Macintosh | Apple's Most Successful Failure

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"broken parts meant only Apple could fix it, meaning more money for Apple" and they never looked back

"while apple recognized the wants and needs of the average person, they failed to recognize the average person's salary." still happens now

What wasn't explained here is WHY the Mac performed so poorly, and why it was so un-upgradeable. The whole reason for this is that the 68000 processor was used to emulate all sorts of hardware, such as sound card, disk controller, video adapter; it had none of these. These pieces of "hardware" were created in software every time the machine was turned on. While this says a lot for the capabilities of the 68000 chip, and the cleverness of Apple's programmers, the real issue was that by the time all this phantom hardware was created, there was little capacity left for the CPU to run programs. Besides that, this approach made the operating system inextricably bound to the hardware, and severely limited any upgrade path. As well as all that, the Mac was way overpriced. Since the interior was mostly air, with only one circuit board, and no expansion path other than the scsi bus, it should have sold for much less than it did. The only expensive component was the 68000 chip itself, but there was no other processor at the time that could have done the job. Having painted themselves into a corner with this approach, Apple paid dearly for this supposedly clever piece of deception. It nearly sank the company. Later on, Atari and Amiga used the same 68000 chip, but did a much better job of exploiting its capabilities to do really useful stuff.

Just a note: "Big Blue" was never a derogatory name. The employees (who were very team-oriented at that time, as a Japanese corporation) lovingly called their corporate god "Big Blue". I know. I was there. I was a team player. I wore IBM boxers and had an IBM tie. I loved that job. I loved that company. It was sort of a cross between an extended family and a cult. In hindsight, it was freaking weird. But we all called our insular, corporate mama "Big Blue" because we loved the place. Again, it was never derrogatory.

The failure of the Macintosh just fascinates me. Computer history is always amazing to look at. I hope this will be very fun!

Man this brings me back. My school back in 98-99 had a macintosh SE or 2 in every classroom. My first time really fumbling around on a computer was one of those. They were dated for that time but the school didn't have the funds to upgrade yet. Then one day we came in and they had upgraded them all to the iMac G3. We thought we were living in the future lol. Thanks for bringing me back buddy!

Let's not forget that the OS didn't initially have multitasking, and when they grafted on a system that could it wasn't the greatest. Update after Update and patch after patch gradually made the system unstable and led to the disaster that was Copeland.

My Mom bought a decent amount of Apple stock right before they launched the iPod. She's doing pretty well in retirement.

In 1986/7 I worked in a graphic design studio. My then boss saw the Mac plus and considered it a possible advantage to our otherwise manual artwork production (pens, typesetting and scalpels). He bought one of the first units in the North of the UK, along with an external monitor that had the display cable literally hot glued to the top of the graphics chip to enable it to display the image as it was not a 'thing' to have a large monitor yet!!!!. This was the beginnings of the DTP revolution, and I loved it. Mac WAS very capable by the late 80s, albeit most days I had the take off to case cover to re-glue the piggyback mount on the graphic chip. I used photoshop, illustrator etc all from first releases and as a company we showcased what a computer based studio was capable of… great times.

Hoooooooly moly I wasn't prepared for that bombshelle of a fact that Pixar was bought by Steve Jobs at some point. Hoooooly CRAP that was interesting as heck

"Overpriced and underpowered"....nothing has changed and yet people still shell out tons of money for them. Also I had no idea they were pulling the whole "can't upgrade or fix them yourself so we can make more money" scheme since way back then..

There's a few liberties taken toward the end here. NeXT wasn't exactly doing great when Apple bought them back, and the iMac (1998) had about three years of running on classic Mac OS before OSX came out and it took a few more after that before Apple considered the Mac OS -> OSX transition complete (and a few more still before users agreed). Also NeXT's reliance on object orientation had nothing to do with its 3D capabilities (which were also quite primitive even by the day's standards). Where the pervasive OO helped NeXT was by making it easier for programs to communicate with one another through component embedding, and another big advantage for NeXTstep was that it was built for networking from the ground up. 3D was hardly a factor in NeXT.

Shouldn't apple batteries just be called: apple juice? 😏

19:25 almost 40 years later and it still holds true.

"Broken parts meant only Apple could fix it, meaning more money for Apple" Old habits die hard, I see

Ah, back in the 80s where a pretty computer which was impractical, expensive, and had no upgradeability caused the company to almost go bankrupt. Nowadays it turns it into a 2.75 trillion dollar company

Compare 1984 Macintosh to an 1985 Amiga. Then you’ll know which machine was 10 years ahead of its time.

Everything wrong with the Mac is why I adore the Mac SE. Same physical footprint, and actually does all the original Mac advertised and more. Unlike the Mac, though, the SE included user-upgradeable memory up to 4 MB, versatile expandability via a PDS card slot, a fan, an optional internal hard drive, and a somewhat standardized and interchangeable bus for keyboards, mice, and other input devices. In short, the Macintosh finally done right. Alas, only possible after Steve Jobs's exit. Also, I get the love for silent operation, but the SE was never obnoxiously loud even with the fan and hard drive.

This is from back in the days when people said Macintosh = Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs 😊