How was Apple's first Macintosh series, the Macintosh 128K, developed?
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The Macintosh 128K , released by Apple in 1984, was a low-priced computer priced at $2,495 (approximately 390,000 yen) at the time, but its versatility made it a popular choice among multiple users and laid the foundation for the Mac brand, which continues to this day. IEEE Spectrum, an overseas media outlet, explains the development of the Macintosh 128K.
Designing the First Apple Macintosh: The Engineers' Story - IEEE Spectrum
https://spectrum.ieee.org/apple-macintosh
Development of the Macintosh 128K began in 1979. At the time, Apple was selling
So Jeff Raskin of the Apple II team suggested to Apple that they develop a low-cost computer that was as easy to use as a toaster, 'like a home appliance.' However, since the Lisa was already in development, Raskin's idea was not well received.
Nevertheless, Raskin brought in Burrell Smith, an engineer who had previously worked on the logic circuits of the Apple II, to the Macintosh team. Meanwhile, Apple's board of directors asked the company to stop the Macintosh project in September 1980 and to involve Apple in more important projects, but Steve Jobs , who was Apple's vice president at the time, was appointed manager of the Macintosh project, and they were able to get approval to continue the project.
The Macintosh team steadily grew in budget and personnel under Jobs, and by early 1981 had grown to 20 people. However, some Apple employees called the Macintosh project 'Steve's Folly.'
The Macintosh was developed with the goals of 'using inexpensive parts while minimizing the number of parts as much as possible,' 'developing an interface to launch programs by operating the mouse,' and 'making it run faster than the Lisa software, which was criticized for being slow with little memory.' At the time of development, engineers were not given a clear definition of the Macintosh's specifications, but Smith said, 'Jobs helped us to concretize the problem and the solution at the same time. Many of us engineers like to define the computer as we work.'
On the Macintosh project, each team member was responsible for developing a relatively large part of the overall design, and was free to consult with the rest of the team when considering alternatives. As one engineer put it, 'Some managers like to be in charge, but J.Jobs never tried to control us.'
In addition, the team held weekly meetings, where each team member shared what they had done in the previous week. In addition, whenever a competitor's product was released, they purchased it, disassembled it, and incorporated it into their own product development. And by disassembling a competitor's PC, which required an increasing number of parts and was difficult to manufacture, it became more costly and less reliable, and the development policy of the Macintosh was decided, which was to limit the number of printed circuit boards to two and not to have slots, buffers, or backplanes.
The team then decided to equip the computer with Motorola's MPU, the
By January 1982, the development team had begun work on the 'User Interface Toolbox' software for the Macintosh. They worked on constructing objects such as windows, pull-down menus, scroll bars, and icons for the Macintosh OS, which could run on only 64KB of RAM. In addition, with the goal of selling the Macintosh in non-English-speaking countries, they developed a way to easily translate text within the program into foreign languages. The computer code and data were separated on the software, and the data part of the program was scanned to translate it without having to solve the complex computer program.
In order to reduce the number of parts and increase future usefulness, the Macintosh adopted two serial ports to connect to peripheral devices such as printers and local area networks. At the time, serial port parts were relatively expensive, costing about $9 (about 1,400 yen) each, and it was difficult to get Apple to order serial port parts from manufacturers. Nevertheless, Chris Espinosa, the drafter of the Macintosh, recalls, 'Thanks to Jobs' negotiating skills, we were able to successfully order the parts.'
In the fall of 1981, plans were made to build a factory in Fremont, California, to mass-produce the Macintosh. At the same time, Jobs said, 'Real artists ship the finished product,' and ordered his team to deliver the final prototype and begin shipping in May 1983. The development of the final prototype was extremely tough, and development proceeded despite problems such as bottlenecks due to computer circuit density, problems with dot density, and delays in the design of custom chips.
By Philip Brechler
When the factory was built in the fall of 1982, the Macintosh design was nearing its final form. However, although the sound generator hardware was complete, the software that would enable the computer to produce sound had not yet been developed. Seeing this situation, Jobs notified his team, 'If the sound is not produced by Monday morning, the sound generator hardware will not be installed in the Macintosh.' In response, the team immediately proceeded with software development and succeeded in creating software that could produce four sounds in just three days.
At the Macintosh factory, which Apple built with a cost of $20 million (approximately 3.1 billion yen), the circuit boards and displays to be installed in the Macintosh were checked, and finally production of the first sellable Macintosh began in January 1984. Initially, the number of Macintoshes produced was unstable, but as the production line stabilized, it was possible to produce one every 27 seconds, and about 500,000 units were shipped per year.
By Matthew Pearce
Although Macintosh has since become a major PC brand, which continues to exist at the time of writing, Smith said, 'Apple is now a big company. Managers now follow managers. The small, cohesive teams that were the Macintosh development teams no longer exist at Apple.'
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