APPLE COMPUTERS

Himanshu C. Reddy Shyam Ashish

Nasreen Mohsin Arjun Athul

Ajith K. J.
 Introduction
• Macintosh or Mac, is a series of several lines
of personal computers produced and marketed
by Apple Inc.
• Production of the Mac is based on a vertical
integration model in that Apple facilitates all
aspects of its hardware and creates its own
operating system that is pre-installed on all
Mac computers.
 Introduction
• Apple does use third party components,
however, such as graphics subsystems from
nVidia and ATi.

• Current Mac CPUs use Intel's x86 architecture.

- the earliest models (1984–1994) used Motorola's 68k

and models from 1994–2006 used the AIM alliance's
PowerPC.
 Development
• The Macintosh project started in the late 1970s with
Jef Raskin.
• The first Macintosh board (Lisa) was built to
Raskin's design specifications –
– 64 Kb of RAM
– Motorola 6809E MicroProcessor (8 bit)
• Capable of handling 256x256 black and white display
• It included two 8-bit accumulators (A and B, which could be
combined into a single 16-bit register, D), two 16-bit index
registers (X, Y) and two 16-bit stack pointers. The index and
stack registers allowed very advanced addressing modes.
 Development
• By December 1980, a new model had been designed with the
Motorola 68000 Microrocessor.
• Speed had increased from 5 MHz to 8 MHz.
• Had the capacity to support a 384×256 pixel display.
• Used fewer RAM chips.
• The final Mac design was self-contained and had the
complete QuickDraw picture language and interpreter in 64
KB of ROM.
• It had 128 KB of RAM. RAM was expandable to 512 KB.
• The final product's screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel
monochrome display, exceeding the prototypes.
 Macintosh 128K
• The Macintosh 128K machine was the first original
Apple Macintosh personal computer.
• It used 8 MHz Motorola 68000 microprocessor
connected to a 128 KB DRAM by a 16-bit data bus.
• Contained a 400 KB, single-sided 3.5-inch floppy disk
drive and dedicated no space to other internal
mechanical storage.
• The Macintosh 128K was not upgradable as there was
no provision for adding internal storage, more RAM
capacity or an upgrade card.
 Macintosh Plus
• The Macintosh Plus computer was the third
model in the Macintosh line.
– 1 MB of RAM (expandable to 4MB)
– Motorola 68000 @ 16 MHz
– Single In-line Memory Modules
– Supported 512x342 monochrome display
• Had overheating problems due to lack of a
cooling fan.
 Macintosh II
• The Macintosh II computer was the first model in
this line.
– 1 MB of RAM (expandable to 20 MB)
– Motorola 68020 @ 16 MHz (32-bit Microprocessor)
• Included a ALU chip.
• Included on-board cache memory.
• Instruction cache of 256 bits.
• Had support for a co-processor.
– Supported 32-bit color display
• Included “Color QuickDraw” in ROM, a color version of the
graphics language.
 Macintosh SE
• First compact Macintosh with an internal drive bay for a hard
disk (originally 20 MB or 40 MB) or a second floppy drive.
• First compact Macintosh that featured an expansion slot.
• Used the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB), introduced with the
Apple II, for keyboard and mouse interface.
• Better reliability and longer life expectancy due to the addition
of a cooling fan.
• Used Motorola 68000 @ 8 MHz.
• Had a monochrome display.
• 256 KB ROM with 16 bit data-bus.
 Macintosh IIx
• The Macintosh IIx was introduced by Apple in 1988
as an incremental update of the original Macintosh II
model.
• Replaced the 16 MHz Motorola 68020 CPU and
68881 FPU of the II with a 68030 CPU and 68882
FPU.
– Included 800 KB floppy drive with the 1.44 MB SuperDrive..
– Sported 0.25 KB of L1 cache
– 16 MHz bus (1:1 with CPU speed).
– RAM of 1MB (expandable to 128MB).
 Apple iMacs
• New line of Apple’s multimedia computers.
• The iMac was the first computer to exclusively offer USB
ports as standard, including the connector for its new keyboard
and mouse.
• The original iMac had a 233 MHz PowerPC G3 (PowerPC
750) chip, with 512 KB L2 cache running at 116.6 MHz, 32
MB RAM, 2 MB video RAM.
• Although the iMac did not officially have an expansion slot,
the first versions had a slot dubbed the “mezzanine slot”.
• It was only for internal use by Apple, although a few third-
party expansion cards were released for it.
 Apple iBook
• iBook is an Apple Inc. trademark for a line of discontinued
laptop computers.
• Like the iMac, the iBook G3 had a PowerPC G3 (300-466
MHz) CPU, and no legacy Apple interfaces. USB, Ethernet,
modem ports and an optical drive were standard.
• The iBook G3 was the first Mac to use Apple's new "Unified
Motherboard Architecture", which condensed all of the
machine's core features into two chips, and added AGP and
Ultra DMA support.
• The iBook was the first mainstream computer designed and
sold with integrated wireless networking.
 Intel Era
• Apple discontinued the use of PowerPC
microprocessors in 2006.
• Started using x86 processors manufactured by
Intel. (T2400 1.83 GHz)
– Dual Core processor
– 2M cache
• Initiated in view to make Windows OS work
on Apple Machines.
 Other Apple Products
• iPods
– Classisc - 6 generations
– Shuffle- 4 generations
– Nano - 6 generations
– Touch - 4 generations
• iPad
– 2 generations
• iPhone
– 4 generations
• Apple TV
 iPod Classic
• First, second and third generations used ARM7
TDMI (Thumb + Debug + Multiplier + ICE)
– 32 bit RISC CPU
– 130 MIPS for a 0.13 μ cm process
– Ran at 90 MHz
• Fourth and fifth generations used ARM7
TDMI at 80 MHz
– Lower speed to preserve battery life
• Sixth generation specifications unknown.
 iPod Shuffle
• Used SigmaTel STMP35xx System On a Chip
(SoC)
– Contained the decoder for audio of mp3 and aac formats
– Required no external RAM, voltage converters, battery
chargers, headphone capacitors, ADC, DAC, or amplifiers
• First media player in apple line to use flash
memory

• No further details available on iPod shuffle.

 iPod Nano
• Initially called iPod Mini during the first
generation.
• First generation Nano used ARM7 TDMI at
80MHz.
• Later generations used Samsung System On A Chip,
based around an ARM processor.
• Initial generations had over-heating issues leading to
more than 20 registered flaming incidents.
 iPod Touch
• First and second generations were based on Samsung SoC
architecture*.
– 300 - 400 MHz speeds
– 128 MB on board RAM
• Third and fourth generations were also based on Samsung
SoC architecture*.
– 700 - 800 MHz speed
– 128 MB on board RAM
– Tested to be faster than iPhone 2nd generation.

* No official data available

 iPad
• First generation was built on Apple A4 SoC
designed by apple and manufactured by
Samsung.
– Package on package chip
– Combined ARM Cortex-A8 CPU with a PowerVR GPU
– Had varying speed of 800 MHz
• Second generation was built on Apple A5 SoC.
– Contained dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU and a
dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU
– Had speed of 1000 MHz or 1 GHz
 iPhone
• First two generations of iPhone were based on Apple
A4 technology.

• Third generation was based on Apple A5 technology.

• Fourth generation is supposed to base on Apple A5

v2 technology.

• No further information available.