Filed under: Hardware, Peripherals, Blast From the Past, Apple History, This Old Apple
On this day in 1985...
Sure, the Mac made a big splash back in January of 1984, but that didn't make it a popular desktop computer for the enterprise. Most companies looked at the Mac the same way they do now; as an overpriced toy that wasn't compatible with the IBM PCs of the day.What started sneaking Macs into corporations wasn't the color Mac II or the original Microsoft Excel. No, it was the Apple LaserWriter, which was introduced on March 3, 1985 at the everyday low price of $6,995. For the first time, companies and individuals could get high-quality black and white printouts of their documents from a fast, 300 dpi printer.
The LaserWriter also introduced Adobe Postscript to a wider audience, as it was embedded in the raster image processor for the printer. The LaserWriter was the first printer to feature the AppleTalk Personal Network, so the expensive 8 page per minute printer could be shared with a workgroup.
When you use your little sub-$100 black and white laser printer today, remember those hardy pioneers of the Mac world who sacrificed their wallets to eventually bring you low-cost laser printing.
Thanks to Hadley for the tip!
[via Apple Matters]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Scott said 1:42PM on 3-03-2009
Sub-$100 black and white? I have a free color printer... though not laser.
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LinuxMacWindows Fanboy said 3:38PM on 3-03-2009
thats an inkjet. ink is expensive. slow as hell.
laser printers are fast. thats why copying machines use them
Scott said 3:42PM on 3-03-2009
Thank you captain didn't-get-the-point.
Darren said 1:53PM on 3-03-2009
Sub-$100 laser printer? You must be thinking of ink jet printers.
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Jonathan Wise said 3:41PM on 3-03-2009
Nope, I paid $89 for my B&W laser printer, with a "starter" toner that I still haven't used up after more than 8 months of weekly use...
Darren said 3:47PM on 3-03-2009
I stand corrected.
Wow, laser printers are cheap now.
ryemac3 said 1:56PM on 3-03-2009
My Dad had one of those, and my school book reports in the 80's never looked so good!
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oZ said 9:35AM on 3-04-2009
Same here! We had a Mac 512ke with a LaserWriter Plus in 1986, and I had the best looking papers in school!
LeftOfProspect said 2:23PM on 3-03-2009
I bought one of the first of these printers, paying the $6K. I was starting a small business and the impression that the sheets from this printer made was great. I'm sure we got some contracts that we would not have otherwise.
The printer weighed at ton (figuratively; it was 60 lbs, I think) and was unbelievably slow. If I recall, it was not easy or fast to download new fonts into the printer (they were stored there, not on the desktop machine), and there were not that many PostScript fonts available.
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David Alison said 3:01PM on 3-03-2009
Sure, there are sub $100 printers available today. Amazon is your friend:
http://bit.ly/1qgyj
And that's an HP Laserjet too! I do remember the first LaserWriter though. In the days of clacking "letter quality" printers that were basically typewriters hooked to a parallel cable and dot matrix printers that made that ripping sound as they printed the LaserWriter was so incredibly quiet.
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tvscifi.com said 3:44PM on 3-03-2009
I know the $6,000 price tag sounds steep, but remember before this baby came out, most business had to have stuff sent out for type setting. Then you'd have to take the type set copy that came back on rolls of paper, and paste it to a board, then that board had to be sent to printer for offset photography to make a plate. I remember doing catalogs with this printer for the Bissel Corporation. Our cost for the catalogs that year went from $100,000 to $70,000 just by using this printer to do our mock ups. This printer put a lot of people out of business.
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badweasel said 7:06PM on 3-03-2009
It would be a stretch to call IBM PC's 'the standard' in 1985. Were you around in 85? It wasn't until a few years later that it started gaining business momentum. In 88 I worked at US Sprint and we had terminals (yeah - dumb terminals we used to program the switches), some IBM PC's for database programming, and some Macs. On the Mac we were testing hyper stacks. Windows was just starting to pick up, but most everyone used DOS.
Holy crap that makes me feel old - like i'm talking about the model T or something. Now I'm depressed! :(
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Steven Sande said 10:20PM on 3-03-2009
Absolutely I was around in 1985 -- I'm 51, which makes me the senior person on the TUAW staff. I ran the IT department at a company of about 275 people. We got our first IBM PCs in 1984, and they were considered to be THE standard at that time. The saying at that time was "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM", so that's what a lot of companies did regardless of the cost. We were running DOS; Windows 1.0 didn't arrive until November of 1985.
I was able to start sneaking Macs into our shop in mid-1985, and they quickly became our standard. That stayed the standard until 1995, when our parent company outsourced all IT functions to IBM. My first job as a project manager was to move all Mac users over to Windows 95 in 1996. No wonder I hated working for IBM.
TUAWSteve
Izzy said 8:34AM on 3-04-2009
I got my first Apple ][ in the late 70's, so I was around. And you are partially right, dumb terminals were everywhere, but the IBM PC had taken over a good portion of desktop work while still networked to the old mainframes.
Time for my Geritol.
House of Mirth said 8:43AM on 3-04-2009
Steven is right, IBM was absolutely the standard in 1985. 'Is it IBM-compatible?' was the question people asked back then.
Anyway, about the LaserWriter. My friends and I went crazy when one of their parents brought home a Personal LaserWriter. It was QuickDraw, not PostScript, but a great printer nonetheless. We killed many, many trees with it :D
badweasel said 11:02AM on 3-04-2009
I guess I'm not as old as you guys. :)
I didn't enter the Corp workforce until 88 which was when I started using PCs more. In 85 I was fresh put of H.S. developing apps on Atari ST. Back in those days we were all about Atari. One buddy had a mac, and we were all getting away from our TRS80 stuff.
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Glenn Reid said 11:55AM on 3-04-2009
I was there; I worked at Adobe in 1985, and remember it well. What a great printer the LaserWriter was! We used to name the printers inside Adobe after typefaces. The one that got the most use was called "Gorilla", which in fact is/was a typeface design, though it was named somewhat mockingly, as the typeface was cartoonish (http://www.searchfreefonts.com/search/?q=gorilla).
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MadMike said 12:52PM on 3-04-2009
People still use printers? Last time I printed something, it was a boarding pass for a flight - last June. Now? They can scan it directly from my phone.
Directions? Bah, thing of the past. Google Maps right on the iPhone & some cars even have the ability to upload directions DIRECTLY to your cars navigation system.
I love technology.
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