Apple's Failed BigMac Project: Precursor of the Mac II and NeXT Cube
- 2006.11.14
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In early 1983, Steve Jobs and several other Apple employees visited Brown University for a tour of their computing lab where they showed off brand new Apollo workstations. Andy van Dam was shown the Apple Macintosh before its introduction. He told Jobs that they were waiting for a "3M" machine (a term used in the 80s to describe a powerful computer that has at least one Megabyte of memory, a Million pixel display, and a Megaflop of processing power).
At the time Jobs didn't know what a megaflop was.
Big Dreams
Steve Jobs was given control of Apple's new SuperMicro division in 1984, which combined the Macintosh and Lisa teams. His top priority was to create the Macintosh's successor, a 3M machine dubbed BigMac. Rich Page was heavily involved in the project as well, and it was decided that BigMac would be as compatible as possible with the original Macintosh.
BigMac included a new type of computer bus known as FDB, which allowed up to six peripherals, and this later became the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB), which was introduced with the Apple IIGS in 1986.
BigMac used separate video memory and system memory (RAM), compared to the Macintosh, which dedicated 21 KB of its 128 KB as video memory. The Motorola 68020 chip would be used. BigMac included two serial ports, two SCSI ports, two disk drive ports, and 3 FDB connectors.
Macs with Unix
BigMac was expected to cost as much as a typical personal computer, even though it was actually a powerful workstation for its time.
It would use a Unix operating system, and Jobs had hoped to port Macintosh software to a Unix base so developers could take full advantage of the multitasking and communications features of Unix in combination with the user-friendly interface of the Mac. Apple acquired an expensive Unix license from Unisoft through Jobs' request, but very little progress was being made.
Six prototypes were produced, but they all suffer from several defects. AppleShare never worked, MacBugs was incomplete, only one of the two serial ports was functional, and the sound was never completed.
When Jobs left
the SuperMicros division in the summer of 1985, the project was
canceled by his replacement, Jean-Louis Gassée. Many ideas
from BigMac made their way into the Macintosh II: two serial ports, internal and
external SCSI, room for two internal floppy drives, and two ADB
ports. However, the Mac II ran the Mac OS (not Unix), supported
color, and had six NuBus expansion slots, one or more of which
could be used for video (since there was no onboard video).
The Mac II, introduced in March 1987, was Apple's step toward a "3M" machine. It shipped with 1 MB of RAM, had a math coprocessor capable of 160 kflops, and could support megapixel displays. The 25 MHz 68040-based Quadra 700 and 900 (Oct. 1991) were the first Macs to achieve the 3M mark with 3.5 mflops performance.
Jobs resigned from Apple later in 1985 to start his own computer company, Next (later NeXT Computer), which would create its own "3M" machine. NeXT produced its first Unix-based workstation, the grayscale, 68030-based NeXT Cube, which was introduced in October 1988. It included 8 MB of RAM, an almost megapixel display (1120 x 832), and reached 265 kflops.
The NeXT Cube was followed by a line of color and grayscale
models in September 1990. These 25 MHz 68040-based computers
propelled NeXT to the 3M mark a year ahead of Apple. 
Sources
- What's a Megaflop?, Andy Hertzfeld, Folklore.org
- Flops: Big Mac, L'Aventure Apple
Joshua Coventry's writing can also be found on Silicon User.
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