(Credit: Zain bin Awais/PCMag Composite; Apple)
Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, and along with competitors Commodore and Tandy, it helped launch the personal computer revolution the following year.
Atari followed suit with its 400 and 800 home computers, while the first "trinity" manufacturers iterated on their designs. In 1981, IBM introduced an open-architecture, 16-bit machine called the IBM PC, which, when combined with Lotus 1-2-3, took off in popularity in business environments large and small. And in 1982, PC Magazine hit the scene with its first issue, targeting IBM personal computer enthusiasts.
It was the Macintosh, though, that set the course for personal computing for the next several decades. While Apple didn't invent the graphical user interface, the company brought it to mainstream consumers for the first time with the Mac. Microsoft and IBM immediately began copying its various idioms and design language—at first with hilarious ineptitude, and then in earnest, beginning with Windows 3.0 in 1990 and OS/2 2.0 in 1992. The rest, of course, is history.
As part of our 50th anniversary celebration of Apple, we're turning the spotlight on the Macintosh, which itself has been around for an unbelievable 42 years.
The Early Years (1984 to 1989)
After selling the forward-looking but way overpriced Lisa, Apple unveiled the 128K Macintosh in 1984—first via an unforgettable Super Bowl ad evoking George Orwell, and then two days later with a formal introduction on stage in Cupertino, Calif. In a single five-minute segment, Steve Jobs laid out the template for all future Apple events:
Shrewdly designed and smartly equipped—except for an extremely limiting (even for the time) 128KB RAM—the Mac exuded simplicity and sophistication. Its graphical user interface, mouse, and sharp (for the period) 512-by-342-pixel resolution—explicitly designed to mirror printed output at the same dot pitch—made the machine ready for work out of the box.
The Mac even came with all the software you needed to create content, including a word processor and a paint program. The graphics were primitive by today's standards, and you spent way more time waiting for things to happen because programs loaded slowly from floppy disks. But you could get real publishing work done, and thanks to its built-in handle, the Mac was easy to carry.
Later models like the 512K, the Plus, and the SE upgraded the memory and internals, and the last of those added an internal hard drive to complement the 3.5-inch floppy drive. Thanks to the Mac's soon-to-be-ubiquitous enclosure and 9-inch monochrome display, the Apple LaserWriter printer, and Aldus Pagemaker, the era of home desktop publishing and WYSIWYG word processing was born.
The above didn't happen fast enough to save Jobs's, well, job. CEO John Sculley fired him in 1985 amid a power struggle at the top of the company and poor initial sales numbers for the Macintosh.
In the ensuing years, Apple also introduced successive versions of the OS, culminating near the end of the decade with System 6, which offered a more advanced version of cooperative multitasking, something you still couldn't do easily on the PC side. Meanwhile, home computers transitioned to the 16-bit realm, thanks mainly to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.
However, the Mac still reigned supreme, straddling home and business markets—something Commodore, Atari, and IBM tried and failed to do for the most part. Still, the IBM PC began to increase in power, especially with the advent of 80386 chips, VGA graphics, and the first Adlib and SoundBlaster soundcards.
The PowerPC and Messy Clone Years (1990 to 1997)
By 1990, Apple expanded its Mac lineup, introducing the budget-priced LC, the midrange staple IIci, the lower-end color desktop IIsi, and higher-end Centris and Quadra machines. More and more Mac models began to look like proper desktop or tower PCs with separate displays that were increasingly color-capable. Apple also rebranded the Mac SE as the Classic at a lower price, while the supercharged SE/30 included a faster 68030 CPU and found its home in professional desktop publishing.
As the '90s progressed, Apple launched its PowerPC lineup, a significant leap in power in tandem with the 32-bit System 7.1.2. By this point, under the leadership of Michael Spindler and Gil Amelio, Apple lost its way. The company split off its popular Mac into six separate model lines—LC, Performa, Centris, Quadra, Power Macs, and Classic—in several dozen varieties, many of which had near-identical specs but were sold to different markets (such as home, education, and business). And that's just the desktops.
In another effort to grab more market share, Apple then licensed its newly renamed Mac OS to clone manufacturers like Power Computing and Radius, further diluting the brand and showing that companies other than Apple could build good Macs. The net effect: Consumers bought clone Macs over Apple products, not PCs, cannibalizing sales without increasing the number of Mac owners. Stock market analysts began to consider Apple a company in permanent decline.
Steve Jobs, the iMac, and the G3, G4, and G5 (1998 to 2004)
Apple bought NeXT in 1996 and put Jobs back in power in 1997. Then Microsoft injected $150 million into Apple's coffers for software development. When that was announced, the crowd jeered Bill Gates's appearance, as many Mac fans feared he would take control of Apple and turn the Mac into a Windows PC.
Meanwhile, Apple overhauled its PowerBook line with the black-plastic models code-named Wallstreet, and later with the much lighter Lombard and Pismo, all of which sold well despite their high $2,500 to $3,500 price tags.
The Bondi Blue iMac G3, introduced in May 1998, was the first major Apple product to once again have Jobs's blessing. It was widely considered a return to form. Designed by Jony Ive, it distilled the essence of the Macintosh in a single, self-contained enclosure, much in the same vein as the original 1984 model, while ditching the 3.5-inch floppy drive—considered a bold move ahead of its time, especially since Apple was instrumental in bringing that format to the public consciousness in the first place. Here's our original test of the iMac, from the Oct. 20, 1998 issue of PC Magazine:
(Credit: PCMag)Candy-colored versions of the iMac with faster 333MHz processors followed, along with similarly designed iBook laptops with a compelling new feature called 802.11b Wi-Fi. Apple introduced a brand-new, clear and gray G4 tower in September 1999 to considerable fanfare. And a complete redesign in 2002 gave the iMac a sleek, lamp-like form factor.
Meanwhile, in the biggest change to how Macs operated since their introduction 16 years earlier, Apple completely revamped Mac OS with a Mach kernel and bits of BSD Unix from NeXTSTEP. The company announced OS X in 2000 and released the first version in 2001.
Along with a popular "Think Different" ad campaign that featured famous cultural figures such as Gandhi and Einstein, Apple began its slow, steady ascent back into the zeitgeist.
The Mac Goes Intel (2005 to 2011)
Apple continued to pull off design coups in the early aughts with its beautiful titanium silver PowerBooks, mod lamp iMacs, and dedicated eMacs (for the education market). Then, in a stunning 2005 announcement, Apple switched from the tough-to-scale PowerPC architecture to Intel, giving Macs the same internals as you'd find on a Windows PC.
Miraculously, hell didn't freeze over, and people kept buying Macs. They were just faster than they ever were before. No longer did Apple have to resort to weird, cherry-picked benchmarks against nameless, spec-less PCs in its advertising. Meanwhile, the iMac switched to a self-contained, flat LCD enclosure that started as a white plastic design and gradually became thinner, eventually made of aluminum.
Over the next decade, as the world increasingly moved to laptops, Apple's innovations in portable computing began to overshadow its iMacs and professional desktops. By this point, Apple was becoming better-known for its iPod, and in 2007, everything changed again with the introduction of the iPhone. Then the iPad (2010) rewrote the book on what a tablet computer could be. For a time, it seemed Cupertino could do no wrong.
Why Apple Alienated Its Pro Users (2012 to 2019)
Alas, even as Apple racked up success after success with its iOS devices, it began to lose sight of its most loyal Mac users: creative professionals.
The 2013 "trash can" Mac Pro revamp was the first indication. It was compact, cool, and fast, but it lost its internal expandability and languished in the product lineup for years. Apple introduced the Retina display on its Macintosh line to considerable fanfare with the MacBook Pros (2012) and the 5K iMac (2014). But beginning in 2015, when Apple reintroduced the 12-inch MacBook, and especially in 2016, when the company revamped its MacBook Pro line, it began making some mystifying decisions, all in pursuit of "thin" and "light."
To wit: removing almost all ports and slots in favor of the then-new USB-C standard. You couldn't connect an external drive to the 12-inch MacBook and charge it at the same time because it had only one port. Worse, the Ive design philosophy became all-encompassing. Macs lost some key features professionals relied on, such as the SD card slot for photographers and the much-loved MagSafe power connector, which prevented the computer from being damaged if someone tripped over the power cord. It seemed as if something was a moving part, it had to go.
On MacBook Pros, Apple introduced the Touch Bar, an LCD strip across the top of the keyboard that displayed context-sensitive touch controls. Mainly, it just confused everyone, with no tactile feedback while typing and the loss of the the function key row and the Escape key. Even the inverted-T cursor key layout, while thankfully still hardware, was nixed in favor of a cleaner design.
Perhaps the worst decision was the 2015 move to the dreaded Butterfly keyboard. It enabled a lower profile than scissor key switches and closed up the spacing around the keys for perfect backlighting. But it proved incredibly susceptible to crumbs and dirt, which could permanently damage the keys, sending untold thousands of people back to the Genius Bars for repeat replacements over the next several years. Apple released four separate keyboard iterations, none of which solved the problem.
The Move to Apple Silicon (2020 to Today): M1, M2, and Beyond
Apple began making amends in 2019 with the release of the revamped Mac Pro, a much more accessible design that boosted power and restored its upgradability for professionals. The company also began to reverse its mistakes in the MacBook lineup by bringing back the scissor-key switches and the SD card slot, and eventually removing the unloved Touch Bar altogether.
Most importantly, Apple began switching to its own silicon with the launch of the M1-powered MacBook Pros. With their efficient ARM SoC designs and large number of CPU and GPU cores, these chips smoked the earlier Intel machines while remaining cool to the touch. I owned a Core i9 16-inch MacBook Pro that sounded like a jet engine whenever a display was attached, and it lasted only three to four hours on a battery. I was thrilled to ditch it after just two years for an M1 Pro model.
In 2026, the Mac lineup is as strong as ever, with its new M5-powered MacBook Air and MacBook Pros, potent Mac Studio desktops, and the colorful new MacBook Neo. The iMac is still around, with an array of colors and a sharp, svelte design of its own. Apple's computers seem almost perfect—light, fast, and still thin enough, with top-quality webcams, mics, speakers, keyboards, and the best trackpad in the business. You can still see the essence of the original models in today's Macs, from the hardware designs to the self-contained systems to the excellent bundled software for out-of-the-box creative projects.