| Introduced | March 1, 1985 |
|---|---|
| Discontinued | February 1, 1988 |
| Cost | $6,995 |
| Processor | Motorola 68000 |
| Frequency | 12 MHz |
| Minimum | 1.5 MB |
| Maximum | 1.5 MB |
| Slot | 1 |
| ROM | 512 kB |
| Ports | Serial, LocalTalk |
| Type | Laser |
| Color | 1 |
| DPI | 300 |
| Speed | 8 Pages Per Minute |
| Language | PostScript, Diablo 630 |
| Power | 760 Watts |
| Weight | 77 lb |
| Dimensions | (H x W x D) 11.5 x 18.5 x 16.2 in |
The LaserWriter was a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter introduced by Apple in 1985. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMaker, that operated on top of the graphical user interface of Macintosh computers, the LaserWriter was a key component at the beginning of the desktop publishing revolution.[1][2]
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The LaserWriter was announced at Apple's annual shareholder meeting on January 23, 1985,[3] the same day Aldus announced PageMaker.[4] Shipments began in March[5] 1985 and the printer retailed for US$ 6,995.
The LaserWriter was the fourth laser printer on the market and the first for the Macintosh.[6] It was an integral part of the newly announced Macintosh Office.[7] The printer had a resolution of 300 dpi and a printing speed of 8 ppm, and its raster image processor implemented Adobe PostScript interpreter, a feature that would ultimately transform the landscape of computer desktop publishing.[8]
Unlike HP's PCL and other early printer control languages, PostScript is a complete interpreted page description language. PostScript describes fonts in outline form, which allows arbitrary size, rotation, and position. PostScript handles bitmap graphics and vector graphics equally well, allowing any mixture of fonts, bitmaps, and drawing primitives on a single page (limited by the PostScript interpreter’s available RAM). While competing printer control languages offered some of these capabilities, they were limited in their ability to reproduce free-form layouts (as a desktop publishing application might produce). Negotiations between Apple and Adobe over the use of Postscript began in 1983 and an agreement was reached in December 1983, one month before Macintosh was announced.[8]
The PostScript interpreter in the LaserWriter printer can be used interactively: it is possible to connect a serial terminal to the printer and, by typing “executive”, communicate with the printer’s computer. The printer will also display diagnostic error messages on this link (RS-232, 19200 baud, 8 bits, no parity bit, 1 stop bit).
The original LaserWriter printer used a Canon LBP-CX print engine,[9] which was used by many printer manufacturers at the time. The print engine is responsible for feeding paper, image transfer, and fusing the image. Parts from early LaserWriter and HP LaserJet printers, except for the interface board, formatter, and casing, are sometimes interchangeable as they are based on the same print engine.
The LaserWriter Plus was a later version, sold from 1986 to 1988. It was mechanically identical to the previous LaserWriter; the only difference between them was the expanded ROM which contained seven additional fonts: ITC Avant Garde, ITC Bookman, New Century Schoolbook, Palatino, ITC Zapf Dingbats, ITC Zapf Chancery and Helvetica Narrow, a variant of Helvetica squashed[10] to 82% of the original width.
The LaserWriter II series (1988 - 1991) included the Laserwriter IISC, the Laserwriter IINT, and the Laserwriter IINTX. They were based on the Canon Inc. LBP-SX engine. Later versions included the Laserwriter IIf and IIg (1991-1993).
The Personal Laserwriter series was sold from 1990 to 1993; it used the Canon LBP-LX motor, printing at four pages per minute rather than eight. Personal Laserwriter models included the SC, LS, and NT. The series was continued with the Personal Laserwriter 300 and 320 (1993-1995) which used the Canon LBP-PX engine.
The LaserWriter Pro 600 was sold only from January to October 1993. The LaserWriter Pro 630 was sold between January 1993 and September 1994, and the LaserWriter Pro 810 between October 1993 and November 1994.
The LaserWriter Select series (1993-1996) included the 300, the 310, and the 360.
The Laserwriter 4/600 PS, introduced in 1995, succeeded the Personal Laserwriter 300 series; it also had a printing speed of four pages per minute but had improved resolution. The Laserwriter 16/600 PS, introduced in 1994, was capable of 17 pages per minute and 600 dots per inch. It was succeeded by the Laserwriter 12/640. The last of the black-and-white laser printers was the LaserWriter 8500 (1997-1999).
When the LaserWriter was introduced the use of PostScript was expensive. At an introductory price of US$6,995, the LaserWriter was more expensive than non-Postscript laser printers of comparable print speed and quality. The LaserWriter’s high cost was largely due to the extra processing power needed to run the PostScript interpreter. PostScript is a complete programming language and requires a complex software rasterizer program, all implemented in the printer. The LaserWriter had a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 12 MHz, 512KB of workspace RAM, and a 1 MB framebuffer. At introduction, the LaserWriter had the most processing power in Apple’s product line—more than the 8 MHz Macintosh.
Since the cost of a LaserWriter was several times that of a dot-matrix impact printer, some means to share the printer with several Macs was desired. LANs were complex and expensive, so Apple developed its own networking scheme, LocalTalk. Based on the AppleTalk protocol stack, LocalTalk connected the LaserWriter to the Mac over an RS-422 serial port. At 230.4 kbit/s LocalTalk was slower than the Centronics PC parallel interface, but allowed several computers to share a single LaserWriter. PostScript enabled the LaserWriter to print complex pages containing high-resolution bitmap graphics, outline fonts, and vector illustrations. The LaserWriter could print more complex layouts than the HP Laserjet and other non-Postscript printers. Paired with the program Aldus PageMaker, the LaserWriter gave the layout editor an exact replica of the printed page. The LaserWriter offered a generally faithful proofing tool for preparing documents for quantity publication, and could print smaller quantities directly. The Mac platform quickly gained the favor of the emerging desktop-publishing industry, a market in which the Mac is still important.[11]
Building on the success of the original LaserWriter, Apple developed many further models. Later LaserWriters offered faster printing, higher resolutions, Ethernet connectivity, and eventually color output. To compete, many other laser printer manufacturers licensed Adobe PostScript for inclusion into their own models. Eventually the standardization on Ethernet for connectivity and the ubiquity of PostScript undermined the unique position of Apple’s printers: Macintosh computers functioned equally well with any Postscript printer. After the LaserWriter 8500, Apple discontinued the LaserWriter product line.
The LaserWriter was the first major printer designed by Apple to use the new Snow White design language created by Frogdesign. It also continued a departure from the beige color that characterized the Apple & Macintosh products to that time by using the same brighter, creamy off-white color first introduced with the Apple IIc and Apple Scribe Printer 8 months earlier. In that regard it and its successors stood out among all of Apple’s Macintosh product offerings until 1987, when Apple adopted a unifying warm gray color they called Platinum across its entire product line, which was to last for over a decade. The innovative look of the LaserWriter was distinctive and marked a turning point in industrial design as the zero draft design incorporated into the case allowed the stylish lines to form-fit around the interior mechanism, keeping it small and sleek.
It was also the first peripheral to use the LocalTalk connector and Apple’s unified AppleTalk Connector Family, designed by Brad Bissell of Frogdesign using Rick Meadows’ Apple Icon Family designs. The connector’s design was used on all of Apple’s peripherals and cable connectors for the next 15 years and influenced the connectors used throughout the industry as a whole.
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