The Macintosh XL has a 400K 3.5" floppy drive and an internal 10 MB proprietary "Widget" hard drive with provision for an optional 5 or 10 MB external ProFile hard drive with the addition of a parallel interface card. The machine uses a Motorola 68000 CPU, clocked at 5 MHz together with 512KB RAM. The Macintosh XL was discontinued in April 1985.
Upgrades
Because of its roots as a Lisa — unlike all other Macintosh computers — the stock Macintosh XL used rectangular pixels. The resolution of the Macintosh XL's 12 inch display was 720 × 364. Square pixels were available via the Macintosh XL Screen Kit upgrade that changed the resolution to 608 × 432. The CPU could be replaced with a new CPU board containing up to 8 MB RAM, called the XLerator 18. The maximum upgraded RAM with conventional add-in RAM cards was up to 2 MB – four times larger than the maximum capacity of earlier Macintosh computers.
MacWorks
was developed by Sun Remarketing as a successor to MacWorks XL in order to provide application compatibility with the Macintosh Plus computer. MacWorks Plus added support for an 800 KB 3.5-inch floppy disk and System software up through version 6.0.3. MacWorks Plus II extended that to the same 7.5.5 limit imposed on all 68000 processors.
History
The re-badging of the XL was a last-ditch effort by Apple to save the poorly selling Lisa which had been usurped by the Macintosh line. After two years of marginal sales Apple was unprepared for the record number of orders placed for the newest member of the Macintosh family.
Discontinuation
Despite its relative success, the Macintosh XL was discontinued because it was unavailable. Parts had not been ordered to keep the XL in production and, once the last of the parts ran out, Apple made the decision to shut down production for good. In 1986, Apple offered all Lisa/XL owners the opportunity to turn in their computer and receive in exchange a Macintosh Plus and Hard Disk 20.
Sun Remarketing
After Apple dropped the XL from their price list in September 1985, Sun Remarketing of Logan, Utah, bought a number of Apple's remaining inventory and continued to sell them under license with their updated version of MacWorks Plus, re-branded as the Macintosh Professional. Though no new Lisas were available for sale, development continued on MacWorks Plus to support the installed base of Lisas, making them as relevant as their closely related cousin, the Macintosh Plus.
Legacy
The Macintosh XL shares the same legacy as the Lisa before it. However, the increased sales from the emulation of the Macintosh operating system proved that the Macintosh family badly needed a more professional environment which could support larger monitors, greater memory and more expandability than the Macintosh 512K offered.
