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Quorten Blog 1

First blog for all Quorten's blog-like writings

Wow, now this is really interesting, a story seldom told. The Macintosh actually did get cloned, just like the Apple II. But, despite Steve Jobs best efforts to put the “stolen by Apple!” code inside the ROM, the cloned Macintosh computer used its own reverse-engineered ROM without that code. Also, the story behind the cloning is very interesting, it was Brazilian military-run government import restrictions on computers under the guise that they could be spy devices that motivated the extralegal cloning outside of Apple’s primary jurisdiction.

In the aftermath, the Brazilian government got concerned that the consortium of U.S. computer manufacturers banding together to propose trade sanctions on imports of Brazilian shoes, orange juice, and steel would send Brazil into a total economic disaster, so they counter-appraised their previous decision and banned the sale of the Macintosh clones. The designs were sold off to a Taiwanese company as a meager effort to keep the company afloat from the tremendous economic hit this entailed, and Apple’s lawyers followed the trail to ban the Taiwanese company from ever manufacturing those designs. That was the last we heard of the Macintosh clones.

20201013/https://www.cultofmac.com/266710/meet-unitron-mac-512-worlds-first-macintosh-clone/

Minor notes about the Macintosh 512K. Before MultiFinder, Switcher just partitioned up Macintosh 512K RAM into 4 sections.

20201013/https://www.cultofmac.com/500730/apple-history-fat-mac-quadruples-memory/