Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh
Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, Berlin 2014
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| Release date | March 20, 1997 |
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| Introductory price | US$7499 (today $11187.87) |
| Discontinued | March 14, 1998 |
| Operating system | Mac OS 7.6.1 (initial OS) – Mac OS 9.1 (final OS) |
| CPU | 250 MHz PowerPC 603e L2 Cache: 256 KiB, max 1 MiB Bus: 50 MHz |
| Memory | RAM: 2 slots 32 MiB, max 128 MiB (2 × 64 MB) (Memory Spec: 168-pin, 5 V, 60+ ns EDO or FPM DIMMs) VRAM: 2 MB |
| Storage | Hard Drive: 2 GB IDE Floppy Drive: Apple SuperDrive |
| Display | 12.1" Active Matrix |
| Graphics | 800×600 or 640×480 @ up to 16-bits ATI 3D RAGE 2 chip set |
| Input | Rear Ports: Variable Level Sound In Sound Out DB-25 SCSI TV Tuner FM Tuner Rear Side Ports: 1 ADB 2 DIN-8 GeoPorts DB-25 SCSI S-Video In Sound Line In Via Expansion Slots: 1 Comm Slot 2 PCI Slot Optical Drive: 4× CD-ROM |
| Dimensions |
Metric: 438 × 419 × 254 mm Imperial: 17.25 × 16.5 × 10 in |
| Weight | 6.8 kg (14.9 lb) |
The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (or "TAM") is a limited-edition personal computer released in 1997 to mark Apple's 20th birthday. The machine was a technological showcase of the day, boasting a number of features beyond simple computing, and with a price tag aimed at the "executive" market.
April 1, 1996 marked 20 years since the day that Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne came together to form Apple Computer. As this milestone arrived and came to the attention of Apple's then current executives, the decision was made to release a limited edition Macintosh computer to celebrate - and so the "Spartacus" (or "Pomona", or "Smoke & Mirrors") project was born.
The normal time-span to develop a new Macintosh computer was 18+ months, however they were already late to the party. Luckily the design team had already been working on several "dream" concepts, and soon settled on the most feasible of those - the (almost) "All-in-One" LCD-based design. To cut down on development time, many off-the-shelf components were used on the new computer's internals.
The TAM was announced almost 20 years to the day after Jobs and Wozniak incorporated the company, in January 1997 at MacWorld Expo, San Francisco. It was given a release date of March 20, 1997, with a retail price of US$7,499. Originally intended as a mainstream product, the marketing group turned it into a pricey special edition.
The TAM was to break the established form factor of the personal computer. One of the first projects of Jonathan "Jony" Ive, the design of the TAM was both a state-of-the-art futuristic vision of where computing could go whilst redeveloping Apple's original objective to create a device that would integrate into people's lives.
The TAM featured a 250 MHz PowerPC 603e processor and 12.1" active matrix LCD powered by an ATI 3D Rage II video chipset with 2MB of VRAM capable of displaying up to 16bit color at either 800x600 or 640x480 pixels. It had a vertically mounted 4x SCSI CD-ROM and an Apple floppy Superdrive, a 2GB ATA hard drive, a TV/FM tuner, an S-Video input card, and a custom-made Bose sound system including two "Jewel" speakers and a subwoofer built into the externally located power supply "base unit".
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