March 20, 1997: Apple launches its Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, a futuristic, special-edition Mac that’s forward of its time in each manner.
Not a part of any established Mac line, it brings a glance (and a value!) not like anything obtainable. And but the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh promptly bombs. As we speak, it’s a collector’s piece.
The twentieth anniversary Mac … form of
Considerably confusingly, the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh didn’t really characterize the twentieth anniversary of the Mac. (That milestone handed in 2004 with little or no fanfare from Apple.) As an alternative, the progressive Mac marked 20 years because the 1977 incorporation of Apple.
With the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, Apple simply may have appeared to the previous and constructed a Mac that paid tribute to the look of the authentic Macintosh 128K. In some methods, this is able to have made excellent sense within the “unhealthy previous days” of the Nineteen Nineties, when Apple was successfully promoting to a small however devoted group of Mac addicts.
As an alternative, Apple boldly did the alternative, constructing a pc that appeared prefer it got here from the long run. The Twentieth Anniversary Mac was the primary flatscreen Mac in historical past, with a design that massively predated at the moment’s attractive iMacs.
As with the flatscreen monitor, the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh embraced the long run by aiming to be a full multimedia machine. It boasted an built-in TV/FM radio system, S-video enter and a customized sound system designed by Bose.
From a visible perspective, the weirdest factor in regards to the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh was its CD drive. Not like the almost-invisible slots of later Macs, the CD drive on the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh was a front-on vertical sq. that dominated the entrance of the machine.
Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh: Harbinger of change
Photograph: Apple
In line with the theme of seeking to the long run, the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh additionally signaled a change inside Apple.
Blaming the corporate’s dysfunctional tradition, head designer Robert Brunner stop Apple shortly earlier than the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh got here to market. That cleared the best way for Jony Ive — who labored as a designer on the undertaking — to rise via the ranks.
Rise of Apple design group
The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh was one of many first computer systems to get began inside Apple’s design group, moderately than its engineering division. Given Ive’s lofty place inside Apple in later years, this method turned normal follow in Cupertino. However that actually wasn’t the case within the mid-Nineteen Nineties. (Ive, who went on to develop into Apple’s chief design officer, left the corporate in 2019 after a string of hits.)
The Twentieth Anniversary Mac arrived as Apple went via huge modifications, with former CEO Gil Amelio stepping down and Steve Jobs rejoining the corporate as a part of its NeXT acquisition.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak got here again as an adviser, too. For a brief time frame, 1997 actually was like 1977 once more. Jobs and Woz briefly performed a much bigger function in Apple than that they had in years.
(Apple really gave the primary two Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh models to Jobs and Wozniak. Woz beloved it, describing it because the excellent laptop for a university pupil because it got here with “laptop, TV, radio, CD participant and extra … multi function modern machine.)
Twentieth Anniversary Mac fails within the market
Sadly, the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (like one other of my favourite Macs, the Energy Mac G4 Dice) failed fully on the field workplace. When it launched, the TAM value $9,000 (almost $17,000 in at the moment’s {dollars}). That price ticket made it completely unaffordable to the common shopper, not to mention faculty college students.
Ultimately, Apple bought just some thousand models.
As with the battles between Jobs and Jef Raskin over the unique Mac, a disagreement arose over whether or not the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh ought to be an everyday laptop priced for the lots, or an expensive particular version — which is what the advertising division needed. The entrepreneurs gained out, and the Twentieth Anniversary Mac floundered because of this.
A luxurious Mac, delivered in a limo
Photograph: Seinfeld
For what it’s price, for those who did purchase an early Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, you loved an expertise like no different.
Overlook ready in line on the retailer. Apple delivered the Twentieth Anniversary Macs to patrons’ properties through limo. A person in a tuxedo would arrange the high-end machines.
Apple ultimately chopped the value of the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh to only $2,000, earlier than discontinuing it in March 1998. It by no means caught on with shoppers, though it did win design awards.
The distinctive laptop additionally popped up in popular culture. It served because the Mac in Jerry’s condominium within the remaining season of Seinfeld. And Alfred Pennyworth used a TAM within the horrible 1997 film Batman & Robin.
When you’re on the lookout for a Mac that bridges the hole between the doomed experimentalism of Apple within the Nineteen Nineties and the corporate Apple ultimately morphed into, the completely distinctive Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh is the right machine. Simply don’t count on to simply discover one going low cost on eBay.
