Speaker 1: Technology with tech Stuff from dot com. Hey thereon Welcome
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, senior writer
Speaker 1: for how Stuff Works dot com. And today we're gonna
Speaker 1: try and wrap up the grand saga that is the
Speaker 1: history of the Macintosh computer. This is part three of
Speaker 1: that series, and it's going to be a little shorter
Speaker 1: than parts one and two, because, honestly, once we get
Speaker 1: toward the end of this saga, really all that I
Speaker 1: would be saying is how the next generation of the
Speaker 1: Macintosh is x amount more powerful than the last generation,
Speaker 1: and just kind of being a specs podcast, and that's
Speaker 1: not really interesting to me. I really want to talk
Speaker 1: about the big innovations, the big changes, the big design
Speaker 1: implementations that have happened throughout the course of Apple's line
Speaker 1: of Macintosh computers, rather than just be a laundry list
Speaker 1: of all the specifications of every mac that has ever
Speaker 1: ever come out. That would just be boring and I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. So if you don't remember,
Speaker 1: Part one of this series covered the people responsible for
Speaker 1: launching the first Macintosh, which came out in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: The second part largely focused on the mac from about
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five up through the point where Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: returned to Apple. So between five and nine seven Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs was effectively forced out of the company he had
Speaker 1: co founded, and then in nineteen seven he returned to Apple.
Speaker 1: So this third part we're going to pick back up
Speaker 1: right around that time, which requires me to do a
Speaker 1: little backtracking just so that we're all on this on
Speaker 1: the same page. So it's nineteen seven. Uh. The Apple
Speaker 1: CEO at the time, at the big getting of was
Speaker 1: Gil Emilio, and he was in charge during the time
Speaker 1: where Apple started looking at developing the next generation of
Speaker 1: operating systems. It had been developing operating systems in house,
Speaker 1: trying to develop a brand new operating system for the
Speaker 1: power PC microchip as a a partnership with Motorola and IBM.
Speaker 1: It became known as the AIM project because it was Apple, UH,
Speaker 1: IBM and Motorola, and it was meant to be a
Speaker 1: competitor to Intel and the Windows operating system. And how
Speaker 1: well that partnership was working, UH, they were looking at
Speaker 1: acquiring a company in order to get a new operating
Speaker 1: system on board, and they were looking at two different
Speaker 1: companies that were each founded by a different former member
Speaker 1: of the Apple team. One of those two companies was
Speaker 1: called Next. Next was a company that Steve Jobs founded
Speaker 1: after he had left Apple. Uh. He was trying to
Speaker 1: create a new computer standard, a new type of computer
Speaker 1: for the educational industry, and Next was the computer system
Speaker 1: he developed. It was not really a super success. It
Speaker 1: was modest in its successes. It was a very expensive machine. Again,
Speaker 1: like many of the stories I've told about the Macintosh,
Speaker 1: not only was it expensive, but it was hard to
Speaker 1: get developers to make software for it. So it was
Speaker 1: not a bad idea. It just didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of support and it was really expensive, so it didn't
Speaker 1: get a huge number of of of purchases out there. Well.
Speaker 1: Apple acquired Next, and as a result, they also kind
Speaker 1: of acquired Steve Jobs. He came along with the the company.
Speaker 1: Jobs would then convince the board of directors that Amelio
Speaker 1: needed to go. I mean, he had led the charge
Speaker 1: about acquiring Next, but he had also of made some
Speaker 1: decisions that Steve Jobs viewed as being incredibly negative for
Speaker 1: the health of Apple as a company. Apple stocks were
Speaker 1: at a twelve year low when Gil Emilio was CEO.
Speaker 1: The board agreed with Steve Jobs and removed Gil Emilio
Speaker 1: from the position of CEO, and then Steve Jobs essentially
Speaker 1: became the CEO of Apple, although originally he was just
Speaker 1: called 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: at and that was the iMac uh. He started that
Speaker 1: the day at September seven. He started that iMac project,
Speaker 1: so he didn't waste any time once he stepped into
Speaker 1: that role. Now was also the year that Apple decided
Speaker 1: to rename the operating system for the Macintosh. If you
Speaker 1: remember in our last episode, they had started calling the
Speaker 1: operating system a pretty simple name. The name was System,
Speaker 1: So the first mac operating system was just System one
Speaker 1: point oh. The last version of System using this naming
Speaker 1: style was System seven point five point five or seven
Speaker 1: dot five dot five. Of you prefer starting with version
Speaker 1: seven dot six, they decided to rename it and they
Speaker 1: went with Mac OS eight. Now, what's more, this version
Speaker 1: of the operating system wasn't compatible with the Mac Plus.
Speaker 1: It was the first of the operating systems that Apple
Speaker 1: had designed that would not work on the old Mac
Speaker 1: Plus computer. If you remember, Mac Plus was the longest
Speaker 1: lived Macintosh on the market. It had been developed by
Speaker 1: Apple and manufactured for four years. That's a long time
Speaker 1: in the computer business to keep making the same model
Speaker 1: of computer. But the they had stopped making Mac Plus
Speaker 1: is for a long time. They just continued to support
Speaker 1: it by developing operating systems that could still run on
Speaker 1: a Mac Plus. You just would update your Mac Plus
Speaker 1: to the latest operating system and you're good to go. Well,
Speaker 1: Mac OS eight was the first operating system that would
Speaker 1: not run on a Mac Plus. So this was sort
Speaker 1: of the mark of Mac Plus marching into the sunset.
Speaker 1: It was over. It was an obsolete form at that point.
Speaker 1: You could run old stuff on it, but you couldn't
Speaker 1: run anything new on it. Now you might wonder why
Speaker 1: they changed the name of the operating system from system
Speaker 1: to mac OS And I'll explain that in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But another thing that Apple discontinued continued at this point
Speaker 1: was it's licensing program, or at least it really change
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 Steve 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 they were not breaking the law or anything,
Speaker 1: and you could run that Mac operating system and software
Speaker 1: on your Mac clone for much less money than it
Speaker 1: would cost for you to buy an official Macintosh, which
Speaker 1: meant that ultimately Apple was undercutting its own sales. Why
Speaker 1: why would you go out and buy an official Apple
Speaker 1: Mac if you could get a comparable system for much
Speaker 1: less money somewhere else. Steve Jobs didn't really care for this.
Speaker 1: He thought it was a terrible idea, and so he
Speaker 1: wanted to renegotiate all those licensing agreements. So once the
Speaker 1: term was coming up, you wanted to renegotiate where the
Speaker 1: royalty fees would be much higher, so that every sale
Speaker 1: of a macclone would guarantee Apple a certain percentage of
Speaker 1: the revenue. Now, of course, that doesn't make the manufacturing
Speaker 1: companies all that eager to sign a new agreement. It
Speaker 1: means cutting into their profit margin, and it would mean
Speaker 1: that they would have to start raising the prices of
Speaker 1: their computers to regain that lost profit margin. But that
Speaker 1: would mean that the higher price computers would be in
Speaker 1: direct competition with the Apple computers. It would just mean
Speaker 1: a lot of tough decisions on the part of these
Speaker 1: licensed companies. So there was a lot of resistance on that,
Speaker 1: and 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 mac os
Speaker 1: that probably 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 most the latest version of the operating system
Speaker 1: without paying another hefty license fee, and as a result,
Speaker 1: one by one these licensed companies began to get out
Speaker 1: of the macclone business, until by the middle of nineteen
Speaker 1: none of them were doing it anymore. So within about
Speaker 1: a year Steve Jobs stopped this cloning program that was
Speaker 1: going on from his predecessor. Now that, in in full
Speaker 1: was a pretty good decision, at least from a sales
Speaker 1: perspective for Apple. Back in Apple had sold four and
Speaker 1: a half million MAX. So at four and a half
Speaker 1: million MAX, but then it started this clone program where
Speaker 1: it began to license the technology to competitors, and in
Speaker 1: nine sales of MAX dropped to four million units, so
Speaker 1: five units fewer than a year before. Now, you never
Speaker 1: want to see the number go down. When you are
Speaker 1: in a company, you always want that that graph to
Speaker 1: 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 nine, and 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 now. To be fair,
Speaker 1: there were other mitigating factors that were also affecting this.
Speaker 1: For example, Microsoft launched Windows five and that really affected
Speaker 1: sales at the end of ninety five and throughout ninety
Speaker 1: six and ninety seven. It was a very powerful operating system.
Speaker 1: It was much friendlier than previous versions of Windows. People said, oh,
Speaker 1: this is more like what I expect from Apple, and
Speaker 1: so people began to become more uh happy with Microsoft's
Speaker 1: approach to a graphic user interface or gooey operating system.
Speaker 1: So there were other factors besides the fact that there
Speaker 1: were cheaper clones on the market than Apple computers. But
Speaker 1: all of this together meant that UH getting rid of
Speaker 1: that clone program made sense, and that's exactly what Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs was able to do through this renegotiation process. And
Speaker 1: then by changing the operating system name. Now I'm gonna
Speaker 1: keep talking about Steve Jobs because his history and mac
Speaker 1: history are so closely tied together. Remember, the Macintosh started
Speaker 1: not as one of Steve jobs as projects. It was
Speaker 1: an Apple project, but it wasn't headed by Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until Steve Jobs was removed from a Lisa project,
Speaker 1: and then he decided to get involved with the Macintosh project.
Speaker 1: But from that point forward, the Macintosh was really affected
Speaker 1: by Steve Jobs. Even when he was away from the company,
Speaker 1: a lot of his decisions would end up finding their
Speaker 1: way into the Macintosh generation after generation. He made some
Speaker 1: more big changes to Apple. In n For one thing,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs shut down the Newton project. The Newton was
Speaker 1: a personal digital assistant that had become the butt of
Speaker 1: a lot of jokes thanks to uh inconsistent, let's say,
Speaker 1: imperfect design and implementation. It had a handwriting recognition feature
Speaker 1: that frequently did not work very well and was made
Speaker 1: fun of on The Simpsons. Among other things, Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: also decided to streamline the product lines in the computer
Speaker 1: and printer divisions. He started to eliminate some of the
Speaker 1: types of computers they were selling. He thought that they
Speaker 1: needed to refocus and start selling a more narrow band
Speaker 1: of computers and make sure that they got that right
Speaker 1: as opposed to selling a wide variety of computers that
Speaker 1: are of varying degrees of quality. UH Now, one of
Speaker 1: the lines of computers that survived this process was the Mac.
Speaker 1: He decided that the Mac had some value to it.
Speaker 1: It did not need to be completely done away with
Speaker 1: or replaced with some other name. He wanted to reinvigorate it,
Speaker 1: but not to UH to completely scrap it and start over.
Speaker 1: So the biggest jump for Apple was the introduction of
Speaker 1: the iMac. This was a new attempt for Apple to
Speaker 1: push into the consumer market in a really big way,
Speaker 1: and the basic iMac was a pretty decent machine for
Speaker 1: its era. It had a two hundred thirty three Mega
Speaker 1: Hurts G three CPU, had thirty two megabytes of RAM,
Speaker 1: a four gigabyte hard drive, a CD ROM drive, and
Speaker 1: an a t I rage to see graphics card with
Speaker 1: two hold megabytes of video memory. Now, Apple originally stated
Speaker 1: that the iMac could support up to a hundred twenty
Speaker 1: megabytes of RAM, which users could upgrade. So this was
Speaker 1: one of the times where you could actually boost the
Speaker 1: performance of your machine by adding in extra memory to
Speaker 1: the device yourself, something that Apple would eventually get away
Speaker 1: 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. If there's enough people
Speaker 1: who will actually do it. Well, the iMac you could upgrade,
Speaker 1: and again, Apple originally said that you could upgrade up
Speaker 1: to a hundred megabytes RAM, but people found out that
Speaker 1: you could actually upgrade it beyond that, depending upon the
Speaker 1: 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 standards. The computer and display of the
Speaker 1: iMac were paired together, so the computer and display were
Speaker 1: one big unit that you would plug a keyboard and
Speaker 1: mouse into, and it looked a lot like a television set.
Speaker 1: The display was a fifteen inch display. Uh, it did
Speaker 1: not have the basic one anyway, did not have a
Speaker 1: floppy disk drive. In fact, this marked a trend for
Speaker 1: Apple where it began to get away from including floppy
Speaker 1: drives in their computers, and eventually other computer manufacturers began
Speaker 1: to follow suit and stopped including floppy drives in their machines.
Speaker 1: So this was the beginning of the end for the
Speaker 1: floppy disk drive as a storage medium. It began to
Speaker 1: go into obsolescence. But the display on the iMac was
Speaker 1: a cathode ray tube display, a CRT UM. I talked
Speaker 1: a lot about c r t s in the History
Speaker 1: of TV podcasts, So if you want to know how
Speaker 1: a cathode ray tube works, listen to my History of
Speaker 1: Television podcasts because I talked about in detail there. But
Speaker 1: the thing to remember is that these machines are take
Speaker 1: up a lot of space. So these are those big,
Speaker 1: clunky TVs from yesterday that you might have seen, not
Speaker 1: like flat screens. Those are you know, either l c
Speaker 1: D or l E ED or plasma displays. But the
Speaker 1: original IMAX for CRT s, so they were a little
Speaker 1: hefty as a result. Uh they could support a resolution
Speaker 1: originally anyway of one thousand four by seven or seven
Speaker 1: sixty eight if you prefer now. Later in Apple introduced
Speaker 1: an updated version of the iMac that had better graphics
Speaker 1: card with more video memory, and the most recent version
Speaker 1: of the Mac operating system, which was at that point
Speaker 1: Mac version Mac OS version eight point five. And on
Speaker 1: top of the iMac, Apple also introduced new power books
Speaker 1: in their laptop lineup, which included a curvy laptop that
Speaker 1: was called the Wall Street power Book. And I this
Speaker 1: every now and then Apple would come out with a
Speaker 1: product that I just don't get the aesthetics. If you
Speaker 1: don't know what a Wall Street power Book looks like,
Speaker 1: do an image search on Apple Wall Street power Book.
Speaker 1: Because this thing just does not appeal to me. It
Speaker 1: was kind of funky and also suffered from a design
Speaker 1: flaw in The early models of the Hinges were a
Speaker 1: little weak, which meant that once they wore out, the
Speaker 1: laptop screen wouldn't stay in place anymore would start to
Speaker 1: fall over, which is pretty inconvenient for a laptop. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't the best product to ever come out of Apple.
Speaker 1: The Wall Street line also had a few other issues.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it was it was noticeably slower than
Speaker 1: the desktop Power Max that were coming out at the time.
Speaker 1: And you'd expect that to a point. But when you're
Speaker 1: selling these laptops at a premium price and you're saying
Speaker 1: this is the field version of the desktops that you
Speaker 1: can get for your for your your basic home set up,
Speaker 1: it's not great when it works significantly slower than the
Speaker 1: desktop version. Alright, So we've come up to our first
Speaker 1: little break here. Now after the break, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk more about some interesting developments from Apple, including some
Speaker 1: changes in ports systems, as well as some interesting aesthetic
Speaker 1: choices to really set Apple apart from the herd. But
Speaker 1: before we get into that, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. 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. Uh Now, originally you had to get FireWire
Speaker 1: expansion cards so that you could get a FireWire port
Speaker 1: in your mac but but over time, FireWire would become
Speaker 1: a standard port in the Macintosh. Lines for several years. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now if you don't know what FireWire is, because it's
Speaker 1: it's largely been replaced at this stage. Uh. It is
Speaker 1: a protocol, a technology for moving data from one device
Speaker 1: to another, and it's meant to move a large amount
Speaker 1: of data in a small amount of time. So it's
Speaker 1: really essentially similar to other types of ports that you
Speaker 1: would find on computers, like Scuzzy ports back in the day,
Speaker 1: or USB ports or USBC today USB three point oh
Speaker 1: style ports. Now, at the time, FireWire was a big
Speaker 1: advance from Scuzzy, at least your basic Guzzy. Unless you
Speaker 1: were using top of the line Scuzzy ports with the
Speaker 1: best cables that money could buy, you weren't maxing out
Speaker 1: your speeds that high. In fact, Scuzzy Ultra had about
Speaker 1: ten megabytes per second top speed for data transfers, which
Speaker 1: is not bad except if you're trying to transfer very
Speaker 1: large files. Let's let's say video files are very high
Speaker 1: quality audio files. That was a little slow. And remember
Speaker 1: that the Mac line of computers was frequently being used
Speaker 1: by video producers audio producers for a lot of creative
Speaker 1: applications like that as opposed to your productivity software which
Speaker 1: was typically viewed as a Windows machine. Duty Max. We're
Speaker 1: taking on all these really high end and very demanding
Speaker 1: applications when it comes to audio and video production, so
Speaker 1: they needed something that would allow you to transfer data
Speaker 1: at faster speeds. Now, FireWire's initial capabilities stretched up to
Speaker 1: the four megabits per second range. Now, megabits versus megabytes
Speaker 1: very different. Right, A bit is one single unit of information.
Speaker 1: It's either a zero or a one. A byte is
Speaker 1: eight of those collectively, So foreigner megabits is equivalent to
Speaker 1: around fifty megabytes per second, but that's like five times
Speaker 1: faster than Scuzzy trub was. So Apple was looking at
Speaker 1: re inventing 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 can 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 one to two thousand eight, and God's development in
Speaker 1: the late nineties, but really got wide rollout by about
Speaker 1: two thousand one, and over the next seven years, it
Speaker 1: was standard on almost every map that came out from Apple.
Speaker 1: Also in Apple discontinued quite a few machines from their lineup.
Speaker 1: They officially stopped supporting all of the motor Rola processor
Speaker 1: MAX that preceded the switch to the power PC microchip. Now,
Speaker 1: remember to Rolla still had UH involvement in developing the
Speaker 1: power PC chips, but the chips that were in Macintosh
Speaker 1: computers prior to power pc chips were all Motorola chips.
Speaker 1: So at that point Apple said, well, we're not going
Speaker 1: to support those anymore. Uh, everything is gonna now depend
Speaker 1: upon this power PC microchip because that's what we're putting
Speaker 1: in our MAX from this point forward. They also discontinued
Speaker 1: support for the Apple two line, which is pretty incredible
Speaker 1: that they had supported Apple two all the way up
Speaker 1: to nine. Now, they had discontinued manufacturing the Apple two
Speaker 1: long before that, but they continued to support it all
Speaker 1: the way until when they officially ended support. Uh that
Speaker 1: really tells you how long that Apple two's life was,
Speaker 1: because remember that was introduced. Apple two came out like
Speaker 1: in the late seventies early eighties, So the fact that
Speaker 1: it lasted all the way to and at least some
Speaker 1: capacity in Apple support was amazing, So it's really the
Speaker 1: last hurrah for the Apple too. I still love the
Speaker 1: Apple too, and I wouldn't mind finding one just to
Speaker 1: mess around with one, but uh that I doubt that
Speaker 1: I could easily find one in good working order at
Speaker 1: this stage. I wish I could, because I loved the
Speaker 1: Apple too. Now, the following year, Apple released some new Imax. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like the previous episodes, I'm not going to cover every
Speaker 1: single model Apple released, which would just make this episode
Speaker 1: incredibly dull. But one thing I want to mention is
Speaker 1: because the Imax came out in a selection of new colors.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just this beige computer that had been kind
Speaker 1: of Apple's trademark ever since the old Apple two days.
Speaker 1: You could get a selection of different colors which included blue, purple, orange, green,
Speaker 1: or red, but Apple called them different names. You could
Speaker 1: get an iMac and blueberry, grape, tangerine, lime, and strawberry.
Speaker 1: And I gotta be honest with you guys, even though
Speaker 1: I'm the dude from tech stuff who from the beginning
Speaker 1: has been accused of having an anti Mac bias and
Speaker 1: even though these machines are woefully outdated by today's standards,
Speaker 1: I really still dig the designs of these early Imax,
Speaker 1: these nineteen nine Imax and these bright colors. They're really
Speaker 1: appealing to me. Uh, I would love to have one
Speaker 1: in grape or lime. So I guess this episode is
Speaker 1: ultimately a Jonathan which list of old computers that are obsolete,
Speaker 1: that are no longer supported, that don't run any useful
Speaker 1: operating system or software at this point, but I still
Speaker 1: kind of one. So the Apple two and a nineteen
Speaker 1: iMac are on that list. There's just something really appealing
Speaker 1: about those vibrant color schemes. So look up ninete Imax
Speaker 1: to get a look at what these these brightly colored
Speaker 1: machines look like back in the day, and maybe you'll
Speaker 1: 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 machines, But I don't know,
Speaker 1: they just seemed kind of friendly to me. Now. Apple
Speaker 1: also introduced a desktop tower style computer called the Yosemite
Speaker 1: Power MACG three. Some people refer to this one as
Speaker 1: the Smurf, and the reason they do that is the
Speaker 1: case was uh 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. Um, 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: Mega Hurts version initially in this Yosemite computer, but by
Speaker 1: June so within a few months of introducing it, they
Speaker 1: discontinued the three hundred Mega Hurts version and instead relied
Speaker 1: on a more powerful four hundred fifty Mega Hurts 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 power Mac G four,
Speaker 1: and the US government initially called this computer this desktop
Speaker 1: personal computer, high end personal computer but still a personal computer.
Speaker 1: They called it a supercomputer. Now, why did they call
Speaker 1: a personal computer a supercomputer. Well, this was the first
Speaker 1: Mac that could perform one billion floating operations per second,
Speaker 1: or otherwise known as a giga flop, and at the
Speaker 1: time gigga flop was considered a capability was in the
Speaker 1: supercomputer range, so the US government said, technically, this power
Speaker 1: Mac is a supercomputer. The case was essentially identical to
Speaker 1: the Yosemite tower I just described, only this one was white,
Speaker 1: graphite gray and had silver accents. And I guess this
Speaker 1: was meant to make it look more professional and business
Speaker 1: like and less sort of sleek and fun. I suppose
Speaker 1: it still was a very nice design. The top level
Speaker 1: Max in this model line introduced a new type of
Speaker 1: motherboard called the saw tooth, which allowed for a more
Speaker 1: powerful machine overall. You could fit more memory, you could
Speaker 1: fit a faster processor, you could fit a better graphics
Speaker 1: card to it, so it was a more powerful machine overall.
Speaker 1: But there were various lines in this G four model,
Speaker 1: so the entry level did not have this saw tooth motherboard.
Speaker 1: It was only the higher end models that did. The
Speaker 1: entry level had a motherboard that was modeled after the
Speaker 1: Yosemite design, so it had a slightly less powerful approach,
Speaker 1: which now this was a particularly potent machine. If you've
Speaker 1: got the top of the line G four power Mac,
Speaker 1: then you had a machine that was comparable or actually
Speaker 1: faster than a PENTTHEUM three processor computer from the IBM
Speaker 1: compatible lines and Pathium three's were known to be screaming
Speaker 1: fast back in the day. Today they're slow as a snail,
Speaker 1: But back in the day that was cutting edge if
Speaker 1: you were going the Intel slash Windows route. So the
Speaker 1: Apple computers were no slouch. They could go head to
Speaker 1: head with the the fastest machines coming out from Intel's side.
Speaker 1: But Apple did do something that was kind of lu
Speaker 1: zy to their customers when they introduced this power Mac
Speaker 1: G four, and uh it was all because of a
Speaker 1: supply chain issue. So one of the things that computer
Speaker 1: manufacturers in general have run into are these supply chain
Speaker 1: problem where one element, or maybe more than one element
Speaker 1: in some cases, is being held up by the the
Speaker 1: the suppliers of the specific components that are going into
Speaker 1: the computer. In this case, it was the microprocessors. Apple
Speaker 1: was finding that Motorola could not supply five hundred Mega
Speaker 1: hurts processors at the rate that Apple needed them. Which
Speaker 1: was unfortunate because Apple had a bunch of orders for
Speaker 1: five hundred Mega Hurts Power MACG four computers. So Apple
Speaker 1: did something that a lot of people found a bit questionable.
Speaker 1: The company scaled back all their models by fifty Mega Hurts,
Speaker 1: so instead of selling a five hundred Mega Hurts machine
Speaker 1: as their top machine, they went with a four hundred
Speaker 1: fifty Mega Hurts machine as their top machine. This refers
Speaker 1: to the processor speed, so how fast is the CPU
Speaker 1: inside the Powermax four or fifty Mega Hurts. Obviously fifty
Speaker 1: mega Hurts slower than a five hundred Mega Hurts machine.
Speaker 1: And then the four fifty Mega Hurts machines were scaled
Speaker 1: back to four hundred Mega Hurts, so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: so everything took like a half step back from where
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be. But Apple did not change
Speaker 1: the prices of their models, so the top model was
Speaker 1: still the same price, even though it had a less
Speaker 1: powerful processor than what was originally planned. And Apple customers
Speaker 1: got a tiny bit peeved about this, understandably so that
Speaker 1: they were paying a premium price for something that was
Speaker 1: less powerful than what they were promised. So this was
Speaker 1: a pretty nasty little situation. For Apple. Fortunately the company
Speaker 1: was able to rectify things in like a week, but
Speaker 1: it still was a rough week over at Apple Computers
Speaker 1: due to this little kerfuffle. And um, yeah, so people
Speaker 1: who talk about Apple being a company that that sets
Speaker 1: a premium price, it's stuff like this particular incident that
Speaker 1: reinforces that idea. Now, the Wall Street power Book ended
Speaker 1: up taking a bow. In nine, they discontinued the Wall
Speaker 1: Street and decided to launch a new model of power
Speaker 1: Book that was code named Lombard. And this was the
Speaker 1: first power book Mac to have a USB port on it,
Speaker 1: so it was revolutionary at the time, and it was
Speaker 1: the fastest laptop line at the time of its debut,
Speaker 1: not not fastest for Apple. The power Book Mac that
Speaker 1: was code named Lombard was the fastest laptop on the
Speaker 1: market period when it came out. Uh. It also had
Speaker 1: a bronze translucent keyboard, which I think actually looks more
Speaker 1: brown than bronze and was in my mind really unattractive.
Speaker 1: That's my own personal perspective on it. Maybe that's that
Speaker 1: anti Mac bias kicking in again. But the specs were
Speaker 1: really impressive, even though I found the aesthetic to be
Speaker 1: not terribly attractive. Taking a page from their success with
Speaker 1: the Mac, Apple also introduced a laptop for the education
Speaker 1: market called the Eyebook. This was a bit chunkier and
Speaker 1: more rugged than their power Book line. It was less powerful,
Speaker 1: didn't need to be as powerful as the power Book. Uh,
Speaker 1: but it's still had a lot of curved lines in
Speaker 1: the design. I kind of dig the Eyebook. It does
Speaker 1: look a little unwieldy, especially compared to the laptops that
Speaker 1: Apple produces today, but it has again a kind of
Speaker 1: a friendly look to it. I think. Now. One thing
Speaker 1: that really helped Apple out at this time something that
Speaker 1: was completely outside of Apple's control. It was a little
Speaker 1: thing called the Y two K scare. And you may
Speaker 1: owe my drugs not remember what this was about. Things
Speaker 1: changing so scory and people like to forget. But the
Speaker 1: Y two K bug or the Y two K Scare
Speaker 1: was all about how some lazy computer programmers and computer
Speaker 1: scientists had really made a terrible design decision that frightened
Speaker 1: the pants off a whole bunch of people back in
Speaker 1: the late nineties. So here's what it was all about.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a quick summary because I could
Speaker 1: do a full episode. In fact, I have done a
Speaker 1: full episode about Y two K. The problem was that
Speaker 1: programmers were a little lazy back in the day, and
Speaker 1: when some programmers were designing various architectures, they took a
Speaker 1: shortcut when it came to designating years, and they used
Speaker 1: a two digit method of designating the year. So if
Speaker 1: you put eight nine as the two digits, then the
Speaker 1: computer knew you met nineteen nine. But you're probably already
Speaker 1: spotting the problem, which is that once you got to
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, you're gonna roll over to two thousand.
Speaker 1: But computers only had two digit digits to tell what
Speaker 1: the year was going to be, so zero zero could
Speaker 1: be interpreted as nineteen hundred instead of two thousand, and
Speaker 1: a lot of different computer processes could screw up. As
Speaker 1: a result, you had things that were pretty easy to
Speaker 1: imagine going haywire, like like, uh, financial software that is
Speaker 1: calculating stuff like interest, Well, if it rolls back a
Speaker 1: hundred years, that's really going to mess things up. But
Speaker 1: people were worried about all sorts of stuff, like computers
Speaker 1: just stop maybe they could stop working, and not just computers,
Speaker 1: but other devices too that we're working on. Microchips that
Speaker 1: had this kind of architecture, so people were worried about
Speaker 1: getting stuck in elevators or what would happen on a plane. Well,
Speaker 1: Apple didn't have to worry about this because there programmers
Speaker 1: didn't use that convention when they were designating years, so
Speaker 1: they didn't have to worry about running out of time
Speaker 1: with two digits. Uh So, with time continuing to pass
Speaker 1: as it does and two thousand coming along, people began
Speaker 1: to think, well, maybe we should get Apple computers because
Speaker 1: they don't suffer the same weakness as other computers that
Speaker 1: have this two digit problem. So, uh, yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: do you any good if your computer thinks it's nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred and suddenly decides to put on an Edwardian suit
Speaker 1: and start talking about the latest George Bernard Shaw play.
Speaker 1: That doesn't help you out if you want to do
Speaker 1: some modern computing. And the mac Os didn't have that issue,
Speaker 1: so people started to look at Macintosh computers and sales
Speaker 1: uh increased or Apple. Now, whether or not that had
Speaker 1: anything to do with the Y two K bug is
Speaker 1: hard to say because there's so many other variables that
Speaker 1: play here, but it's probably something that factored into at
Speaker 1: least a few people's decision to switch over to the
Speaker 1: Macintosh platform because it was why two K proof. In fact,
Speaker 1: power PC Max not the old Motorola ones, but the
Speaker 1: power Pc Max actually allow computers to keep good time
Speaker 1: up to the year twenty nine thousand ninety, So we're
Speaker 1: good for now. Even if you're using an obsolete mac
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about the operating system suddenly
Speaker 1: thinking it's nineteen hundred, because it's gonna keep on chugging
Speaker 1: along until the hardware breaks. Because I guarantee you that
Speaker 1: hardware will break before the year twenty nine thousand ninety.
Speaker 1: And if it doesn't, I'm guessing you won't be around.
Speaker 1: That's not a you know, that's not a slam against you.
Speaker 1: It's just i'm recording this in and I don't think
Speaker 1: people in the year twenty thousand are still listening to
Speaker 1: tech stuff. If you are, thanks for listening. You're awesome now.
Speaker 1: In case you were curious, the world did not end
Speaker 1: in two thousand spoiler alert. But Apple did introduce some
Speaker 1: new stuff that year, like the Cube. This was a
Speaker 1: desktop computer that was shaped like a cube. It was
Speaker 1: five one cubic inches and it was a really powerful
Speaker 1: machine for its time. This was also the year that
Speaker 1: Apple previewed the mac OS ten using the Roman numeral
Speaker 1: for ten, which is an X. Now that led me,
Speaker 1: the ignorant person that I was at the time, to
Speaker 1: call it mac os X, which got lots of people
Speaker 1: laughing at me for calling it mac os X. But
Speaker 1: if you are going to be using a bunch of
Speaker 1: letters in the name of your product, don't use a
Speaker 1: Roman numeral to designate its operating system number. So it's
Speaker 1: macOS ten. Uh. And sometimes I still say mac OSX
Speaker 1: because sometimes I just like to have a little fun
Speaker 1: at my own expense. Now, moving ahead to two thousand one,
Speaker 1: Apple again boosted the power of its various computers. Nothing
Speaker 1: new there. Pretty much every year Apple would update its
Speaker 1: line of existing computers and increase their abilities by putting
Speaker 1: in more powerful processors, putting in more memory, giving it
Speaker 1: a few different ports. So again I'm not going to
Speaker 1: cover all of those changes. I'm just going to cover
Speaker 1: the big, big differences. Uh. They also introduced some new
Speaker 1: color schemes in their iMac lines, so you could buy
Speaker 1: the Blue Dalmatian or Flower Power. These actually had designs,
Speaker 1: not just a solid color. They actually had you know,
Speaker 1: designs on them that I find almost but not quite
Speaker 1: completely unappealing. So I don't want either of those. If
Speaker 1: anyone's listening and they want to get me the which
Speaker 1: list of items I've talked about, like Apple two's and
Speaker 1: the iMac you know lime or the iMac grape. That's cool,
Speaker 1: but don't get me a blue Dalmatian or flower Power.
Speaker 1: I don't need them. Um, They're just not for me.
Speaker 1: The company also released a lighter, more powerful eyebook sometimes
Speaker 1: called the ice Book, and Apple created the quicksilver version
Speaker 1: of its power Mac G four line. And they also
Speaker 1: opened up their first two Apple stores in two thousand one.
Speaker 1: Now there's hundreds of the things, but back in two
Speaker 1: thousand one they were brand new. It was the first
Speaker 1: time 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's there are Apple
Speaker 1: stores that get crowds of tourists because they are particularly
Speaker 1: interesting in their design and layout. Oh, that's also your
Speaker 1: Apple launched the next product to help defind the company
Speaker 1: as its new identity. That would be the iPod. But
Speaker 1: we talked about the iPod in our History of MP
Speaker 1: three players podcast. So I'm not going to cover it here,
Speaker 1: but just to say that two thousand one marked a
Speaker 1: real turning point in Apple's history, because that was the
Speaker 1: moment when Apple began to really expand beyond personal computers
Speaker 1: and printers and workstations. They began to get into personal
Speaker 1: electronics in a serious way. The Newton was kind of
Speaker 1: a failure, but the iPod was totally the opposite. iPod
Speaker 1: was a runaway success, particularly once you've got a couple
Speaker 1: of generations in and really took off once iTunes became
Speaker 1: a real player in the in the data management or
Speaker 1: music management space. Now two it was more of the
Speaker 1: same with tweaked computer designs, some boosted performance, and not
Speaker 1: much else. Apple did create a new line of MAX
Speaker 1: for educational institutions. They called it the eMac E for education.
Speaker 1: It was housed in an iMac like CRT style case. Uh,
Speaker 1: the stream was flat, it wasn't curve, but it still
Speaker 1: was a cathode ray tube that was providing the actual
Speaker 1: image that you saw in there. So big bulky case
Speaker 1: in fact, really big and bulky. The basic model weighed
Speaker 1: fifty pounds, but it cost a little less than a
Speaker 1: thousand bucks, So Apple was really trying to price these
Speaker 1: computers in a way where education systems would be able
Speaker 1: to shell out the bucks to buy them, because again
Speaker 1: Max were pretty expensive and a lot of education systems
Speaker 1: just didn't have the budget to buy Macintosh computers. So
Speaker 1: this was Apple's attempt to kind of get into that
Speaker 1: market with a slightly less powerful computer. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Apple began introducing Max that were no longer backwards compatible
Speaker 1: with the old classic Mac operating system, and this began
Speaker 1: the March of obsolescence for those old OS builds. The
Speaker 1: company continued its trend of updating machines, but again there
Speaker 1: were no major revolutions that happened. In two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Apple did introduce the power Mac G five with the
Speaker 1: IBM power Pc NV CPU that gave the Mac a
Speaker 1: processor speed of between one point six to two point
Speaker 1: oh giga hurts, depending upon the model that you bought.
Speaker 1: This computer generated so much heat that it required nine
Speaker 1: cooling fans to manage it. Nine fans inside of this
Speaker 1: computer so that it would not overheat. The case was
Speaker 1: also made out of aluminum, which is a very effective
Speaker 1: conductor of heat, which is good because a lot of
Speaker 1: heat gets generated inside the machine, it transfers out to
Speaker 1: the case, and the case transfers it out to the
Speaker 1: air around it. But yeah, these machines got pretty toasty. Well,
Speaker 1: we've got one last section to go through to talk
Speaker 1: about the history of the Macintosh and get up to
Speaker 1: present day. But before I jump into that, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. Jumping into two
Speaker 1: thousand 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 one ish aesthetic that they became known for.
Speaker 1: A lot of Apple's products would end up following that
Speaker 1: same sort of design philosophy, but this was one of
Speaker 1: the earliest ones. And I actually had an iMac in
Speaker 1: this style, although it wasn't a two thousand four iMac.
Speaker 1: It was a bit later. It might have been as
Speaker 1: late as two thousand six, but um, I definitely had
Speaker 1: one of these. Max was the only Mac I've ever owned.
Speaker 1: I liked it just fine. I just never bought another one.
Speaker 1: Um so kind of cool. This two thousand one ish
Speaker 1: approach very different from the lollipop colorful approach of the
Speaker 1: CRT Imax from just a few years earlier. And in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, we got the Mac Mini. Now by we,
Speaker 1: I mean the general we I never owned a Mac Mini,
Speaker 1: but this was a really cool idea too. This was
Speaker 1: a desktop computer in miniature, and it didn't have a
Speaker 1: built in display. There was no display that came along
Speaker 1: with it, but you would get this tiny little computer,
Speaker 1: and I mean it was tiny. It was six and
Speaker 1: a half inches per side and two inches tall and
Speaker 1: that was the whole desktop. And he would just connect
Speaker 1: that to an existing display using whichever port you needed.
Speaker 1: And uh it was bargain priced, at least as far
Speaker 1: as Apple is concerned. It was on sale for four dollars.
Speaker 1: That's dirt cheap with Apple. Uh. So it gave people
Speaker 1: the opportunity to own a Mac as long as they
Speaker 1: already had a display, or they didn't mind buying a
Speaker 1: display and a keyboard and all that other stuff for
Speaker 1: a bargain price compared to the other Max that were
Speaker 1: on the market at that same time. One drawback to
Speaker 1: this design was that you couldn't expand it. You couldn't
Speaker 1: add more memory or or change it in any meaningful
Speaker 1: way because it was so small and everything was packed
Speaker 1: so tightly together that there was no room to expand
Speaker 1: it at all. So if you bought one, you were
Speaker 1: pretty much stuck with the initial specs that it came
Speaker 1: out with. That same year, Steve Jobs made a big announcement,
Speaker 1: so this is again two thousand five. He said that
Speaker 1: future Max would move away from power pc chips that
Speaker 1: had 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: that worried a lot of Mac users because not all
Speaker 1: software is compatible with various uh microprocessor architecture. So if
Speaker 1: you have operating system and software that was designed to
Speaker 1: work on the power Pc platform, it might not work
Speaker 1: on the Intel platform. And if those programs are important
Speaker 1: to you and your business or or what you know,
Speaker 1: whatever you're using your Mac for, then upgrading to a
Speaker 1: new Macintosh could be harmful to you. So, for example,
Speaker 1: here at how Stuff Works, we use very specific editing
Speaker 1: suites for our video and audio stuff like this podcast
Speaker 1: and video series. We use very specific types of software
Speaker 1: for that on Macintosh computers. If we were to upgrade
Speaker 1: to a new processor that could not run those old programs,
Speaker 1: we would be kind of stuck. Now, Apple solution for
Speaker 1: this was to release a power Pc emulator. It's called Rosetta,
Speaker 1: named after the Rosetta stone, which of course was used
Speaker 1: to help translate Hiero glyphics back in the day. So
Speaker 1: the Rosetta was an emulator, which means it's a program
Speaker 1: that simulates another type of technology, in this case another
Speaker 1: type of microprocessor, the power PC style microprocessor, and this
Speaker 1: would allow you to continue to use some of that
Speaker 1: legacy software even on these in TELL powered machines. Also
Speaker 1: in two thousand five, Apple introduced the Mighty Mouse. You
Speaker 1: can't see this audio listeners, but I'm making a very
Speaker 1: unimpressed face into the webcam I'm using for the Twitch
Speaker 1: stream of this episode. Remember, you can always go to
Speaker 1: twitch dot tv, slash techt stuff if you want to
Speaker 1: watch an episode live as I recorded. Well, the Mighty
Speaker 1: Mouse was a mouse that had more than just one
Speaker 1: button capability. The Macintosh was famous for shipping with a
Speaker 1: mouse that only had one button, and if you wanted
Speaker 1: other types of functionality, you had to hold down a
Speaker 1: key on the keyboard while pressing down on the button.
Speaker 1: The Mighty Mouse actually had ability to use the left
Speaker 1: side of the mouse or the right side of the mouse,
Speaker 1: or you could squeeze both sides and create three different
Speaker 1: types of controls with this mouse, or three different types
Speaker 1: of commands with one mouse. So it still felt like
Speaker 1: one button, but you could us the left side of
Speaker 1: the button down, or press the right side of the
Speaker 1: button down, or squeeze it, and that would allow you
Speaker 1: to execute different commands in various programs. Why not just
Speaker 1: make a mouse with extra buttons, with each button dedicated
Speaker 1: to a specific function. Because Johnny I've who's a chief
Speaker 1: designer over at Apple, and Steve Jobs hate buttons. I
Speaker 1: guess they just don't like them. They like the ascetic
Speaker 1: of a smooth, buttonless type of device, even if it
Speaker 1: means that they are stressing form over functionality. Now, maybe
Speaker 1: again that's my anti Mac bias, but I like functionality
Speaker 1: over form. I want something to work first and then
Speaker 1: look nice. I don't want it to look nice and
Speaker 1: then just work. Okay, but that just shows the difference
Speaker 1: of approach I take to technology than Apple takes. Now,
Speaker 1: Apple would argue that they value both equal, that something
Speaker 1: needs to look amazing and work perfectly. I would argue
Speaker 1: the Mighty Mouse does not quite achieve that. That's my
Speaker 1: own personal opinion as someone who had a Mighty Mouse
Speaker 1: and a and iMac and I despise that mouse a lot.
Speaker 1: But again, anti Mac bias, So don't pay too much
Speaker 1: attention to me. The company also began to ship dual
Speaker 1: core Power Max at this time, using dual core processors.
Speaker 1: This is part of a new era in computing at
Speaker 1: this point where we started to see these multi core
Speaker 1: processors find their way into consumer computers. Now I'll likely
Speaker 1: do a full episode about what multi core core processors
Speaker 1: are and how they work and why it's important at
Speaker 1: a later date. I've covered it a little bit in
Speaker 1: previous tech Stuff podcasts, but just know that it would
Speaker 1: take a full episode to really explain this. But it
Speaker 1: was a big advance for Macintosh computers at the time. Now,
Speaker 1: in two thousand six, the first Intel Max started to
Speaker 1: hit store shelves, and the biggest drawback for Mac users
Speaker 1: was that these machines wouldn't support any classic mac Os applications.
Speaker 1: So if you had those legacy apps you depended on,
Speaker 1: you couldn't run them on those machines. You had to
Speaker 1: keep an older Mac around or you had to create
Speaker 1: an emulator to run them. And that's the problem in
Speaker 1: general with legacy systems is the hardware gets faster, sometimes
Speaker 1: you lose support for older software, and that's still a
Speaker 1: problem if you really depend on that older software to
Speaker 1: do something. Like I said before, with audio and video production.
Speaker 1: Here at how stuff works, that could be an issue.
Speaker 1: Anyone who used garage Band with Macintosh computers knows that
Speaker 1: the various evolutions of the garage band software and the
Speaker 1: changes to the Mac operating system and Mac processors meant
Speaker 1: that sometimes you would end up losing features that you
Speaker 1: thought were absolutely important for you, and you had to
Speaker 1: stick with older, obsolete machines just to get stuff done.
Speaker 1: The company also introduced a new line in laptops. They
Speaker 1: called this new line the MacBook Pro, which of course
Speaker 1: you 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 there, they've got faster processors. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's essentially, you know, they're your sports vehicle version of
Speaker 1: the Macintosh laptops. People really hated this name when it
Speaker 1: first came out. The MacBook Pro was replacing the old
Speaker 1: power Book line, and people really liked power Book and
Speaker 1: they hated the name MacBook. But today MacBook is standard,
Speaker 1: and I think most people probably don't even remember the
Speaker 1: old power Books, and they probably don't remember that they
Speaker 1: put up a fuss when it went from power book
Speaker 1: to MacBook. The moral of that story is people hate change,
Speaker 1: whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. Now, nothing of real
Speaker 1: significance happened in the Macintosh history in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: other than Apple making flat screen Imax and brushed aluminum
Speaker 1: instead of white plastic. So let's skip ahead to two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. I'm not going to spend time on
Speaker 1: a year where not really anything happened. Now, this was
Speaker 1: the year that Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air, which
Speaker 1: was a big deal in a small package. It was
Speaker 1: the thinnest MacBook at that point, and at 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 c D or DVD into it, but did
Speaker 1: have a sweet aluminum body. And it had one port
Speaker 1: on it, which was a single USB two point oh
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 want to add more ports, it would have
Speaker 1: meant having to create a thicker version of the backbook 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 faster processors,
Speaker 1: better graphics. Uh, ports would change eventually, you would get
Speaker 1: better resolution on your displays as well. They'd get more expensive,
Speaker 1: they'd get thinner, and they get lighter. But that's pretty
Speaker 1: much the trend. There wasn't anything really revolutionary after this point,
Speaker 1: nothing that jumped completely out of the line of what
Speaker 1: you would come to expect from Apple. There were a
Speaker 1: couple of exceptions, a couple of standouts. The MacBook Pro
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve came in a model with a
Speaker 1: retina display that was the first MacBook Pro to actually
Speaker 1: have a retina display that's similar to the display you
Speaker 1: find in iPhones of that time. It's a very high definition,
Speaker 1: high resolution display. And in two thousand thirteen, Apple introduced
Speaker 1: a cylindrical case for a new Mac Pro, so you
Speaker 1: suddenly had a tower that was a cylinder instead of
Speaker 1: a rectangle style, which was what was common at the time.
Speaker 1: And the cylinder was gorgeous. It looks like it belongs
Speaker 1: in some sort of science fiction film. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a high tech supercomputer sort of look to it. And
Speaker 1: this MacPro was really meant to work as a server
Speaker 1: or a workstation. It wasn't necessarily meant to be your
Speaker 1: own personal computer. They were pretty darn expensive when they
Speaker 1: came out, um, and it was a really unique aesthetic
Speaker 1: something that stood out. However, I can tell you that
Speaker 1: some of the video team here at How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: have a few strong opinions about the performance of this
Speaker 1: specific model of the Mac row 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: words trying searching for a word that wouldn't be too harsh.
Speaker 1: Frustrating is a good one. But this was another example
Speaker 1: of Apple taking a dramatic departure from the general esthetics
Speaker 1: that were prevalent in personal computers at the time, and
Speaker 1: trying to make it their own. M One thing else
Speaker 1: I need to mention before we conclude, really uh. Obviously,
Speaker 1: a moment that really changed the direction of Apple overall
Speaker 1: and the mac in particular was the death of Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: He passed away in two thousand eleven. We did an
Speaker 1: episode called One More Thing all about Steve Jobs where
Speaker 1: we talked about this, and this obviously had a monumental
Speaker 1: impact on the company as a whole. He had already
Speaker 1: stepped down as CEO earlier before his passing, but he
Speaker 1: was still very much a presence at Apple up until
Speaker 1: a couple of months before his death, and he had
Speaker 1: handed the reins over to Tim Cook to become the
Speaker 1: new CEO. But it had been Jobs, along with a
Speaker 1: top tier level of designers like Johnny I've who had
Speaker 1: really set the direction of Apple and the the aesthetic
Speaker 1: direction for products like the Macintosh computer line and the
Speaker 1: MAX that followed. It would be another couple of years
Speaker 1: before Jobs is 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 two thousand eleven. It would be
Speaker 1: another year or two before his direct influence was no
Speaker 1: longer a living component of the max that followed. But
Speaker 1: this did mean that Apple started having to produce computers
Speaker 1: without that guidance from Steve Jobs himself, and that uh
Speaker 1: some people ended up pointing out as being a an issue.
Speaker 1: Some people say that the changes to the Mac line
Speaker 1: post Steve Jobs haven't been terribly inspirational or innovative. Others
Speaker 1: have said that been more frustrating as Apple has continued
Speaker 1: to change things up. Remember in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: they stopped making FireWire a standard on all Macintosh computers.
Speaker 1: By a couple of years later they started moving toward well,
Speaker 1: actually really this year they started moving in last year
Speaker 1: they started moving towards USBC ports and abandoning things like
Speaker 1: the thunderbolt connectors. So there have been changes. A lot
Speaker 1: of them have been changes that some Apple users have
Speaker 1: been very upset about because they feel like Apple is
Speaker 1: ignoring consumer needs uh and as instead demanding that consumers
Speaker 1: follow in the footsteps that they are forging, which is
Speaker 1: mixing metaphors. But never mind it. But I would say
Speaker 1: that that's been Apple's history all along Apple has made
Speaker 1: very strong decisions to go in certain directions that require
Speaker 1: users to follow suit or they get left behind. That's
Speaker 1: the history of Apple. It might be frustrating, but it's
Speaker 1: not out of character. It is something that has been
Speaker 1: part of the company culture from the earliest days. I
Speaker 1: would argue, now, ultimately you can start classifying Max by
Speaker 1: their specs and they're disappearing ports. Uh. But again, it
Speaker 1: would just turn into a laundry list at this point,
Speaker 1: so we're really going to leave off here. I will
Speaker 1: say that Macintosh computers continue to be really powerful machines.
Speaker 1: They're really beautiful machines. The aesthetic design on them tends
Speaker 1: to be top not much, and they're really expensive machines.
Speaker 1: And you might argue whether or not the expense is justified,
Speaker 1: but that's outside the scope of my own episode. And
Speaker 1: this kind of brings us to a close on the
Speaker 1: Macintosh saga, keeping in mind that will probably see more
Speaker 1: changes to the line in the near future. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: even see some dramatic departures from what we've seen before,
Speaker 1: maybe introduction of new models of Macintosh computers. But I
Speaker 1: can't predict the future because I don't work for Apple
Speaker 1: and they won't let me in the building. Now. What
Speaker 1: I really hope to do in the future is look
Speaker 1: at some other Apple products stuff for other episodes. I
Speaker 1: would love to do a full episode on their Flying
Speaker 1: Saucer headquarters building, which should be opening up really soon
Speaker 1: and looks phenomenal from the photos I've seen. Apple. If
Speaker 1: you want to invite me out to see your headquarters,
Speaker 1: I would love to check it out because it looks
Speaker 1: phenomenal and I wouldn't mind getting lost in the Flying
Speaker 1: Saucer for a while, But I expect that invitation will
Speaker 1: get lost in the mail. In the meantime, If you
Speaker 1: guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: why don't you send a message to me. You can
Speaker 1: send me an email. The address for the show is
Speaker 1: text Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you
Speaker 1: can drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show at both of those is text
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W. And let me know if there's
Speaker 1: a subject you want me to cover, or someone you
Speaker 1: want me to interview, or even a guest you want
Speaker 1: me to have on as sort of a guest host
Speaker 1: to talk with me, send me a note, and as always,
Speaker 1: you can go to twitch, dot tv, slash tech stuff
Speaker 1: to see me record these shows live. There is a
Speaker 1: schedule up on the websites, and sometimes I even stick
Speaker 1: to it. I got a little bit of a late
Speaker 1: start today, so big kudos for those of you watching
Speaker 1: live right now. And that's all for me. I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics is at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Wh