Macintosh prototypes

The first Macintosh computer system had been prototyped at Apple Computer from 1980 to 1983, prior to the release of the Macintosh 128K in January 1984.

History
About half a dozen prototype logic boards were hand built and wire wrapped by members of the Macintosh development team under lead engineer Burrell Smith.

Around 1981, Brian Howard and Dan Kottke hand assembled a clear prototype with an Apple II floppy drive. It booted into the UCSD Pascal operating system as the first Mac operating system was being developed on Apple Lisa systems.

By 1983, the design of the Macintosh 128K had nearly been finalized and 8 functional prototypes had been constructed with the same 5.25" Apple FileWare drives as the Lisa. However, these drives, nicknamed "Twiggy", had a very high failure rate and smaller 3.5" drives from Sony were substituted months before release. Steve Jobs ordered the prototypes destroyed and only two have survived in working order.

Apple continued the practice of creating clear prototypes of Mac models for smoke testing to observe venting in new designs.