macintosh
4 definitions found
macintosh - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :
Mac \Mac\ prop. n.
Shortened form of Macintosh, a brand name for a personal
computer; as, the latest Mac has great new features.
[PJC]
Macintosh \Mac"in*tosh\, n.
1. Same as Mackintosh.
[1913 Webster]
2. [Trademark.] (Computers) A brand of personal computer
featuring an integrated system in which the hardware and
system-operating software were designed by or under the
control of a single company, the Apple Computer
Corporation; among personal computers, distinguished from
the IBM-compatible or Intel-based series of computers.
[PJC]
macintosh - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :
macintosh
n 1: a lightweight waterproof (usually rubberized) fabric [syn:
mackintosh, macintosh]
2: a waterproof raincoat made of rubberized fabric [syn:
macintosh, mackintosh, mac, mack]
macintosh - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :
Macintosh
Apple Macintosh
beige toaster
Mac
<computer> (Mac) The name of a product line and operating system
platform manufactured by Apple Computer, Inc.,
originally based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor
family and a proprietary operating system. The Mac was
Apple's successor to the Lisa.
The project was proposed by Jef Raskin some time before
Steve Jobs's famous visit to Xerox PARC. Jobs tried to
scuttle the Macintosh project and only joined it later because
he wasn't trusted to manage the Lisa project.
The Macintosh user interface was notable for popularising
the graphical user interface, with its easy to learn and
easy to use desktop metaphor.
The Macintosh Operating System is now officially called
Mac OS.
The first Macintosh, introduced in January 1984, had a
Motorola 68000 CPU, 128K of RAM, a small monochrome
screen, and one built-in floppy disk drive with an external
slot for one more, two serial ports and a four-voice sound
generator. This was all housed in one small plastic case,
including the screen. When more memory was available later in
the year, a 512K Macintosh was nicknamed the "Fat Mac."
The standard Macintosh screen resolution is 72 dpi (making
one point = one pixel), exactly half the 144 dpi
resolution of the ancient Apple Imagewriter dot matrix
printer.
The Mac Plus (January 1986) added expandability by providing
an external SCSI port for connecting hard disks, magnetic tape
, and other high-speed devices.
The Mac SE (March 1987) had up to four megabytes of RAM, an
optional built-in 20 megabyte hard disk and one internal
expansion slot for connecting a third-party device.
The Mac II (March 1987) used the faster Motorola 68020 CPU
with a 32-bit bus.
In 1994 PowerPC based Macs, Power Macs, were launched, and
in 1999, the iMac, updated on 2002-01-07. The Power Mac G4
(Quicksilver 2002) was the first Power Mac to clock at 1GHz and
"Superdrives" (combined DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-RW)
appeared in the iMac in 2002. In mid 2003 the first G5
Power Mac was released, the first Mac to be based on a 64-bit
architecture. IBM and not Motorola manufactured the CPU for
this new generation of Power Macs. The clock speed was
initially 1.6GHz but a dual 2GHz system was available in
September.
Mac OS X is the successor to Mac OS 9, although its
technological parent is the NEXTSTEP OS from Next, Inc.,
founded by Steve Jobs after he left Apple the first time. OS
X is based largely on the BSD UNIX system. The core of the
OS X operating system is released as free source code under
the project name Darwin.
If "Macintosh" were an acronym, some say it would stand for
"Many Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs".
While this was true for pre Mac OS 9 systems, it is less true
for Mac OS 9, and totally incorrect for Mac OS X, which has
protected memory, so even if one application crashes, the
system and other applications are unaffected.
See also Macintosh file system, Macintosh user interface.
Apple Home (http://apple.com/).
(2004-07-20)
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