PostScript

PostScript is a page description language developed and marketed by Adobe and used in Apple's LaserWriter line of printers.

PostScript and Apple
The architecture of PostScript was designed by Adobe Systems co-founders Charles Geschke and John Warnock, along with Doug Brotz, Bill Paxton, and Ed Taft from 1982 to 1984. Steve Jobs visited Adobe during its early days and convinced them to adapt PostScript to run on a laser printer. This was launched in the LaserWriter printer which featured a 12MHz Motorola 68000 processor that was faster than any Macintosh computer at the time in March 1985. Jobs had Apple invest $2.5 million in Adobe for a 19% stake. This investment helped Adobe to become profitable quickly. However, the high royalty fees that Adobe charged for PostScript soon caused friction with Apple as it kept LaserWriters very expensive.

After Adobe resisted pleas from Apple to reduce licensing costs and began selling PostScript to other printer manufacturers that undercut the LaserWriter line, Apple dumped their remaining 15% stake in Adobe. On September 20, 1989, Apple and Microsoft announced a joint effort to develop alternatives to PostScript, such as TrueType font technology. John Warnock, who was CEO of Adobe at the time, distraughtly called it "the biggest bunch of garbage mumbo jumbo I've ever heard in my life". Adobe developed Adobe Type Manager to maintain the presence of its Type 1 fonts in the desktop computer market.

When Apple was financially struggling in 1996, Adobe teamed up with Microsoft to develop OpenType as a successor to both TrueType and Type 1. PostScript Level 3 was introduced on September 11, 1996.

PostScript and NeXT
After Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, he founded NeXT, which was an early adopter of Display PostScript technology. The integration of PostScript into the operating system allowed the NeXT Laser Printer and Color Printer to be significantly simpler and cheaper, while still maintaining speed and WYSIWYG accuracy in their printed output. However, after Jobs returned to Apple, the new Mac OS X operating system (which was adapted from NeXTSTEP) replaced Display PostScript with a PDF-based imaging model called Quartz to avoid paying licensing fees to Adobe.