A sidebar to the Apple Macintosh review published in Byte, issue 8/1984, pp. 241-242.

At a glance

Name
Macintosh
Manufacturer
Apple Computer Inc.
20525 Mariani Ave.
Cupertino, CA 95014
(408) 996-1010
Components
Size: 13.5 by 9.7 by 10.9 inches (main unit)
2.6 by 13.2 by 5.8 inches (keyboard)
Weight: 19.5 pounds
Processor: Motorola 68000 (7,8336 MHz)
Memory: 128K bytes of RAM; 64K bytes of ROM
Display: 9-inch built-in monitor; high-resolution bit-mapped display (512 by 342 pixels); adjustable
Keyboard: 58 keys, detached, standard layout, no function keys, software-mapped
Mouse: single button, mechanical tracking, optical shaft encoding
Mass storage: built-in single-sided 3½-inch Sony drive (400K bytes)
Sound generator: four-voice sound
Interfaces: two RS-422A serial ports (230.4K bps transfer rate); external-disk interface for second (optional) disk drive; mouse interface; synchronous serial keyboard bus
Operating System
Proprietary unnamed
Optional Hardware
Imagewriter dot-matrix printer: $595
Numeric keypad: $99
Carrying case: $99
Modem (300 bps): $225
(300/1200 bps): $495
Security Accessory Kit: $49
Second floppy-disk drive: $495
Optional Software
See text box
Documentation
160-page user’s manual
Price
$2495 ($2990 with Imagewriter)

The Memory Size graph shows the standard and optional memory available for the computers under comparison. The Disk Storage graph shows the highest capacity of a single floppy-disk drive for each system. The Bundled Software graph shows the number of software packages included with each system. The Price graph shows the list price of a system with two high-capacity floppy-disk drives, a monochrome monitor, graphics and color-display capability, a printer port and a serial port, 256K bytes of memory (64K bytes for 8-bit systems), the standard operating system for each system, and the standard BASIC interpreter for each system. The Mac’s price includes 128K bytes of memory only.

The graph for Disk Access in BASIC shows how long it takes to write a 64K-byte sequential text file to a blank floppy disk and how long it takes to read this file (For the program listings, see “The Chameleon Plus,” by Rich Krajewski, June 1984, page 327.) The BASIC Performance graph shows how long it takes to run one iteration of the Sieve of Eratosthenes prime-number benchmark. In the same graph, the Calculations results show how long it takes to do 10,000 multiplication and division operations using single-precision numbers. The System Utilities graph shows how long it takes to transfer a 40K-byte file using the system utilities. The Spreadsheet graph shows how long the computers take to load and recalculate a 25- by 25-cell spread-sheet where each cell equals 1.001 times the cell to its left. The spreadsheet program used was Microsoft Multiplan. The time for the format/disk copy test on the Macintosh reflects using the disk-copy utility on a single-drive system. Four disk-swaps are required for the complete disk copy, the time for which is included in the benchmark.
* The Sieve benchmark couldn’t be run on the Mac (see text for details).
** The new Disk Copy program was not available at press time.