20th Anniversary Macintosh

The 20th Anniversary Macintosh was released by Apple Computer in May 1997 to mark the 20th anniversary of Apple Computer, not the Macintosh. The system was built to look state of the art, but used common components and technologies readily available at that time, and suffered from being overpriced and under-powered.

Features
Conceived as a futuristic concept, the "TAM", as it was affectionately called by many of its owners, was built with the 12" active matrix LCD display, ATI 3D Rage II video chipset, and trackpad from the PowerBook 3400, and the motherboard from the Power Macintosh 6500 with a 250 MHz PowerPC 603e processor. The system could only handle a video resolution of 800x600 with a 16-bit color depth and shipped with Mac OS 7.6.1. It later required a special version of Mac OS 8, and was only supported through Mac OS 9.1.

The use of the Power Mac 6500’s motherboard did give the TAM some capabilities that were unusual for the day. It included the Apple TV/FM Radio System from 5200 / 6200 and later models of Performa and Power Macintosh. It could also support a Comm Slot II networking card and 7-inch PCI card, which required the user to swap the default back panel for an alternate "fat back" version that provided additional space for the cards.

In order to give the perception that the system was more advanced than it was, the power supply was external to the computer. This, when combined with the flat panel display and the vertically mounted 4x CD-ROM drive, gave the system a much smaller footprint. The power supply was part of the manufactured by Bose, which could be kept out of sight.

The small keyboard didn’t feature a numeric keyboard but did have a built-in touchpad and leather palm rests. The touchpad could be removed from the keyboard and placed at a more convenient location on the user workspace.

Release
The system was initially marketed as an elite system, and featured a concierge service for personalized delivery and setup. This service was quickly discontinued as sales failed to materialize. Apple soon started lowering the price of their premium product, in a somewhat embarrassing move that only echoed other problems that the company was having at the time. While Apple had built 12,000 of the systems, sales were slow throughout the life of the system. The remaining inventory of TAMs was sold at a loss through Apple’s developer price list.

Despite its poor sales, the TAM remains a popular collector's item among some dedicated Macintosh collectors. There was even a line of G3 processor upgrades for the systems to help extend its useful lifespan.

Read more

 * Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh at Apple (archived 1997-04-14)
 * Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh: Technical Specifications
 * Apple's Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh at Bose (archived 1998-01-30)
 * The 20th Anniversary Mac at 512 Pixels
 * 20th Anniversary Macintosh specs at EveryMac
 * 20th Anniversary Mac at Facebook
 * 20th Anniversary Mac at Low End Mac
 * Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh at Ning (archived 2010-08-02)
 * at Wikipedia

Articles

 * Today in Apple history: Twentieth Anniversary Mac lands with a thud by Luke Dormehl at Cult of Mac (2019-03-20)