However, the LaserWriter featured AppleTalk support that allowed the printer to be shared among as many as sixteen Macs, meaning that its per-user price could fall to under $450, far less expensive than HP's less-advanced model. Shipments began in March 1985 at the retail price of US$6,995, significantly more than the HP model. The LaserWriter was announced at Apple's annual shareholder meeting on January 23, 1985, the same day Aldus announced PageMaker. The VC coined the term 'desktop publishing' during this time. Arranging his own funding through a venture capital firm, Brainerd formed Aldus and began development of what would become PageMaker. Seybold's son) introduced Paul Brainerd to Apple, where he learned of Apple's laser printer efforts and saw the potential for a new program using the Mac's GUI to produce PostScript output for the new printer. Jobs eventually arranged for Apple to buy $2.5 million in Adobe stock.Īt about the same time, Jonathan Seybold ( John W. Negotiations between Apple and Adobe over the use of PostScript began in 1983 and an agreement was reached in December 1983, one month before Macintosh was announced. Jobs was aware of Warnock's efforts, and upon his return to California he began convincing Warnock to allow Apple to license PostScript for a new printer that Apple would sell. Meanwhile, John Warnock had left Xerox to found Adobe Systems to commercialize PostScript and AppleTalk in a laser printer they intended to market. Steve Jobs of Apple Computer had seen the LPB-CX while negotiating for supplies of 3.5' floppy disk drives for the upcoming Apple Macintosh computer. In 1984, HP released the first commercially available system based on the LBP-CX, the HP LaserJet. In 1983 Canon introduced the LBP-CX, a desktop laser printer engine using a laser diode and featuring an output resolution of 300 dpi. Sales of the non-networked product were unsurprisingly poor. HP introduced their first desktop model with a Ricoh engine for $12,800 in 1983. Other copier companies also started development of similar systems. During the mid-1970s, Canon started working on similar machines, and partnered with Hewlett-Packard to produce 1980's HP 2680, which filled only part of a room. Both machines were large, room-filling devices handling the combined output of many users. IBM followed this with the IBM 3800 system in 1976. Laser printing traces its history to efforts by Gary Starkweather at Xerox in 1969, which resulted in a commercial system called the Xerox 9700.

Laser printers for mac computers