Apple Macintosh computers


 

 

 

 

 

First the good news

According to the Apple website, all Macintosh computers are year 2000 compliant.

And they always have been.

The clock in Macs works by counting seconds from a start date of 1904-01-01 at 12:00:00.

A 32 bit counter is used, and so Macs will go on happily counting up to 2040-02-06 at 06:28:15.

What happens then is not recorded !

Mac users will now protest that you can only set the date in advance up to 2019-12-31.

Apparently, this was done to match an early design of control panel.

 

And now the bad news

It has always been possible for programmers to write applications that did not take advantage of the above, and it is possible that not all applications for the MAC are themselves year 2000 compatible, even though the hardware is.

Also note that the predecessor of the Mac, the Apple II computers, are not so lucky - there are documented problems with year 2000 compliance with many of the versions of the Apple II`s.

 


© 1999 Ron Turner


Return to the Year 2000 index page