![]() ![]() ![]() But you could use it to transfer data between your phone and a Mac - at first using Apple’s Bluetooth adapter and, shortly thereafter, via Bluetooth built into new Macs. In 2002, when phones started adding a wireless technology called Bluetooth, there wasn’t much you could do with it. And if it’s less of a given today that you’ll use a computer for those tasks, it’s only because the iPhone and iPad proved that phones and tablets can also be great media hubs. HyperCard helped inspire the web.īack in the early part of this century, when Apple was busy creating apps such as iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie, Steve Jobs spent a lot of time pitching the idea of the Mac as a media hub - a device you’d use to manage digital music, photos, video and other content you created and consumed using a variety of then-new gizmos. And when Apple unveiled a laptop with built-in Wi-Fi at Macworld Expo New York in 1999, the notion of being able to use the Internet without any cords was still so startling that Phil Schiller jumped from a great height onto a mattress while clutching an iBook to prove that no strings were attached. The original iMac had Ethernet at a time when that was a startlingly advanced feature for a home computer. Starting in 1985, when computer networking was still a pricey and exotic rarity, Apple made it easy to connect Macs to each other using a technology called AppleTalk. And even though today’s designers have more pixels and colors to work with than Kare did back in the day, their work, like hers, involves visualizing concepts in a way that’s immediately understandable, even at a teensy size. Today, icons are everywhere - on computers, phones, tablets and the web. They were famously designed by Susan Kare, who later did icons for Microsoft, Facebook and other clients. The first Mac was the first fully mainstream computer with a graphical user interface, and therefore the first one with icons. Here’s why it’s never stopped being the world’s most influential personal computer. So for this list, I’m skipping the reasons why the Mac mattered in 1984. It’s always just tried to build the best, most Apple-esque personal computers it could with the technology available to it at the time.Īnd if you trace the history of the Mac from 1984 to 2014, you keep coming up with ways the platform influenced the rest of the industry - yes, even during the scary period during the mid-1990s when the company flirted with financial disaster. The same things Apple cared about then - approachability, integration of software and hardware, a willingness to do fewer things but do them better - it cares about today. Philosophically, aesthetically and spiritually, though, they’re very much descendants of the original 1984 Mac. Technically, the Macs of today are actually based on operating-system software that originated with the computers made by NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after being ousted from Apple in 1985 and then sold to it in 1996. That the Mac has not only survived but thrived is astonishing. Even IBM, personified as the evil Big Brother-like overlord in the Mac’s legendary “1984” commercial, bailed on the PC industry in 2004. Other than Apple itself, the leading computer companies of 1984 included names such as Atari, Commodore, Compaq, Kaypro and Radio Shack - all of which have since either left the PC business or vanished altogether. In other categories of products, something being around for decades, continuing to evolve and maintaining its popularity isn’t all that unusual: Consider, for instance, the Toyota Corolla, which has been with us since 1966.īut the Mac is the only personal computer with a 30-year history. ( PHOTOS: Macintosh at 30: Apple’s Computer Evolution)īut as I think about the anniversary, I’m at least as impressed by two other facts about the Mac:Ģ) More important, it’s mattered for 30 years As the computer turns 30, it’s tempting to celebrate simply by remembering how profoundly its debut changed personal computing. Here’s a video of the entire event, complete with an introduction by then-CEO John Sculley apologizing to the shareholders who were stuck outside:ĭrawing heavily on inspiration from Xerox’s PARC lab and other research that came before it, as well as Apple’s own Lisa - but adding plenty of its own innovations - the Mac was the first successful computer with a graphical user interface, a mouse and the ability to show you what a printed document would look like before you printed it. On January 24, 1984, at the Flint Center on De Anza College’s campus in Cupertino, California, Apple formally announced the Macintosh at its shareholder meeting, in front an audience so packed that large numbers of people who owned Apple stock couldn’t get in at all. A natty Steve Jobs poses with a room full of Macs in 1984. ![]()
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