View the gallery in full screen to read more about each Mac.
View the gallery in full screen to read more about each Mac.
The Mac's roots trace back to the Lisa, which debuted in 1983 with a graphical user interface and mouse.
The Mac owes a lot of its heritage (and success) to an earlier machine with a graphical user interface and a mouse: the Lisa. Born out of research Steve Jobs saw at the Xerox PARC labs in 1979, the Lisa came loaded with a suite of custom-built Apple software designed to help office workers with things like writing memos, balancing budgets, and creating charts and presentations. Apple designed the screen, a breakthrough consumer innovation called the desktop manager, to look like an actual work environment, with folders for storing documents and a virtual trash can for ditching them. Unfortunately, with a $10,000 price tag ($23,500 in today’s dollars), Lisa was far too costly for average business to purchase. But it paved the way for the cheaper, smaller Mac.
The Macintosh landed 30 years ago today, launching with Apple’s iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial.
The Macintosh landed with a bang thirty years ago, in 1984. It was the first computer to successfully integrate two things that are now commonplace: a graphical user interface (GUI) and a mouse. An image of a piece of paper for a file, a folder icon for folders that held documents -- while the idea publicly debuted on the Lisa, it was the Macintosh that gave many of us our first opportunity to use a GUI. Unlike the Lisa, it had a more palatable $2,495 price tag. Apple unveiled the Macintosh with a huge media campaign spearheaded by a minute-long TV commercial that premiered during the Super Bowl. Inspired by Orwell's dystopian 1984, the Ridley Scott-directed commercial has since landed a spot as one of the most iconic advertisements of the 20th century.
The 1998 "Bondi Blue" iMac came as a welcome antidote to the boring, beige desktop PC.
After floundering through the early 90s while Steve Jobs was at NeXT, Apple’s next big hit was the candy-colored iMac. Introduced in 1998, it was a complete revamp of the traditionally boring, beige desktop PC. It was also the first Mac to feature an all-in-one hardware design that’s still used by today’s iMacs.
Mac OS X was a complete rethinking of the Mac operating system.
As the Mac’s appearance was evolving, so too was its operating system. In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X. While it kept its Unix backend and Apple’s traditional interface conventions, Mac OS X Cheetah -- the first of the “big cats” series that recently concluded with Mountain Lion -- also appealed to computer users who were previously Windows-only. Mac OS 9 and earlier were based on the original Mac software architected back in 1984. OS X was built from technologies that came from NeXT, which Apple acquired in late 1996.
The MacBook Air took notebook portability -- namely thinness and lightness -- to a whole new level. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED
Even as laptops became commonplace in early aughts, many models remained too large and cumbersome for many. Designed to combine performance and portability, the 13.3-inch Macbook Air debuted as the world’s thinnest computer in 2008. Apple really hit its stride with the redesigned Air in 2010, making it available in a smaller 11.6-inch size too. The laptop has remained razor thin and even inspired a line of competing Windows ultraportables dubbed “Ultrabooks.”
Photo: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED
ADVERTISEMENT
Apple’s pro-level portable sharpened things up with a high-resolution display. Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
For those who need more power with their portability, there was the MacBook Pro. In 2012, Apple did something decidedly different: It upped the resolution of the screen to a whopping 2880 x 1800 pixels and redubbed it the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Apple’s upper end, elite notebook line got even more elite. The new Pro balanced performance, a superb display, and that trademark unibody hardware design (now even more slender than it had been in the past).
Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
The iMac has grown up and slimmed down from its jewel-tone beginnings. Photo: Alex Washburn/WIRED
The iMac, Apple’s consumer-facing desktop machine, underwent several redesigns from its first introduction in 1998. But its late 2012 reincarnation, featuring unimaginably slender edges and a trimmer bezel around the display, proved to be not just eye candy, but a feat of engineering. The process used to get those edges so thin (5 mm, to be precise) is called friction stir welding, and was the same one used to machine certain parts for Space Shuttles.
Photo: Alex Washburn/WIRED
Apple ditched the sharp angles of a traditional desktop tower for the cylindrical Mac Pro. Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Eventually, Apple began marketing its Macs toward heavy-hitting technology professionals. The Mac Pro, a desktop tower whose first version debuted in 2006, looked a lot like the Power Mac G5, an IBM PowerPC-based workstation from 2003. But at WWDC 2013, Apple first showed off the slick new cylindrical Mac Pro. Like the original iMac, it was a stark reimagining of what a desktop PC should look like. But rather than fun and playful, the new Mac Pro is shiny, black, and futuristic.
Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
SIMILAR GALLERIES
Your Guide to the Weirdest, Most Wonderful Things in the World
Out of Bounds, Off the Hook: The Season's Best Backcountry Ski Gear Tested
WIRED's CES Smartphone Thunderdome: The Final Results
Stop Trying to Judge CES
We Pick the 10 Best Gadgets at CES
Fresh CES Gear: Eye-Scanning Tech, a Sweet Stereo, and the Future of Home Cinema
ADVERTISEMENT
The Mac put Apple on the map. Thirty years ago today, the company announced the iconic computer with a truly revolutionary Superbowl commercial. Inspired by Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the 60-second TV spot directed by Ridley Scott is still considered one of the landmark ads of the 20th century.
What started out as “a humble, shoe-box sized machine” has grown into an industry-dominating line of devices. Currently, Mac sales continue to surge as the rest of PC market buckles under the pressure from skyrocketing mobile device sales.
As its popularity grew so too did the face of the Mac — both in terms of hardware and interface. After floundering through the early 90s while Steve Jobs was at NeXT, Apple’s next big hit came in the form of candy-colored iMac. Introduced in 1998, it was a complete revamp of the traditionally boring, beige desktop PC.
Of course, hardware wasn’t only thing Apple improved over the years. In 2001, the company introduced Mac OS X, a complete reimagining of its previous operating system, and one that was based around the NeXT software it acquired in 1996. It was at this point that the Mac ecosystem really took off.
So from a tiny beige box, to a candy-colored desktop, to an ultra-sleek silver sliver, here’s how Apple’s Mac lineup has evolved over the past 30 years.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment