25 years of Macintosh

I recently started to use a MacBook Pro. A very high-end laptop which I believe has the coolest “look” compared to the rest. It was given to me by my office and personally, would have never bought one. What held me back from purchasing a Mac was it was way too expensive and the OS and its user interface was different to what I was used to and assumed it would be too much of a nuisance to make the change....or so I thought! It’s been a couple of weeks and it has really impressed me. Not just by the looks of it, but the way it is so easy to use and accomplish tasks.

It just so happens that the very first Macintosh was launched around this time back in 1984 and a good time to reflect on how Apple has survived over the past 24 years.

Apple made a splash back in 1977 with the Apple 2 which became the world’s first personal computer. In 1981, IBM released its version of the personal computer the IBM PC and made waves in the market. Although Apple dominated the industry, the company began planning successors for the product resulting in the release of the Macintosh computer in January of 1984. This became and instant hit because it was something totally new and different to any other computer that was available at the time.

The windows/icons/mouse/pointer (WIMP) interface, first pioneered at Xerox PARC, was intelligible at a glance and set the paradigm for almost every personal computing interface to follow. Apple put a lot of effort into R&D to design and come up with the ultimate user interface for the Mac and encouraged developers to build applications that fit that specification.

Bundled with the Mac were two groundbreaking applications that allowed users to “paint” by clicking and dragging the mouse, and to create and edit text files in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) way. These programs made Mac a house-hold name and set high standards for the rest of the competition. By around 1987, the Mac user base reached over 1 million and continued to grow.

What does the future hold for Mac?

With the global recession, its hard to predict the future of Mac or for that matter the company, Apple. But personally I think the Mac will continue to hang around primarily based on Apple’s other key products such as the iPhone. With the Air released, I expect slimmer and smaller versions of Macs to come out in the next few years. We’ll just have to wait and see!

The 5 most notable Macs over the past 24 years

1. The Macintosh (1984): The original Mac which set the standard for personal computers. It came with a groundbreaking all-in-one design, including a mouse and a user friendly graphical user interface
2. The PowerBook (1991): A joint venture with Sony, the PowerBook series set the standard for portable machines. It featured a 10 inch monochrome screen and a design which later became the blueprint for laptops for all computer manufacturers.
3. The iMac (1998): Somewhat different to previous Macintosh machines, the iMac had a distinctive look and vibrant colors which instantly attracted consumers and even created a pop-culture. The iMac had no legacy ports and instead was relying upon USB ports which offered easy plug and play capabilities. Also, it became the first computer to drop support for the floppy drive as a standard feature.
4. The iBook (1999): A clamshell shaped laptop which was designed to be thrown into a backpack, continued the trends of iMac by not supporting the floppy drive. It also became the first to showcase wireless networking capabilities, dubbed AirPort.
5. The MacBook Air (2008): Apple went ultra slim with MacBook Air early last year. The Air was the first Mac to feature an optional hard drive and the processor was specially designed by Intel that reduced the packaging size by 60% and still deliver performance.