On January 24th, 1984, Apple Computer Inc. released the first Macintosh computer to consumers. The computer was announced on January 22nd with a Super Bowl commercial parodying George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian sci-fi novel, 1984.
The release came after Apple had found widespread success in the consumer and business markets with the Apple II, II+ and IIc, and featured a nine inch CRT display and 128 kilobytes of memory at a retail price of $2,495, which is equivalent to roughly $7,300 in 2024.
The Macintosh was one of the earliest instances of a mass produced major operating system that used a graphical user interface (GUI), predated only by the Xerox Alto, which sold for the equivalent of $130,000, and only sold approximately two thousand units, most of which were used internally by Xerox or its subsidiaries. The Apple Lisa was an earlier attempt at a GUI based operating system by Apple, however, at an equivalent cost of $30,000, it only sold ten thousand units between its debut in 1983 and its discontinuation in 1986, and is largely considered to be a failure.
By the end of the year, Apple’s marketing tactics, like paying ad agency Chiat/Day $900,000 to produce a 1 minute advertisement, and spending $2.5 million to buy all of the ad space in an issue of Newsweek led to the company selling over seventy thousand Macintoshes in the first 4 months.
The Macintosh brought the GUI and mouse to the main consumer market. Microsoft followed Apple’s lead the next year, releasing their first GUI based operating system, Windows 1.0.1, to the public in November of 1985.
Apple’s market share continued to grow as the company launched several successful advertising campaigns. These had a calmer, more fun presence in contrast to other brands. In 1998, Apple released the iMac G3, which was available in six colors, a stark contrast to the beige and grey computers produced by other companies at the time. By setting Apple apart from other computer manufacturers, it made them seem more approachable to new computer users than their competitors.
Apple’s “Think Different” campaign, which ran from 1997 to 2002, won several awards, including the 1998 Emmy for Best Commercial. The campaign contained photos of influential people alongside a photo of the Apple logo and the words “Think different”. The photos, printed on posters and billboards, and run in a slideshow format for television commercials implored people to “Think Different” by purchasing a Mac. The phrase “Think different” remained on the packaging for the iMac up until its redesign in 2020.
Today, Macintosh computers are more prevalent than ever. In 2022, Apple sold twenty six million computers, netting over forty billion dollars in revenue. Macs are incredibly common in the education world, especially in classes that involve art and design.
“You definitely have people who like PCs and who like Macs, but one of the things that’s so interesting about Macs is they’re really good when it comes to design, video production. They have the speed and the capability to do so many neat things when it comes to drawing and design and they’re just a great computer to work with,” said AV Journalism, Graphic Design and Video Production teacher Wendy Connelly. “In my classes here at Amador, we get a lot of use out of QuickTime and iMovie. They’re free options. They’re great for screen recording. They’re great for quick recordings. And they’re really easy to use, so we always have students start on those because they’re so user friendly.”
Macs are incredibly common at Amador, and many students opt to use them instead of the school issued Chromebooks. As of June 2023, 20% of computers around the world utilize the MacOS operating system. However, usage of Apple’s main competitor, Microsoft Windows, has been declining since 2009 when it held 95% of the market share.
Over the course of forty years, Macs have proved themselves to be an icon of modern computing that is truly here to stay.
