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Why the original Macintosh had a screen resolution of 512×324

Many classic Macs came with — or supported — displays running at 512×384 pixels, but many compact Macs, ranging from the original 1984 machine up through 1991’s Macintosh Classic II had built-in CRTs running at 512×324 pixels. That covers all black-and-white compact Macs with a 9-inch screen. The later Color Classic and Color Classic II […]

The Macintosh was going to be powered by a full GUI, and 384×256 would have been just too chunky, so thinking about 128 kilobytes of RAM as an upgrade is a fun twist on the normal take of “Wow, the original Mac was so held back!” Really, it’s amazing that it could do what it did. A good thing, too, as the first Mac shipped with a 512×342 pixel display, and that would have consumed over 30% of the 64 KB of memory originally envisioned for the low-cost information appliance. If you are familiar with standard TV formats, you probably have already picked up on the fact that this refresh rate/screen size combination meant the Mac was incompatible with NTSC composite video, which the Apple II supported.

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