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The Mac Turns 40: Read Apple's Announcement From 1984

40 years, how time flies. I was rocking Timex Sinclair's when that Super Bowl ad aired and remember thinking, "Wow, can't wait to see what that's going to be all about!" I remember coughing at the price and lumbered on through the '80s with an Atari 520ST and then 1040ST...until '95.

My daughter was in high school and we were looking for a family computer and my Windows-loving brother tried valiantly to try and find something that fit our budget. While researching computer magazines I kept coming back to MacWorld and MacUser and the UK MacFormat magazines when I began to notice a difference in the "letters" sections...Mac users were a happier bunch, talking about getting creative things done on their computers vs all the letters in the Windows magazines with users complaining about trying just to get their computers configured just to work correctly!

I brought this to my brother's attention, how it seemed that Mac users were just "happier people" with their computers vs the Windows folks and he tried hard, using all the arguments of the day, to dissuade me from going that route. LOL Another month of saving and it was purchase time...a Performa 6300CD! And I've never looked back!

Soon after, a scanner that came with a full version of Photoshop 3.0.5, and then, a friend providing me a copy of QuarkXpress and I was off and running quickly taking over duties as our astronomy club's newsletter! Sold on Mac System 7.5.1, a Performa 6360CD soon became the family computer! And when the rainbow iMac G3's were announced my daughter's first Mac to call "her own" was the purple one!

I've bought lotsa Macs for myself and loved ones over the years...from Pismos to iMacs to iPods and iPads and iPhones to MBPs and more iMacs and "iMac" is the Macintosh!

~$7,000 in today's dollars?! Well, I can do that...let's make it a 42"/8K XDR M4 Max TB5 2,500-nit iMac and let's celebrate! I'm in! :)
 
Apple Knowledge Navigator said:
Over the years I’ve considered a lot of the arguments that Windows and Mac fans used to have - before OS X the similarities weren’t as great - but the one that stands out is the ‘right-click’.

Hard to imagine now, but I still recall people saying “Yeah but you can’t even right-click on a Mac!” or “The mouse is wired, it only has one button!”

I believe this was first introduced in Windows 95, and it became such an obviously brilliant and useful feature that it was hard to go back to anything else. Of all the features Apple ‘borrowed’, this one tops it for me.
Click to expand...

One thing I like about the Mac even today is that the heritage lives on, since Apple has been there since the beginning.

In this case, universal support for option click to do the same thing (and the option button in general) still gives us flexibility. If you had no right click button for some reason, there was no reliable way to bring up that menu. With option click you can still do it.

Microsoft is even making OEMs turn the context menu key into a Copilot key. Mac keyboard is still the same with minor improvements but you can trace its lineage all the way back.
 
Maybe they provide a special one day discount based on the big anniversary.

/Wishful_thinking
 
I have all the original Macintosh form factors. It took about a year and a half to find them all. They all work but could use some recapping to make them last another few decades. I just enjoy looking at them more than most of my other possessions. And I own just about every form factor of Mac from the 2000's and up except all the towers as I have no more space for more. But the originals are still my favorite as far as how well those things are built and how simple they are. All the clear or colored plastic Macs are way more fragile than the original Macintoshes.
 

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I bought an Apple IIgs in 1986, but my first Mac was a IIcx in 1989. About 30 Macs later (IIfx, PB170, Quadra 800, PowerMac 8500/120....) I've got a 16" MBP as my main development machine. I remember paying $1500/yr for the Developer program and another $1500 to buy MPW, the compiler of the day, before moving to THINK Pascal/C and eventually CodeWarrior. It was better when Steve ran the company, but Apple still wins over Windows hands down.
 
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lkrupp said:
Well they did come out with a 20th anniversary Mac that flopped because of price. A leather sleeve is only important to MacBook owners, not iMac, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro owners.
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That’s is one that I’m so happy it flopped. I was able to afford it. Haha… Like many of you old timers, I have used so many over the years, including Performa models like the breadbasket with subwoofer. I’ve only kept a few over the years. Just my favorites. Original Mac Portable. PowerBook G3 Lombard, Pismo, 420c Blackbird?, PB 1400c, Newton 120, PB Titanium G4, 20th anniversary, iMac Late 2013 and now my new iMac M3. Now I’m 62 wow! My wife and I Retired. I can’t wait to see what Apple does in the few decades I may be lucky enough to have and get to see them. 😊
 
My first Apple computer was a MAC II with a color monitor. After building and configuring PCs and using PCs for years, I never looked back. However, there were times when I was forced to use a Dell/Windows laptop as that was what was assigned to me by the companies I worked for at that time. I've used both platforms for years. I prefer and find myself most productive on a Mac.
 
Mac has improved a lot in the last several years. Macs are great machines!!
 
As a person who joined the Mac party in year 39, I am more than proud of owning a MacBook Air and an iMac. I never got any  product before starting work, but man are they important for my PhD and research work....
 
Kissmo1980 said:
I loved every Mac I owned - even though 2 of them had GPU failures (Nvidia and AMD)
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My first Mac was the 2002 dual-processor 1Ghz "Quicksilver" G4. Like you, I loved my first Mac, which was (for the first and only time in my life) briefly the best, fastest Mac available, and which had multiple logic board failures and a fan as loud as a wind tunnel. A beast nevertheless!
 
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Lounge Deluxe said:
I wonder why Jobs named Apple's first pc Macintosh. Does anybody know the story behind that name/brand?
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It was not Apple’s first PC . The first PC was named Apple . Macintosh , among other things , is a type/variety of apple . ‘Apple’ is borrowed from Apple Corps ( the Beatles ).
 
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MacRumors said:


January 24 marks the 40th anniversary of Steve Jobs unveiling the Macintosh, the first successful mass-marketed computer with a graphical user interface.

Classic-Mac-40-Years-Old-Feature-1.jpg

The original Macintosh popularized the computer mouse, allowing users to control an on-screen pointer. This point-and-click method of computer navigation was still a novel concept to most people at the time, as personal computers in this era typically had text-based command-line interfaces controlled with a keyboard.

An excerpt from Apple's press release in 1984:Apple said the Macintosh typically took "only a few hours to learn," and it touted what are now basic computer features, such as a desktop with icons, the ability to use multiple programs in windows, drop-down menus, and copy and paste.

A quote from Jobs in Apple's press release:pricing for the original Macintosh started at $2,495, equivalent to over $7,000 today. Key specs and features included an 8 MHz processor, 128 KB of RAM, a 400 KB floppy disk drive for storage, and serial ports for connecting a printer and other accessories.

Apple's full press release for the Macintosh can be found on Stanford University's website.

Article Link: The Mac Turns 40: Read Apple's Announcement From 1984
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I remember when I got my first computer it was a tough decision between an Apple II or this new thing the IBM PC. I ended up taking the risk and got a IBM PC and it paid off helping start a new career path. Then I remember a couple years later the Apple Macintosh came out and just like everything Apple ever since be very expensive for the market it was in. In hindsight not getting the original Mac's was a benefit for me it saved me a lot of money and my career in computers grew learning CP/M, Unix, and PC. Then years later I finally worked for a company that had an Apple Developer account and using it was able to afford a Mac SE. By then the Mac had matured and I started learning to program the Mac which led to getting a new job in a company that made Mac and PC software. My background in PC and Mac paid off and got to work with a company that made Mac developer tools I got to be around some the original Apple Mac developers and hear their stories or should I say nightmares of working with Steve Jobs. Then through an acquisition I ended up at a Unix company that also made Mac and PC software. But the real benefit of all this is knowing Mac but also Unix and PC has kept me employed. Working on multiple platforms kept me opened minded to all platforms and see the advantages of each as well as issues of each learning no one platform is perfect or one company. So watching and being part of the history of Mac has been a very interesting to watch. Apple is a company I've been on the fence about for decades a love and hate relationship, but glad to see the competition the Mac created, competition benefits all users by help to push innovations by all companies in a marketplace.
 
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First Mac I bought for myself was a Performa 630CD. PCWorld was doing the Mac, 15" CRT monitor and StyleWriter inkjet for £999. Although I'd been working on an original 128k Mac for a good while before then. My first pro Mac was a G3 Minitower and a Lombard G3 Powerbook that I bought together. Quark Xpress was the go-to back then. Good days...
 
Interesting that I don't even see anything from Apple Site marking the 40th year of the Mac intro. I must have missed it?
 
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