History of Macintosh

A 39-Year Love Affair

The now-famous Macintosh computer turns 39. When Apple President Steve Jobs launched this computer at the Flint Center on the De Anza College campus on January 24, 1984, to the theme from the movie Chariots of Fire, he called it “insanely great!”

Macintosh Launch

The $1.5M “1984” Super Bowl commercial filmed by Sir Ridley Scott had appeared on TV two days before Macintosh went on sale, and the world was holding its breath.

Photo: Apple Super Bowl Ad “1984”

When IBM released the so-called IBM PC in 1981, I remember telling workmates I had at a Silicon Valley startup at the time that it

“legitimized the desktop microcomputer market,”

…at least for business. Though it was called a Personal Computer, few people I knew had one at home. It was driven to popularity with MS-DOS, a character-based user interface, first with green characters on a black screen, then in living color.

The PC had been around for almost a decade, back to the Xerox PARC Alto machine, but they were too expensive and too difficult to use for the ordinary mortal. The more hobby-friendly Commodore PET, Atari, and TRS-80 were within people’s budgets but were primarily used by hobbyists. Early adopters used CP/M operating…