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Apple Introduced the LaserWriter 40 Years Ago Today
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My family bought an Apple //c and the *original* Imagewriter back in 1984, and both lasted me through 1992. The //c actually gave up the ghost before the Imagewriter did - I sold it to a friend who kept using it. That thing was the loudest tank in the world, but good grief, did it perform well and last. My current printer is still the HP Laserjet 1102w (the "w" stood for "wireless!") from 2012 that is also finally starting to show its age - though I think it has lasted as long as it has partially because I don't really print much, anymore.
I bet someone here has 1 as their daily driver for their work.
They'll say there's nothing wrong with it and has no reason to upgrade.
They'll say there's nothing wrong with it and has no reason to upgrade.
The original Canon, HP LaserJet, Imagen and Apple LaserWriter desktop printers were all based on the dry-toner 300 dpi Canon LBP-CX engine (8 ppm).
Before that, Canon had a wet toner (240 dpi, LBP-10, 10 ppm) table top (needed big, strong table
) that Imagen sold as the IMPRINT-10.The successor of the CX from Canon was a 300 dpi engine, (LBP-SX) that Apple used in the LaserWriter II line.
After the original invention, Gary Starkweather later modified a Xerox copier at PARC, and built a number of the "Dover" printers. Gary ended up as a Fellow at Apple (remember Apple ATG?); he left Apple in the Jobs debacle, and ended up as a Fellow at Microsoft.
A number of the early Xerox Dover printers (never commercialized, as far as I know) went to universities like MIT, CMU and Stanford, where they were driven by the Xerox Alto workstation.
Chen
Apple then had AppleTalk over ethernet - confusingly AppleTalk was both a protocol and to some extent a cabling standard. TCP/IP ultimately replaced AppleTalk.
Price a MacIIfx (released 1990 at US$8,969 no HDD and 4MB RAM, equivalent to over US$20K now, then plus accelerator and graphics cards, RAM upgrades (had 8 slots for a whopping 128MB)
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It goes further than the compact "original" Macs - the II series machines were also not actively cooled even the IICi (68030 @ 25mHz, or the IIFX (60040 @ 40mHz) etc. I cannot remember if the Centris series or Quadra 700s were cooled or not, the 800, 900 (and models that replaced them) were actively cooled - aftermarket accelerators though are a different beast and some did have cooling
I almost went and worked for Tektronix, but I settled in at intel corp. now I feel old 😬.
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Well, I've really enjoyed reading all the stories so I'll share mine. I was a freshman in high school when the LaserWriter came out. The year before, my parents had given me my first computer, an original Macintosh (128K) with an ImageWriter. I had to write a paper for some class and instead of printing it on the ImageWriter, I got brave and took my floppy disk down to the county office for our school system because I heard they had a LaserWriter. I became friends with the guy in charge of the county's computers that day and from then on always went down there every week to read MacWeek (anyone remember that... the last page had a column called Mac the Knife, with "Mac Rumors," but I digress...).
Anyway, I printed my paper on the LaserWriter and my teacher was, of course, stunned at the print quality. Because of that, the school ended up buying a Mac to use for their journalism classes (newspaper and yearbook), and I borrowed it every day, rolling it on a cart, to my programming class where I learned Pascal and tried to teach myself C, which the teacher didn't know either.
Thanks MacRumors for posting this article and thanks to all who shared their memories.
Anyway, I printed my paper on the LaserWriter and my teacher was, of course, stunned at the print quality. Because of that, the school ended up buying a Mac to use for their journalism classes (newspaper and yearbook), and I borrowed it every day, rolling it on a cart, to my programming class where I learned Pascal and tried to teach myself C, which the teacher didn't know either.
Thanks MacRumors for posting this article and thanks to all who shared their memories.
Printers are probably the only tech products I want to pay more for better quality. Printer companies make ****** products because the business model is to give away the printers and to make money from ink and toner. My current brother laser works well but it doesn’t take much to satisfy me given the crap out there. I’ve sworn off hp and Epson inkjets.
New Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm Thinking Printers'
SAN FRANCISCO—Following the resignation of Apple founder Steve Jobs, incoming CEO Tim Cook called a meeting of shareholders and members of the press Thursday morning to announce that he envisioned printers as the company’s future. “Laser, ink-jet, double-sided, color, black-and-white—the future...
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er? I have a Brother LED printer, and it just works, and I also have an Epson ET-8550, and it just works. The main problem with a lot of printers, certainly canon and Epson is the amount of rubbish they install with the drivers.
The drivers are the problem with Macs, Canon printers by all account are difficult to get colour mamagement working on Macs and also Macs default to air print.
Took me six months after I had my Mac to find that out, when I wanted to use a feature on my Brother printer and found I could not, so had to search to see why not. Turned out, even when I install Brothers on own drivers, I need to change the computer to use them instead of Air print.
But i can now printer to my two printers with ease from the MAc and from Windows if I really need to.
The only printer I do sometimes have problems with is my Canon selphy, but that is down to wi-fi doe some reason, so I just stick my photos on a SD card and print them that way
i have a Brother colour LED printer, and it just works, once drivers are sorted out.
The problem with Inkjets or most of them are they are produced to be cheap to buy, and the ink is the thing that cost. I just paid out for an Epson Eco-tank, 8550, £700 worth of printer, not that I paid that much. Hopefully it will last longer than the last Inkjet I had. The thing with inkjets, so I have been told, is to leave them on, don't let them go on standby, then they don't have to do the cleaning cycle every time you turn them on. My Epson goes into a low power state, but it is still on. The other thing is if you don't use it that much, do a nozzle check print out every month, that will keep the nozzles clear. Also, don't do borderless unless you really need to.
But I have noticed even on my £700 Epson, the build quality in some places is not great, the scanner lid is a bit flimsy, the paper tray is not much better. Now my Brother LED printer is built like a tank.
I did not even know Apple had an image capture, but then my scanner is a HP scanjet 7650, and I had to get Vuescan to make it work with my Mac and the Mac don't reconise the scanner as such.
But my new Epson printer have a scanner, not as good or as useful as the HP, but I may use it now and again and the Image capture app will be useful for that.
Cheers.
The old Daisy wheels, I never used one myself, but I remember the noise from them . My first printer was a thermal one I used with my ZX81, it printed on silver paperWell, at the time dot matrix wasn't considered good enough for "business quality" letters etc. so daisywheel printers with one-shot ribbons were popular if you wanted to write a letter to your bank manager (kids, ask your grandparents about "writing letters" and "bank managers") - and produced very crisp text, better than laser. Ok, it was all in the same font... but most wordprocessors would pause the printing so you could change the wheel to get a different one... er, yes, lasers were rather better all-round
. I don't think I could have sent a letter on that to my bank manager I used to have a colour dot Matrix, it was okay for a while, but then the ink from the darker colours would stain the lighter colours on the ribbon, so you end up with muddy colours. But i thought it was amazing at the time. Just like my ZXprinter.
If it does the job, is still working, and they can get the toner, then why not? My main scanner is over 10 years old and works fine, people said I should buy a new one when I got the mac, but nope, I managed to find software to make it work with the mac and if I could not, I would use the PC to sca. I know it is not as old as the Apple Laser, but the idea is still there.
I know people who use old computers and printers.
Atari and Commodore werent that far back, but their GUI had to be modified in horrible ways thanks to Jobs and Apple frivolous lawsuits.
Both of those companies died due to horrible management.
That correct but they really needed a fan and one of the first Mac accessories was the Kesington System Saver. Jobs simply hated fans and one of the reasons why the Apple III failed was because it absolutely needed a fan but Jobs forbade the inclusion of one.