ImageWriter
More info
- Creator
- Apple
- Released
- 1983
- Type
- Dot-matrix printer (9-pin)
Apple's 1983 nine-pin dot-matrix printer, the default output for the Apple II and early Macintosh before laser took over.
It fed tractor paper past a nine-pin print head and could reproduce the Macintosh screen dot for dot — QuickDraw graphics, proportional fonts and all — because the Mac sent the page as an image rather than as characters. That made it a "what you see is what you get" printer long before PostScript, if at coarse resolution and with the dot-matrix's trademark screech.
The ImageWriter II of 1985 could print in colour using a four-band ribbon shifted vertically. When the LaserWriter arrived the same year with letter quality, the division of labour was clear: the dot-matrix for cheap everyday output and multi-part forms, the laser for anything meant to look typeset.