The Power Macintosh (later Power Mac) is a family of personal computers that were designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer as part of its Macintosh brand from March 1994 until August 2006.
Introduction[]
Described by Macworld magazine as "The most important technical evolution of the Macintosh since the Mac II debuted in 1987," the Power Macintosh was Apple's first computer to use a PowerPC RISC processor. Existing software written for 68k processors that were used in earlier Macintoshes would not run on the PowerPC natively, so a Mac 68k emulator was included, starting with System 7.1.2. While the emulator provided good compatibility with existing Macintosh software, initial performance was about one-third slower than comparable Macintosh Quadra systems. The Power Macintosh replaced the Quadra at the high end of Apple's lineup, and were initially sold in similar enclosures, but with 4-digit model numbers. As PowerPC-native software began to appear, significant performance improvements were realized.
Photoshop 3.0 was the first PowerPC-native application from Adobe.
PowerPC native software[]
- Adobe Creative Suite 1 to 3
- After Effects 2.0.1 to CS3
- Adobe Illustrator 6.0 to CS3
- Adobe Photoshop 3.0 to CS3
- Adobe Premiere 4.2 to 6.5
- Adobe Type Manager 3.8 to 4.6.2
Evolution and discontinuation[]
Over the next twelve years, the Power Macintosh evolved through a succession of enclosure designs, a rename to "Power Mac", five major generations of PowerPC chips, and a great deal of press coverage, design accolades, and controversy about performance claims. The Power Mac was discontinued as part of Apple's transition to Intel processors,[1] which occurred while Macromedia was being acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005.[2] Adobe Creative Suite 3 added support for multi-core Intel-based Macs, and Creative Suite 4 dropped support for PowerPC entirely.
References[]
- ↑ Four years later: Why did Apple drop PowerPC? by Brooke Crothers, CNET. 2009-06-15.
- ↑ Adobe Completes Acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe Systems. 2005-12-05. Archived 2005-12-07.
External links[]
- Power Macintosh data sheets at Apple (archived 1998-12-05)
- Power Macintosh at EveryMac
- Power Mac index at Low End Mac
- Power Macintosh at the Apple Wiki
- Power Macintosh at the Macromedia Wiki
- Power Macintosh at Wikipedia