Baby Macintosh

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Baby Macintosh
Baby Macintosh prototype design concept.png
Concept art for the Baby Macintosh by Hartmut Esslinger
Also known asBaby Mac
Manufacturer Apple Computer, Inc.
Product family Compact Macintosh
Type All-in-one
Release dateIntended to be released in 1986, although was cancelled because of Steve Jobs leaving Apple. [1]
Introductory priceN/A
Discontinued1986
Operating system System Software 1.0(?)
Predecessor Macintosh 128K
Successor Macintosh II
Related iMac G3

The Baby Macintosh (also referred to as simply the Baby Mac) was a cancelled Macintosh computer from 1986. [1] It was designed by Hartmut Esslinger, using the new Snow White design language. [2] It would have served as a smaller alternative to another cancelled compact Macintosh, called the Big Mac.

Features

The Baby Mac, as described by Esslinger himself, was his "best design never to be produced". It was an all-in-one Macintosh computer that was being designed mainly in 1985. The Baby Mac's development stopped after Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple Computer due to a clash of ideologies with John Sculley. [3] [1]

Esslinger and the design team had worked with Toshiba to create multiple cutting-edge features that would have been seen in the Baby Mac; a new CRT front, high-end plastics with no paint, and a flat-screen display. Esslinger's team chose a flat-screen display to "avoid the cheap look of a regular CRT screen". [3] The Baby Mac was intended to be designed to be as small as possible, so Esslinger experimented with the first Apple wireless keyboard and mouse concepts to achieve this design. Esslinger said that the Baby Mac was a zero-draft design, and that it was specifically chosen as the winning design for a new computer. [2] [1]

The design of the Baby Macintosh has been noted to have a superficial resemblance to the egg design of the iMac G3 from 1998.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Apple Baby Mac". May 2017.
  2. 1 2 "Hartmut esslinger's early apple computer and tablet designs". 18 December 2012.
  3. 1 2 "Apple's sexy concepts from the 1980s (Pictures)".