Steve Jobs developed the Apple Laser Writer because he couldn’t convince any of the printer manufacturers to make a desktop printer that could manage what was the then the very recently born, super duper high resolution desktop design and publishing, including .pdf typography, and with what at the time was exceptional speed. Local networking was another big advantage for Macs that was also unmatched in the market at the time.
For people working in publishing, physical paste up rapidly became a thing of the past. This saved an enormous amount of time and money, and changes could easily be made via Local Talk, which saved even a lot more of running around time among offices.
Once Laser Writer established desktop publishing and printing, printer manufacturers saw that Macs could easily manage desktop publishing and printing, many printer manufacturers quickly jumped into the desktop market. Steve Jobs exited the not very profitable printer market.
Yes, they were. My SE eventually failed to boot, which is either a power supply problem or an issue with the Mobius PDS card I installed. The 20 MB hard drive failed after a couple of years, but I purchased a 45 MB external hard drive that doubled as a nice base for the machine.
My LaserWriter Plus still worked fine, too. I replaced it mainly because I was moving and wanted a lighter-weight office setup. The HP LaserJet 6MP that replaced it was higher-res, but failed after about 5 years.
That was what spurred my first paying Mac job, after learning typesetting in a phototype environment where everything was paste-up. I was freelancing in the Boston Hub, and the reason my client called me in was that one of their execs somehow had a LaserWriter but no Mac, and wanted to know if the Mac could be used to make nametags for a sales meeting.
Between me, the Mac rental, and the software purchase, they spent the price of a nice iMac today to find out that it could. Also, validated the executive’s choice of acquiring a LaserWriter.
Soon after I bought the Mac, I got really tired
of those little hard disks, so I had a couple of guys from Pasadena add a hard drive. Best thing I ever did. I was able to eliminate all the typesetting that I had to procure from typesetting vendors with the Laserwriter, saving my clients about 50% on the jobs. Who needs 1200 DPI for a return address? It gave me a great price break I could pass on to my customers and I used it for about 15 years, even after I had upgraded to a new printer.
Yup. Though I’ve always been based on the other coast, there was a time when I would have been working for one of those typesetting vendors. Before LaserWriter, there was a ton of jobs that were done with phototype.
My freelance agency used me to do relief work around Boston for typesetters on vacation or leave, and it was lucrative at a time when the minimum wage was under $4 an hour. I did a week’s work for one of the big department stores (maybe Filene’s), where I spent the whole week setting price toppers for clothing racks. They would take the masters and print 800 or so cards on a small offset press. I was skilled on “big iron” typesetting front ends that could lay out the text and price using fields.
It must have cost a fortune to do it that way, but it was replacing in-store letterpresses where the type was set by hand.
It’s one of those jobs that today are done in-house at individual stores using laser printers and card stock supplied by corporate. Pretty much a full circle thing.
Let’s see if I remember. My first Mac was a Mac 512 I got for Christmas 1985 (with an Imagewriter), and upgraded a month later via the half-price deal on a Mac Plus upgrade for Macs purchased in December. I upgraded that Mac with an accelerator card and maxed-out memory at some point. Then I bought a Mac SE and immediately added a 68030 accelerator card and maxed out the memory. I think the order of the next Macs was a Centris, then a Power Computing tower (don’t recall the name), then a Quicksilver, then a Powerbook of some flavor (used concurrently with the later years of the Quicksilver, I think). Trying to remember if I owned two Powerbooks one after the other - maybe. Then a 27” iMac concurrent with the Powerbooks and an early MacBook Pro. Then a few MacBook Pros, 4 of them maybe, or 5 (I still have my M1 and my most recent Intel).
I started with a 512K Mac, which I bought along with a printer and an external drive at a MacWorld convention in Boston from a store that never billed me. I was billed a year or two later by whoever bought their assets out of bankruptcy.
LC, which I gave to a friend who insisted on paying me something. Not very memorable.
8500, which took me from the mid-90s into the early 2000s. The plastic broke and I eventually scrapped it.
A used Powerbook 5300 when I needed a laptop for giving talks at conferences, and shared with my daughter for school. It was a heavy beast that I sold on ebay for about $350 a few years ago.
Original iMac, for my wife as her own computer; we still have it
iBook, which replaced the Powerbook 5300 and made travel easier. I still have it
G5 when I felt flush in 2004. A beautiful machine, but the Apple Display I bought with it was a fiasco that failed after a few years. It still works, but I don’t use it.
2009 MacBookPlus 13". A nice little machine. My wife still uses it.
2010 MacMini, Still works, and fills my needs quite well
2017 MacBook Air. We bought the minimal model. We still use it as a house computer, but it’s mainly my wife’s
2018 MacMini. Great little machine, which fills my needs.
I’ve owned several Macs; two iMacs, a 17" Mac Pro Laptop, and recently a 16"Mac Pro with the new chip.
All are still in excellent condition and are still in use except the first Laptop; I’ve misplaced its power supply and need to find a replacement.
My first Mac was a gift from a friend that had problems getting a LAN setup on Windows for Workgroups. I built him a dedicated Windows machine to be his server and straightened out his problems. He bought me the iMac and I happily switched from Windows to Mac permanently!
I haven’t looked back for my home other than to help friends with Windows and to do some consulting many years ago. We are a Mac family!
At last! A second person mentioned the 17” Mac Pro! Loved mine.
My first was an SE/30, Sys.6.3. Sys. 7 was life changing.
Maxed out the memory, then bought a graphics card from Geoff Duncan (free installation) and plugged in a Nokia color monitor and started doing DTP.
5 years later got a 7600.
Then a Power Mac G4 and I did the free power harness swop myself.
Then a Quicksilver MDD
Power Mac G5
At the moment, it’s a Mac Studio. Sweet machine.