Macintosh History: 1995In early 1995, Apple announced that they had shipped one
million Power Macs within one year of their introduction,
showing an overwhelming acceptance of the new
technology. FasterIn January, the Power Mac
6100 was bumped from 60 MHz to 66 MHz, the 7100
went from 66 MHz to 80 MHz, and the top of the line
8100 moved from 80 MHz to
100 MHz. SlowerThe first Power Mac for the education market was released
in April. The 5200/75 put
the new PowerPC 603 processor in a case similar to the one
used for the LC 575. The all-in-one design was a natural for
schools, since it meant less cables to come loose and fewer
parts to set up. Unfortunately, although the PowerPC 603 was a match for
the earlier, more expensive PowerPC 601, the 5200 and
several subsequent models were hobbled by some very poor
design decisions on the motherboard. These are covered in
general on the Road
Apples site and on Macintosh
Online Technical Journal, but boil down to this: - The 603 has a 64-bit bus, but the motherboard had a
32-bit bus. It took four memory cycles to collect and
integrate data so the CPU could process it.
- The motherboard had two sections which could only
communicate via the CPU. One part handled ADB,
networking, and SCSI, the other dealt with IDE, video,
and graphics.
These compromises were rooted in a decision to use as
many components and subsections from the Quadra
605 and Quadra 630 as
possible, to reduce design costs. Send in the ClonesPower Computing introduced the first licensed Maclone,
the Power 80, running an
80 MHz PowerPC 601. Over time, speed was increased to 100
MHz, then 120 MHz. Power Computing went on to be a very
successful company, until Apple pulled their license in 1997
-- and then bought the company. Adopting PCIUntil June 1995, Apple had stuck with the 10 MHz 32-bit
NuBus slot as the standard Mac expansion slot. But June was
the first Mac with PCI slots, a 33 MHz 32-bit architecture
pioneered on the Wintel side. The Power Mac 9500/120
not only used PCI slots (six of them), it was also the first
Power Mac to use the powerful PowerPC 604 processor. In
October, Byte magazine noted that the 8500/132 (which also
used a PPC 604) was 87% faster than a 133 MHz Pentium for
integer math. Never again would the Wintel crowd be able to
look down on the Mac's performance But perhaps the most forward-looking feature of the 9500
was the CPU daughter card. Today, it's very easy to find a
400 MHz G3 card that can plug into the daughter card slot
and make the 9500 several times faster than it was at
birth. Small ImprovementsApple moved from 2x CD-ROMs to 4x mechanisms, both of
which sound pretty slow in this day of 24x to 40x
drives. The LC 580 improved the
price of the LC 575 by
moving from the Sony Trinitron to a less expensive
monitor. More Power to GoMay saw the introduction of three PowerBooks, the
190, 190cs,
and 5300. Both series used
the same case, and the 190s could be upgraded to PowerPC
status with a 5300 motherboard. The 190s were the last PowerBooks designed around the
Motorola 68LC040, and both ran at 33 MHz. The 190cs had a
color screen, while the plain 190 displayed grays. The 5300 used the new PowerPC 603e, a version of the 603
with a larger on-chip cache that greatly improved
performance when running old Mac software using 680x0
emulation. And although today's 5300s are very nice laptops, that's
mostly because Apple fixed them and newer versions of the
Mac OS work more reliably on it. The initial release was
recalled due to a combustible battery. The case plastics
tended to chip, a characteristic shared by the 190. For
these, the PowerBook 5300 earns a Road
Apple. More Power MacsIn August, Apple replaced the 7100 with the 7500,
which sported a 100 MHz 601 and a brand new case with a
slide-off top. The 8100 was replaced by the 8500, which
shared the same minitower case originally used by the Quadra
800. Both the 7500 and 8500 had three PCI slots and used CPU
daughter cards, allowing upgrade to a 400 MHz G3 processor
today. The CompetitionAfter many years of working on a replacement for Windows
3.1, Microsoft finally shipped Windows 95 in August. Intel introduced the Pentium Pro in November. But the most significant computing event of the year had
nothing to do with Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Apple, or any
other company. 1995 was the year World Wide Web entered our
language. Personal PerspectiveIt really wasn't a breakthrough year for Apple. The x100
series of Power Macs were evolutionary jumps, the 5200
suffered from too many compromises, the Power 80 was nothing
to get excited about, and the LC 580 was no faster than its
predecessor. Apple adopting PCI was news, and even today the 9500 is
in strong demand on the used market, mostly due to the 6
expansion slots and the ability to plug in a fast G3
processor. The PowerBook 190 was a step backward after the PowerBook
500 series. The earlier models came with built-in modems and
ethernet; with the 190 and 5300, you had to buy your own.
While this lowered the price of the computer, it made
support more difficult since you never knew which PC card
modem, ethernet adapter, or combination card you'd be
working with. But with millions of Power Macs in use by the end of the
year, Apple was leading the personal computer revolution
from older designs into the RISC world. 
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