My first Mac was a Plus in 1990. Great machine. I splurged and got a 20 MB Rodime hard drive that was the size of my current machine, a Mac Studio.
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Apple's Macintosh Turns 41 Today
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First had a Mac in the office in either late '84 or early '85. Loved them.
And yes, I had an Amiga when if first came out, then the A2000. Fun machines but Commodore at that point was nothing than a shady holding company that was getting shadier.
Apple at least was a company with serious management, serious about making the best personal computer for home and school.
If Apple had not done the Mac then someone else would have tapped the Xerox pioneering effort. Note that early small computer software company Digital Research came out with GEM that Apple then had spiked. Without Apple maybe DR would have made GEM the dominant PC user interface.
And yes, I had an Amiga when if first came out, then the A2000. Fun machines but Commodore at that point was nothing than a shady holding company that was getting shadier.
Apple at least was a company with serious management, serious about making the best personal computer for home and school.
If Apple had not done the Mac then someone else would have tapped the Xerox pioneering effort. Note that early small computer software company Digital Research came out with GEM that Apple then had spiked. Without Apple maybe DR would have made GEM the dominant PC user interface.
That is almost embarrassing to illustrate the anniversary by showing the 4th gen Mac Classic instead of the actual 128k birthday Mac (128k, 512k > Mac Plus > Mac SE, Mac SE 30 > Mac Classic … correct me if i remember the gens wrong). Apple Intelligence must have generated the image from its Playground, or ChatGPT hallucinated it …
Apple announced the Macintosh 41 years ago today, introducing the first widely successful personal computer with a graphical user interface.
The Macintosh revolutionized personal computing by popularizing the use of a mouse to control an on-screen pointer. At the time, this point-and-click navigation method was unfamiliar to most, as personal computers primarily relied on text-based command-line interfaces operated with a keyboard. An excerpt from Apple's press release in 1984:
Apple claimed the Macintosh required "only a few hours to learn" and introduced features that are now fundamental, such as a desktop with icons, multitasking in windows, drop-down menus, and copy-and-paste functionality.
The Macintosh was priced starting at $2,495, equivalent to over $7,000 today. It featured an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 processor paired with 128 KB of RAM (upgradeable to 512 KB), a 400 KB 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, a 9-inch black-and-white CRT display with a resolution of 512x342 pixels, and two serial ports to attach peripherals like the Apple ImageWriter printer or external modems.
It included software such as MacPaint, which allowed users to draw detailed black-and-white graphics with features like pattern fills and brushes that were revolutionary for the time, and MacWrite, a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processing application with real-time editing, proportional fonts, and drag-and-drop functionality.
The Macintosh launch was accompanied by one of the most iconic marketing campaigns in history, including the legendary "1984" Super Bowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott. The ad positioned the Macintosh as a revolutionary product that would challenge the conformity of the computing industry, dominated by IBM at the time.
Over 40 years later, the Mac continues to be an essential product for Apple and retains many of the same software features as the original model. Apple's full press release for the original Macintosh is available on Stanford University's website.
Article Link: Apple's Macintosh Turns 41 Today
Xerox never planned on consumer computers, they made workstations. The original 1984 Mac OS was just the next step after Lisa.
Apple Lisa - Mac History
The Apple Lisa was a personal computer designed at Apple Computer, Inc. during the early 1980s. Officially, "Lisa" stood for "Local Integrated Software
www.mac-history.net
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The Apple Lisa was released on January 19, 1983, at a price of $9,995.
In 1983, Apple's stock ($AAPL) reached a low of approximately $0.1002 per share, adjusted for subsequent stock splits.
If you had invested the $9,995 intended for the Lisa into $AAPL stock at its 1983 low, you could have purchased about 99,900 shares. As of January 25, 2025, $AAPL is trading at $222.78 per share.
Therefore, your investment would now be worth approximately $22,260,222 with a past year's dividend income of $95,904.
By comparison this would be what would happen with the Mac.
- Investment in 1984 (Mac Price): $2,495
- Total Value Today: ~$4,865,199
- Last 4 Quarters' Dividend Income: ~$20,971
Well, no, but it sure seems that the authors here are responding to stuff that 'they found on the Internet".
There was also the cheaper IBM PCjr which launched shortly after the Macintosh but only remained on the market for about a year and saw notable discounts/price reductions during that time.
And Lisa was (also) heavily influenced/inspired by Xerox design work seen by Jobs and others at Apple during their visits to Xerox PARC in the late 1970s.
Yes it was. But going forward past all the various proprietary workstations of the 70’s/80’s it was when Steve Jobs was running Next that the most important development occurred, which ended up being the basis of Apple’s future.
The Deep History of Your Apps: Steve Jobs, NeXTSTEP, and Early Object-Oriented Programming
Since 2008, over a hundred billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store onto users’ iPhones or iPads. However, the technology and tools powering the mobile “app revolution” are not themselves new, but rather have a long history spanning over thirty years, one which connects back to...
Do you mean the Lisa's? They weren't the same as Macs - targeted much more for businesses.
No exactly as written, the MacSE had an expansion slot.
Macintosh SE Specs: EveryMac.com
Technical specifications for the Macintosh SE. Dates sold, processor type, memory info, hard drive details, price and more.
everymac.com
20” SuperMac display was used in that pairing.
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Cool. But let's not forget the most important of all the Mac apps at that time: After Dark. Gotta love a flying toaster.
Your previous post and source of confusion is your use of the word larger to describe early Mac’s…the earliest Mac was the 128k Mac and had the same dimensions as the Mac SE. not larger. the Lisa, later rebranded Mac xl, was much larger. But more 128 k Macs were sold so it is correct to consider them the early Mac’s, not the Lisa. No one is debating on the SE being more advanced than the 128 k.
I saw the Mac 128 k on release day, Jan 24, 1984, because I was going to rice university which was part of the original 11 consortium schools Apple focused on. We were invited to an unveiling, weren’t told of what, but given a time slot. 20 of us entered a conference room with a smallish rectangle in the middle of the table covered with a white sheet. At the appointed time the Apple rep took off the sheet and voila, the Mac. Some have called it rubbish, others have pointed out it was expensive, but at that time other computers were using text interfaces and students were writing their thesis on vax’s and inserting postscript code for bold and italics.
I remember leaving the presentation and sitting down to a vax terminal thinking I had just seen the future. We can argue who invented the GUI, xerox alto has a claim, but Apple popularized it while Microsoft users were still saying text interfaces were better. It took me a couple of weeks in 1984 to convince my young bride I needed one, even at the greatly discounted price (over 40% off) but I was the envy of other grad students, i could actually draw in chemical structures.
And I’m still seeing the future with Apple. That’s worth the price to me.
I remember leaving the presentation and sitting down to a vax terminal thinking I had just seen the future. We can argue who invented the GUI, xerox alto has a claim, but Apple popularized it while Microsoft users were still saying text interfaces were better. It took me a couple of weeks in 1984 to convince my young bride I needed one, even at the greatly discounted price (over 40% off) but I was the envy of other grad students, i could actually draw in chemical structures.
And I’m still seeing the future with Apple. That’s worth the price to me.
By larger Mac’s that were too big for most office workers desks was 1987’s Mac II line. The MacSE was also 1987, with expansion slot. Sorry posts caused any confusion, it was a attempt to show office deployments right after the earliest Macs.
By larger Mac’s that were too big for most office workers desks was 1987’s Mac II line. The MacSE was also 1987, with expansion slot. Sorry posts caused any confusion, it was a attempt to show office deployments right after the earliest Macs.
No worries my brain is old , keep getting hung up on earliest. Earlier… I can wrap around. Earliest will always be the original 1984 Mac to me. I was in grad school, not offices, and the majority of Mac’s I saw were the 1984 form factor. Ironically I did own and use a Mac II on my first job because it supported color and I was doing molecular modeling… but had one of those big government green desks and size never bothered me. I think cost was the major concern holding back the Mac 2, not size. Which ones did you own?