The Macintosh: 30 years of innovation, influence and invective

The Apple Macintosh wasn’t the first personal computer on the market when it premiered in 1984. Nor was it a blockbuster by current standards.

But the original Mac, introduced 30 years ago today, stands out as one of the most influential consumer technologies of its era. Its innovative design and simplicity helped to set the stage for the coming explosion in desktop computing and the societal shifts that came with it.

“Apple made a machine desirable at a time when computers were these terrifying behemoths guarded in a glass room by someone in a lab coat,” said Leslie Berlin, project historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University. 

Praised for its innovation, Apple has also come to symbolize some of the technology industry’s struggles, specifically taking criticism over exploitation of workers who manufacture Apple products overseas and environmental destruction.

Steve Jobs introduced the first Mac — a beige box with built-in monitor — when computers were largely the domain of hobbyists and office workers. Like most of its peers, the first Mac was low-powered with a relatively tiny amount of memory. Owners could use the computer for word processing, graphics design and planning projects. Digital music, blood-soaked video games and the modern Internet had yet to be invented.

What set the Mac apart was its ease of use compared with its more wonky rivals, which included IBM, Tandy and Commodore. Jobs wanted to make computing appealing to the general public by streamlining all the complex commands. Users could click on icons and drag and drop files, for example. Graphical interfaces, as they are known, soon became ubiquitous not just on desktop computers, but also on the smartphones and tablets of today.

The Mac was also the first consumer-targeted computer to come with a mouse, another bit of slick design that quickly became an industry standard. Apple didn’t necessarily invent all its consumer-friendly technology. Rather, it took the ideas from places like Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, a legendary Silicon Valley lab, and turned them into commercial successes.

Bill Yanko, a retired environmental microbiologist from Lake Wildwood, Calif., in the Sierra foothills, said he’s been a fan of Apple since its early years. During the intervening decades, he’s gone through eight Apple computers, starting with the IIc, a contemporary of the original Mac.

“From the get-go, Apple computers were always much simpler — and that was the key thing for me,” said Yanko, who is president of his local Mac club. “For a computer at home, I just wanted to be able to use it. I had too many things going on in my life to spend hours and hours figuring out how to get it work.”

Along with his wife, Yanko now owns three Macs and an iPad. His son, who grew up on Apple computers and is now a software engineer, is also an Apple devotee.

“He’s following in his father’s footsteps,” Yanko said.

Early Macs helped to accelerate the phenomenon of people buying technology for their homes. Before the Mac’s debut, most computers were too pricy for the general public — the original Mac cost $2,495 (at that time, a typically configured IBM personal computer cost $3,270, according to The New York Times) — and too primitive to be very useful.

“There wasn’t a consumer market at the time, really,” said Chris Le Tocq, an analyst for Guernsey Research. “It was for enthusiasts. The idea of a device that was built for a consumer to purchase as opposed to an enthusiast was pretty revolutionary.”

Computers are now in the vast majority of U.S. households. They’ve changed the way people live by providing access to nearly limitless information, tools for communicating across the globe and the ability for many people to work from home.

Apple can’t claim all the credit, of course. Many companies had a hand, including Hewlett-Packard, Atari and Microsoft. Although Apple was a trailblazer, its market share in personal computers has always been relatively small. The company’s impact on technology greatly exceeded its actual sales, at least early on.

Apple has had its share of troubles with the Mac, along with its other electronics. In particular, critics point to the company outsourcing much of its manufacturing over the past 15 years to contractors that sometimes ignore labor and environmental laws. Apple has acknowledged that some of its Chinese manufacturers have hired underage workers and required employees to work excessive hours. But it defends its record by saying it regularly audits those contractors and pressures them to change their ways.

Kevin Slaten, program coordinator for China Labor Watch, a U.S. advocacy group for Chinese workers, gave limited praise to Apple for at least discussing labor practices in public. But all too often, he said, the company has delayed fixing the problems it finds with its suppliers.

“Ever since Apple established its supply in China, for workers it’s been bittersweet,” Slaten said.

The problems of overseas manufacturing are hardly unique to Apple, however. Furthermore, pinning them on a specific product like the Mac is nearly impossible because contractors assemble a variety of electronics for Apple, along with products for other companies.

The Mac’s premiere served as a springboard for Apple’s eventual meteoric rise. The Mac was the company’s biggest hit soon after it became available and, later, one of the technology industry’s most successful brands.

Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 and, before creating the Mac, had churned out a handful of computers like the Lisa and the Apple II. But the company had yet to reach its stride until the Macintosh.

“The Macintosh was the product that first made Apple sexy,” said Berlin, the Stanford historian. “If you were a designer or desktop publisher, this was a cool computer.”

Nine months after introducing the Mac, Apple upgraded the computer with more memory and a faster processor. It renamed the original Mac the Macintosh 128K to distinguish it from the newer model, the Macintosh 512K. Over the years, a steady cycle of upgrades made the computers more sleek and powerful to the point that they hardly resemble the original. Eventually, Apple expanded the brand to include laptops.

But with the advent of tablets and smartphones, Mac sales are now in decline. Apple’s U.S. shipments of personal computers fell 3.3 percent in 2013 to 6.9 million, accounting for just under 11 percent of the market. While iPads and iPhones may look a lot different from the Mac, they borrow a lot from their predecessor. Like the Mac, they are designed to be easy to use and are operated using icons.

In introducing the Mac, Jobs cemented his reputation as an expert marketer. A now famous commercial for the Mac inspired by George Orwell’s novel “1984” ran during the Super Bowl. It ushered in an era of splashy advertising for consumer technology. Seeing new products from Google, Microsoft and Samsung on television is now routine.

Standing before shareholders during Apple’s annual meeting 30 years ago today, Jobs gave the Mac an effusive kickoff. He spoke of his big ambitions for the computer and its mainstream appeal. The telephone, he said, was the first and only desktop appliance. The Macintosh would become the second one for tens of millions of people, he accurately predicted — although it took many years to achieve.