New Apple TV flashing in the headlines last month, the original version of the set-top box, announced in 2006, was not the first attempts to occupy a niche Apple TV devices. To see this, we have to travel back to 1993.
Received this rare case black Macintosh TV was essentially the same Macintosh LC520, but with some interesting differences. In addition to the usual model in the 90s Apple tried to create a device all-in-one Macintosh TV, equipping the car with a connector for a coaxial cable and a TV tuner.
Plug the TV tuner was located on the rear panel of the computer and allowed users to connect TV antenna or cable TV, change channels, control the volume level. The Macintosh TV was slower original LC520 because of poor system bus, despite the more powerful Motorola 68030 processor with a clock frequency of 32 MHz instead of 25 MHz Mac LC520.
The amount of RAM was another bottleneck on your computer. Macintosh TV worked with up to 8 MB, and its “white brother” cope with 32 MB. Besides, there was no port DB-15 to output image to external display.
The Macintosh TV was operating under the control System 7, which was far from ideal. The computer was easy to use. Also the user could not watch TV and use their Mac at the same time, and the function picture-in-picture, iOS 9, was not provided. You can forget about image capture.
Delving into the drawbacks of the Macintosh TV it is worth noting that at that time the television broadcast was characterized by a 16-bit color, and Mac was still 8-bit.
Idea TV for Mac, like several other development the Apple of the 90-ies, was ahead of its time. A computer costing $2099 scared users and four months after launch, it disappeared from the shelves.
The editor of TidBits Adam Engst called the Macintosh TV the second worst Mac of history after the ill-fated Macintosh Iivi and IIvx. However, this car remained fans-collectors. Before Apple released the 10 000 models on the market, a few pieces got on eBay. This is one of the few places where you can buy the computer, which became part of the history of Apple and the ancestor of the current Apple TV.
