Apple LaserWriter (1985)

What the Apple LaserWriter was

The Apple LaserWriter was a desktop laser printer sold by Apple Computer, Inc. Apple announced it at its annual shareholder meeting on January 23, 1985 and began shipping it that March at a retail price of US$6,995. The machine printed cut-sheet pages at 300 dots per inch and eight pages per minute, driven by a built-in Adobe PostScript interpreter running on a Motorola 68000 processor. So much computing power sat inside the printer that Museums Victoria notes the LaserWriter's own processor exceeded the capability of the Macintosh feeding it work.

One of the first printers to ship with PostScript

The LaserWriter is remembered less for being a laser printer than for what it spoke: it was one of the first printers to ship with Adobe PostScript, the device-independent page description language that lets a computer describe scalable type and vector graphics rather than a fixed grid of dots. Museums Victoria records that PostScript allowed the LaserWriter to reproduce text and graphics at high resolution and to deliver true WYSIWYG output, in which the printed page matched what appeared on the Macintosh screen. This pairing of a graphical computer, a page description language, and an affordable laser printer is widely credited as a foundation of desktop publishing.

The Canon CX engine and how a page was printed

Like the 1984 HP LaserJet, the LaserWriter was built around Canon's CX (LBP-CX) print engine, an electrophotographic mechanism that Apple wrapped in its own PostScript controller. The engine formed each page with laser electrophotography: a laser scanner unit sweeps a modulated beam across a rotating photoconductor drum to write a latent image, which is then developed with toner and fused to the paper. Consumables followed the cartridge model of that engine generation, renewing the wear-prone parts with each toner cartridge. The mechanism produced 300-dpi output at eight pages per minute.

PostScript, fonts, and the raster image processor

Inside, a 12 MHz Motorola 68000 with 1.5 MB of RAM — including a one-megabyte frame buffer — and 512 KB of ROM acted as a raster image processor, converting incoming PostScript into the dot pattern the laser writes. The printer carried four built-in PostScript font families in ROM — Times, Helvetica, Courier, and Symbol — as documented by Museums Victoria and Wikipedia, and could also interpret Diablo 630 printer data for compatibility with older software. The later LaserWriter Plus expanded the resident font library.

LocalTalk networking and the shared office printer

The LaserWriter connected to Macintosh computers over Apple's LocalTalk cabling using the AppleTalk protocols, running on an RS-422 serial port at 230.4 kbit/s, and also offered standard serial connectivity. Because AppleTalk let several computers share one printer, a single LaserWriter could serve a small office or workgroup — an important consideration given a price Museums Victoria likens to that of a small car at the time.

Place in the desktop publishing revolution

In combination with WYSIWYG page-layout software such as Aldus PageMaker running on the Macintosh, the LaserWriter helped ignite the desktop publishing revolution of the mid-1980s, bringing near-typeset output within reach of small businesses and institutions. The original model is documented as discontinued on February 1, 1988 (per Wikipedia); by then the LaserWriter Plus (1986) had extended the line with a larger built-in font library, and the LaserWriter II family followed.

Documented specifications

Authoritative records agree on the core specifications: a Canon CX print engine, 300-dpi resolution, eight pages per minute, a 12 MHz Motorola 68000, 1.5 MB of RAM (including a one-megabyte frame buffer), 512 KB of ROM, Adobe PostScript, four resident font families, and LocalTalk/AppleTalk networking, at a US$6,995 launch price. Figures that cannot be traced to a manufacturer, museum, or archive record are omitted here rather than estimated. This page is a historical reference, not a buying guide, and quotes no current pricing or availability.