Apple: MacIntosh

Although Lisa did set new standards for Apple’s future computers, the system itself was not very ‘clean’; it had a few hardware and design issues. These weak spots had to be worked on. McIntosh was built to just that. What Lisa did average, McIntosh was to do so extraordinarily.

McIntosh was the first commercially successful GUI (Graphical User Interface) computer for Apple. The number of Apple Lisa units that were sold in a year was about the same for McIntosh. Only that the latter reached that figure in 3 months! People had all the reasons to go gaga over it.

A major reason for the success of McIntosh was its simple user face. It was way more intuitive than most computers of that time. It was friendly to the newest of users and advanced for experts. This is what made McIntosh the ideal choice of both beginners and professionals. Results? Rocketing sales!

McIntosh had an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor under its casing. This made execution of all operations very quick. McIntosh beat the lag that was present in Lisa. There was another element responsible for this.

The operating system of McIntosh was essentially a trimmed down and a much more efficient version of Lisa. With almost half as complex, and equipped with approximately double the processing power, McIntosh would have left behind dust for Lisa had they been in a race.

McIntosh ran office applications quite well. Using these applications was made a lot easier with the friendly interface. The features that McIntosh office offered almost three decades ago are still available in the most current of office tools. MacWrite and MacPaint certainly stand out.

Other specifications and features that McIntosh offered were; a nine inch monochrome display, 512 KB of RAM, internal floppy of 400 KB, external floppy ports for further expansion of memory and a printer port. This made McIntosh a perfect piece!

Unlike Lisa, McIntosh series are still in production today. Owning the initial version is like owning the mother of this successful piece of reliable computers. A 1984 McIntosh will certainly beat the crowd at vintage computer events.

It might surprise you but some hobbyists even today use the McIntosh computers dating back to 1987! Now you know the quantum of perfection and reliability this computer holds!

Vintage Apple Computer PROTOTYPE eMate 300 Laptop, CLEAR CASE Newton/Macintosh