Mac TV: 12 Years Before the iMac G5 with Front Row
- 2005.10.18
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With the release of the iMac G5 with Front Row, many analysts have hailed Apple's entry into the living room. Apple actually released its first Mac with a remote control in 1993, the Macintosh TV.
The machine was an oddity, ostensibly designed for the cramped quarters of an American dorm room. The computer was totally black, save for the platinum CD-ROM caddy.
The Macintosh TV was first envisioned as a tenth anniversary Mac, but that project was eventually canceled.
After the unexpected success of the Color Classic, John Sculley requested a machine with a form factor similar to that of the Color Classic, but with a CD-ROM drive and a 14" Trinitron CRT. Mac TV was released on October 23, 1993, shortly after the project was resurrected.
The logic card inside Mac TV was a
slightly modified Mac IIvx
motherboard. (The IIvx was Apple's midrange 68030 machine at the time).
In order to prevent Mac TV from stealing sales from higher-end Macs,
Apple limited its RAM capacity to 8 MB (vs. 68 MB limit present in
the IIvx).
The new machine was designed to be low cost and have a small footprint. Its most notable features were its TV tuner and remote control. The TV tuner had coaxial and RCA inputs, allowing users to watch broadcast television and connect VCRs.
Apple included a remote control to control the CD-ROM drive and TV tuner.
The TV card was also somewhat limited. It didn't allow users to record television and was only capable of displaying video in full screen mode or playing TV audio in the background.
Met with much fanfare at its launch, Apple primarily peddled the machine to college students and early adopters. It only sold the machine at 230 retail locations, mostly electronics stores. Apple built and sold only 10,000 units, making Mac TV far rarer than the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh or even the Lisa.
Apple quietly discontinued the model several months after its introduction.
Mac TV was Apple's first TV-capable machine, but it was far
from the last. Apple created an LC PDS card that included a TV and FM
radio tuner. The tuner card added the ability to record television and
watch TV inside a window.
All of the Power Mac 5xxx series had infrared receivers for the TV tuner's remote controls. Despite the wide availability of such cards, they never took off.
The last computer that supported an Apple TV tuner was the Power Mac 6500.
Bibliography
Some of the sources used in writing this article:
- Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders, Jim Carlton
- Infinite Loop, Michael Malone
- The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, Alan Deutschman
- Apple Confidential 2.0, Owen Linzmayer
- Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple . . . a Journey of Adventure, Ideas & the Future, John Sculley
- Wikipedia
Tom Hormby's writing can also be found on Silicon User.
Recent Orchard articles
- The roots of Apple's retail stores, 05.19. A big problem for Apple in the late 90s was indifferent big box retailers. Apple's "store within a store" in CompUSA was just the beginning.
- NeXT, OpenStep, and the triumphant return of Steve Jobs, 02.04. Steve Jobs left Apple in disgrace in 1985, created NeXT, and regained control of Apple in 1997 (the acquisition was completed on Feb. 4).
- 10 years of 'Think Different': The ad campaign that restored Apple's reputation, 09.28. After Steve Jobs' triumphant return and before the debut of the iMac, Apple had to do something to change people's opinion of the beleaguered company.
- More in the Orchard index.
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- Wouldn't life be great with an iSlate?, John Hatchett, Recycled Computing, 07.04. PDAs and smartphones are too small for some tasks, full-fledged Tablet PCs are overkill, and ebook readers are too limited. Apple has the tech to own this niche.
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