with each button dedicated to a specific function.
Speaker 3: Because Johnny Ive.
Speaker 1: Who's a chief designer over at Apple, and Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: hate buttons, I guess they just don't like them. They
Speaker 1: like the aesthetic of a smooth, buttonless type of device,
Speaker 1: even if it means that they are stressing form over functionality. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe again that's my anti Mac bias, but I like
Speaker 1: functionality over form. I want something to work first and
Speaker 1: then look nice. I don't want it to look nice
Speaker 1: and then just work. Okay, but that just shows the
Speaker 1: difference of approach I take to technology than Apple takes.
Speaker 3: Now, Apple would.
Speaker 1: Argue that they value both equal, that something needs to
Speaker 1: look amazing and work perfectly. I would argue the Mighty
Speaker 1: Mouse does not white achieve that. That's my own personal
Speaker 1: opinion as someone who had a Mighty Mouse and an
Speaker 1: iMac and I despise that mouse a lot, but again
Speaker 1: antimac bias, so don't pay too much attention to me.
Speaker 1: The company also began to ship dual core Power Max
Speaker 1: at this time, using dual core processors. This is part
Speaker 1: of a new era in computing at this point where
Speaker 1: we started to see these multicore processors find their way
Speaker 1: into consumer computers. Now, I'll likely do a full episode
Speaker 1: about what multicore core processors are and how they work
Speaker 1: and why it's important at a later date. I've covered
Speaker 1: it a little bit in previous Tech Stuff podcasts, but
Speaker 1: just know that it would take a full episode to
Speaker 1: really explain this. But it was a big advance for
Speaker 1: Macintosh computers at the time.
Speaker 3: Now, in two.
Speaker 1: Thousand and six, the first Intel Max started to hit
Speaker 1: store shelves, and the biggest drawback for Mac users was
Speaker 1: that these machines wouldn't support any classic macOS applications. So
Speaker 1: if you had those legacy apps you depended on, you
Speaker 1: couldn't run them on those machines. You had to keep
Speaker 1: an older Mac around, or you had to create an
Speaker 1: emulator to run them. And that's the problem in general
Speaker 1: with legacy systems. As the hardware gets faster, sometimes you
Speaker 1: lose support for older software, and that's still a problem
Speaker 1: if you really depend on that older software to do something.
Speaker 1: Like I said before, with audio and video production here
Speaker 1: at how stuff works, that could be an issue. Anyone
Speaker 1: who used garage Band with Macintosh computers knows that the
Speaker 1: various evolutions of the garage Band software and the changes
Speaker 1: to the Mac operating system in Mac processors meant that
Speaker 1: sometimes you would end up losing features that you thought
Speaker 1: were absolutely important for you, and you had to stick
Speaker 1: with older, obsolete machines just to get stuff done. The
Speaker 1: company also introduced a new line in laptops. They called
Speaker 1: this new line the MacBook Pro, which of course you
Speaker 1: can still find today. These are higher end Mac laptops,
Speaker 1: so these are meant for power users. They're more expensive,
Speaker 1: they have more features, they're they've got faster processors. It's
Speaker 1: essentially you know your sports vehicle version of the Macintosh laptops.
Speaker 1: People really hated this name when it first came out.
Speaker 1: The MacBook Pro was replacing the old PowerBook line, and
Speaker 1: people really liked PowerBook and they hated the name MacBook.
Speaker 1: But today MacBook is standard, and I think most people
Speaker 1: probably don't even remember the old power Books, and they
Speaker 1: probably don't remember that they put up a fuss when
Speaker 1: it went from PowerBook to MacBook. The moral of that
Speaker 1: story is people hate change, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. Now,
Speaker 1: nothing of real significance happened in the Macintosh history in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, other than Apple making flat screen
Speaker 1: Imax and brushed aluminum instead of white plastic.
Speaker 3: So let's skip ahead to two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to spend time on a year where
Speaker 1: not really anything happened. Now, this was the year that
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air, which was a big
Speaker 1: deal in a small package. It was the thinnest MacBook
Speaker 1: at that point, and at.
Speaker 3: It was amazing.
Speaker 1: It was three quarters of an inch thick, which is
Speaker 1: incredibly thin for a laptop, especially one as powerful as
Speaker 1: the MacBook Air, and it weighed in at three pounds.
Speaker 1: It had no optical drive, so you couldn't insert any
Speaker 1: kind of CD or DVD into it. But it did
Speaker 1: have a sweet aluminum body, and it had one port
Speaker 1: on it, which was a single USB two point zero
Speaker 1: connector port, and that was behind a little door. You
Speaker 1: had to open the little door to access this port
Speaker 1: because ports, I guess, spoiled the computer's lines otherwise. Also,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to add more ports, it would have
Speaker 1: meant having to create a thicker version of the MacBook Air,
Speaker 1: which was not what Steve Jobs had in mind when
Speaker 1: he actually, you know, when he launched this project to
Speaker 1: create a super thin MacBook, so it ended up having
Speaker 1: just one port. From that point forward, Max and their
Speaker 1: various lines received regular updates and a refresh to their appearances,
Speaker 1: but that was mostly it. Right, the future MacBooks would
Speaker 1: largely follow simple trends in that you'd get.
Speaker 3: Faster processors, better graphics. Ports would change.
Speaker 1: Eventually you would get better resolution on your displays as well.
Speaker 1: They'd get more expensive, they'd get thinner, and they'd get lighter.
Speaker 1: But that's pretty much the trend. There wasn't anything really
Speaker 1: revolutionary after this point, nothing that jumped completely out of
Speaker 1: the line of what you would come to expect from Apple.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of exceptions, a couple standouts. The
Speaker 1: MacBook Pro in twenty twelve came in a model with
Speaker 1: a retina display that was the first MacBook Pro to
Speaker 1: actually have a retina display that's similar to the display
Speaker 1: you find in iPhones of that time, is a very
Speaker 1: high definition, high resolution display. And in twenty thirteen, Apple
Speaker 1: introduced a cylindrical case for a new Mac Pro, so
Speaker 1: you suddenly had a tower that was a cylinder instead
Speaker 1: of a rectangle style, which was what was common at
Speaker 1: the time. And the cylinder was gorgeous. It looks like
Speaker 1: it belongs in some sort of science fiction film. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a high tech supercomputer sort of look to it.
Speaker 1: And this Mac Pro was really meant to work as
Speaker 1: a server or a workstation. It wasn't necessarily meant to
Speaker 1: be your own personal computer. They were pretty darn expensive
Speaker 1: when they came out, and it was a really unique
Speaker 1: esthetic something that stood out. However, I can tell you
Speaker 1: that some of the video team here at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works have a few strong opinions about the performance of
Speaker 1: this specific model of the MacPro, and they are not
Speaker 1: entirely positive. May just be our own experiences with them,
Speaker 1: but something that they found somewhat frustrating is a good
Speaker 1: word searching for a word that wouldn't be too harsh.
Speaker 3: Frustrating is a good one.
Speaker 1: But this was another example of Apple taking a dramatic
Speaker 1: departure from the general esthetics that were prevalent in personal
Speaker 1: computers at the time and trying to make it their own.
Speaker 1: One thing else I need to mention before we conclude, really,
Speaker 1: obviously a moment that really changed the direction of Apple
Speaker 1: overall and the Mac in particular, was the death of
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs.
Speaker 3: He passed away in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: We did an episode called One More Thing all about
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs where we talked about this, and this obviously
Speaker 1: had a monumental impact on the company as a whole.
Speaker 1: He had already stepped down as CEO earlier before his passing,
Speaker 1: but he was still very much a president set Apple
Speaker 1: up until a couple of months before his death, and
Speaker 1: he had handed the reins over to Tim Cook to
Speaker 1: become the new CEO. But it had been Jobs, along
Speaker 1: with a top tier level of designers like Johnny Ive,
Speaker 1: who had really set the direction of Apple and the
Speaker 1: esthetic direction for products like the Macintosh computer line and
Speaker 1: the MAX that followed. It would be another couple of
Speaker 1: years before Jobs's direct influence would no longer be a
Speaker 1: major factor in MAX. And this is largely because the
Speaker 1: products that launch on any given year have been in
Speaker 1: development for a while behind the scenes. So while Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs passed away in twenty eleven, it would be another
Speaker 1: year or two before his direct influence was no longer
Speaker 1: a living component of the MAX that followed. But this
Speaker 1: did mean that Apple started having to produce computers without
Speaker 1: that guidance from Steve Jobs himself, and that some people
Speaker 1: ended up pointing out as being an issue. Some people
Speaker 1: say that the changes to the macline post Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: haven't been terribly inspirational or innovative. Others have said that
Speaker 1: been more frustrating as Apple has continued to change things up.
Speaker 1: Remember in two thousand and eight they stopped making FireWire
Speaker 1: a standard on all Macintosh computers.
Speaker 3: By a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Later, they started moving toward well, actually really this year
Speaker 1: they started moving in last year they started moving toward
Speaker 1: USB s ports and abandoning things like the thunderbolt connectors.
Speaker 1: So there have been changes, a lot of them have
Speaker 1: been changes that some Apple users have been very upset
Speaker 1: about because they feel like Apple is ignoring consumer needs
Speaker 1: and is instead demanding that consumers follow in the footsteps
Speaker 1: that they are forging, which is mixing metaphors.
Speaker 3: But never mind it.
Speaker 1: But I would say that that's been Apple's history all along.
Speaker 1: Apple has made very strong decisions to go in certain
Speaker 1: directions that require users to follow suit or they get
Speaker 1: left behind. That's the history of Apple. It might be frustrating,
Speaker 1: but it's not out of character. It is something that
Speaker 1: has been part of the company culture from the earliest days,
Speaker 1: I would argue.
Speaker 2: And that concludes the three part Macintosh story as of
Speaker 2: June ninth, twenty seventeen. I'll have to check and see
Speaker 2: if I've done updates since then, because clearly a lot
Speaker 2: can happen in six years seven years, so we will
Speaker 2: look and see what kind of updates we can do.
Speaker 2: Maybe it could be a shorter episode, because a lot
Speaker 2: of the really traumatic stuff happened all the way through
Speaker 2: its early years, right with the formation of of the
Speaker 2: Macintosh in the first place, and a lot of the
Speaker 2: things that have happened since then have been largely iterative.
Speaker 2: Although you could argue that Apple developing its own processors
Speaker 2: is a huge part that we should touch on, So
Speaker 2: maybe I will do an update in the near future.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, I hope you're all well and I'll
Speaker 2: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.