Twiggy Mac, the world’s oldest Macintosh prototype
We return for another week with Apple Vintage, a section in which we will travel to the past with the intention of paying a small tribute to the products that Apple has been launching throughout its history. This week, we will look back at a real gem, an object of desire among fans of classic Apple items: the “Twiggy Mac”, a prototype of the 128K Macintosh that has also transcended the passage of time to become the oldest Macintosh ever created.
We are back, one more week, in Apple Vintage, the retro section of Applesupportphonenumber in which we will recover the products that have marked the evolution of Apple to become the company we all know today. Today we will open the trunk of memories to dust off a real collector’s item: “Twiggy Mac”, a prototype of a 128K Macintosh with a 5.25 inch floppy disk drive that can proudly boast of having become the oldest Macintosh in the world.
A true rarity that has jumped to the fore almost three decades after Apple introduced the first Macintosh, and has been named as such by the use of the Twiggy floppy disk drive , used in other computers such as the Apple Lisa.
The enthusiastic statements of Adam Goolevitch, one of the people responsible for the restoration project, left no doubt about the magnitude of the find:
When the Macintosh was introduced by Apple on January 24, 1984, it was accompanied by a 9-inch screen and a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive. However, the first prototypes had this Twiggy floppy disk drive .
The decision to switch to 3.5-inch floppy disks was made by Steve Jobs, when George Crow (who came from Hewlett Packard, which was Sony’s partner for computer floppy drives) showed them what the new smaller, more reliable and higher capacity disks were capable of. Jobs wanted to create his own drives but time was running out, so his engineering team followed the negotiations with Sony in secret from Jobs. When they realized there was no physical time left to manufacture Apple-made drives, Steve thanked everyone for disobeying him.
Consequently, in an attempt to wipe the slate clean, it was decided to destroy all prototypes with defective drives. Until today, it was thought that none of the few prototypes that were manufactured had managed to survive.
Its characteristics were not too different from those of the 128K Macintosh that would eventually see the light of day, and for this reason we will pay special attention to the arduous process of restoration , thanks to which it was brought back to life.
Before we say goodbye, we leave you with a photo gallery courtesy of Adam Goolevitch and Gabreal Franklin , collectors of classic bite block items, and responsible for having resurrected the “Twiggy Mac”.
That’s it for today. In 7 days we’ll continue with our particular review of Apple’s successful history. Don’t miss it! If you’d like us to dust off a particular product or if you have one at home that you’d like us to include in future deliveries, we invite you to share it with us.
