Apple’s Macintosh celebrates 40 years since it changed the history of computing
Apple Mac computers are 40 years old. January 24, 1984 with the help of his co-founder Steve Jobsthe company presented Macintosh 128Ka revolutionary product that changed the computer market.
It wasn’t the first personal computer (PC), but this white cube with a keyboard and mouse was a milestone with its innovative technology. graphical user interfaceresponsible, for example, for the appearance of icons on the 9-inch screen that were convenient for use by the general public.
Three years earlier, in 1981. IBM released its revolutionary PC, a microcomputer based on the emerging idea of architecture open – its parts could be added and replaced – and it was fast dominated the market personal computers, surpassing Apple and other leading companies of previous decades.
But Apple returned the game in the finals Super Bowl -the largest audience of advertising space in the USA – with advertising filmed Ridley Scott and inspired by the novel 1984 from George Orwellwhich showed the Macintosh as the antithesis Big Brother in the form of an IBM PC.
A few days later, Jobs took the stage at Cupertino (California) and demonstrated a device that allowed users to simply “point and click” to operate it, whereas with the IBM PC one had to learn commands and keywords to use the software.
Macintosh with much more compact size than the IBM PC, had almost twice the speed (8 MHz) thanks to microprocessor Motorola MC68000 with a 16/32-bit chip that eclipsed the Intel 8088 microprocessor with an 8/16-bit chip from the dominant computer up to that time.
Although the seer Steve Jobs He personally promoted the Macintosh, and it became a symbol of Apple, the truth is that this computer was another engineer’s idea, Jeff Raskinwho left an indelible mark on the company despite only working there for four years, from 1978 to 1982.
Raskin was working at the computer accessible and suitable for the masses and named the project after his favorite variety of apples – Macbut remained without tasting the honey of success, because abandonment the company after several clashes with Jobs, who eventually made it his own.
Success of the past in the face of technological evolution
The project began when both of them visited a research center Xerox in Palo Alto (California), where the graphical user interface was invented: later Apple created the microcomputer Lisa (1983), which turned out to be a commercial failure, and in parallel macswhich went down in history.
The computer that went on sale for about 2500 dollars (about 2299.4 euros at current exchange rates), today it is very valuable relic among collectors, but not even close to the sky-high prices for rarities vintage How Apple motherboard 1sold at Bonham’s for $905,000 in 2014.
Technological evolution led to the Macintosh being renamed Poppy in 1999, not only one heir appeared, but also a whole line: laptops MacBook Air and Pro and desktop computers iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Proeach with different capacities and prices ranging from $1,000 to $7,000.
However, the same development created competitors market maturity in which Apple products face infinity alternatives, with different characteristics and a wide price range.
Apple remains one of largest listed companies in the worldvalued at $2.9 trillion, although its performance has been declining: Its sales have fallen over the past four quarters, the worst performance in more than 20 years.