On January 24th, 1984, Apple released its first Macintosh computer.
It was powered by a Motorola 68000 running at 8 MHz wit a fixed 128 KB of RAM. It had an integrated 9" CRT screen showing a 512×342 pixel monochrome bitmapped display at 72 PPI.
Inside the case, you could find the designers' and engineers signatures in the plastic. The history of how the machine was developed is stuff of legend.
The keyboard, the
M0110 did not have any integrated numeric keypad or cursor keys.
The cursor keys were omitted on purpose, because Steve Jobs wanted to encourage software companies to make software with mouse control instead of just porting old software.
The keyboard had vintage Alps switches, large ones that are not SKCM/SKCL-compatible. The Caps Lock key is latching.
The layout was largely borrowed from the Apple Lisa, with a standard US-ANSI that we are used to today.
Like Lisa and Apple II keyboards, the \ key above Return was only 1×1 units large - a bad behaviour that that Apple has continued with to this day, thus forcing any ISO variant to have a ridiculously small vertical Return key.
It is also the only Apple Macintosh keyboard to not have the keys making a perfect rectangle. Like the HHKB there is space below the left and right Shift keys. A numeric keypad, the M0120, was released later as a separate part.
The keyboard protocol was special for the first Mac. It uses telephone jacks, except that the leads on the wire are crossed.
You
can use the keyboard with a modern computer.
Hasu has made a
converter firmware for the Teensy that talks the protocol.
Lowpoly is known for having
converted one (or more than one?) to USB by ripping out the electronics and soldering diodes between switch pins directly, which are then connected to a Teensy-based controller that talks USB. Other users, such as matt30 have made
the same thing with their M0110s.
