Macintosh II
First Mac with color support. Modular design with NuBus expansion slots, aimed at professional markets.
Launched March 2, 1987, the Macintosh II was nothing short of a reinvention of what a Macintosh could be. Gone was the sealed, all-in-one compact form factor that had defined the platform since 1984; in its place stood a modular, expandable desktop tower with six NuBus expansion slots, a separate monitor, and for the first time in Mac history, genuine color graphics support. Built around a 68020 processor running at 16MHz, more than double the clock speed of the venerable 68000 and vastly more capable architecturally, the Mac II offered a dramatic leap in raw performance that finally let the Macintosh compete seriously with high-end workstations from Sun and the emerging PC clone market for professional and scientific applications. Its optional color video card and support for large external displays opened the door to color desktop publishing, professional graphics, CAD, and scientific visualization work that the monochrome compact Macs simply could not touch, and it came paired with a numeric-keypad keyboard and separate mouse in a configuration that finally resembled the modern desktop computer setup. The NuBus slots allowed third parties to build accelerator cards, additional video cards, networking hardware, and all manner of peripherals, turning the Mac II into a genuinely extensible platform rather than a closed appliance, a philosophy shift that thrilled power users and professional buyers who had been frustrated by the compact Mac's inaccessibility. It was expensive, launching well above $5,000 in typical configurations, which limited it mostly to publishing houses, universities, engineering firms, and other well-funded professional environments, but it decisively proved that the Macintosh architecture could scale upward into serious workstation territory rather than remaining a friendly but underpowered curiosity. Reviewers were enthusiastic about its performance and expandability while noting the steep price and the awkward reality that much existing Mac software had been written with monochrome, fixed-resolution screens in mind, requiring an adjustment period from developers to properly support color and variable display configurations. The Mac II's release alongside the far more conservative SE on the very same day crystallized Apple's dual strategy of serving both the affordable, familiar compact Mac buyer and the ambitious professional workstation buyer from a single, ostensibly unified platform. Its modular NuBus architecture directly established the template for the IIx, IIcx, IIci, and IIfx machines that followed over the next several years, and its color video capabilities laid essential groundwork for the desktop publishing and multimedia era the Mac would come to dominate. The Macintosh II stands as one of the most consequential Macs ever released, the moment the platform grew up into a legitimate professional workstation.
Mac History Timeline
Full Specifications
Availability
Processor
Memory
Storage
Display
Graphics
Expansion
Connectivity
Physical
Processor Deep Dive
Motorola 68020
MotorolaThe 68020 was Motorola's first fully 32-bit processor in the 68k family, with a 32-bit external data bus and address bus, an on-chip instruction cache, and a more sophisticated instruction set than its 68000 predecessor. Running at 16MHz in the Mac II, it offered roughly two to three times the real-world performance of the 68000-based compact Macs, enabling far more demanding graphics and computation work. It lacked an integrated floating point unit or memory management unit, both of which had to be added via separate coprocessor chips like the 68881 and 68851 on Mac II expansion configurations. It represented a major architectural leap that positioned the Mac II as a genuine workstation-class machine for its era.
Compatible Operating Systems
System 4.1
Launch OS1987
Shipped with the Mac II, adding Color QuickDraw support for its new video capabilities.
System 6.0.8
Compatible1991
A mature, widely used release well suited to the Mac II's 68020 and expansion options.
System 7.5.5
Max Supported1996
The practical ceiling with an accelerator or maximum RAM, though official support ended earlier at System 7.1.
Reviews & Reception
Hailed as a transformative, workstation-class Macintosh that proved the platform could scale to serious professional use, tempered only by its high price.
The Macintosh II is a genuine workstation wrapped in familiar Mac clothing, with color graphics and expansion slots that finally answer the platform's harshest critics.
This is the machine that proves the Macintosh architecture can scale to serious professional work, though the price will keep it out of most homes.
Color, speed, and NuBus expansion make the Mac II a legitimate rival to engineering workstations, even if software has yet to fully exploit its capabilities.
An impressive machine on paper, but at this price it competes with far more established workstation vendors who already have mature color software ecosystems.