Tomorrow, the ubiquitous range of minimalistic Mac computers turns 40 years old: January 24, 1984, tech giant Apple led by its co-founder Steve Jobsintroduced the Macintosh 128K, a product that changed the computer market.
This was not the first Personal Computer (PC), but this primitive white cube with a keyboard and mouse was made perfect thanks to its innovative graphical user interface, which, among other things, was responsible for making easy-to-read icons appear on the 9-inch screen. public.
Three years earlier, in 1981, IBM released its revolutionary PC, a microcomputer based on the nascent idea of an open architecture—its parts could be added and replaced—and which quickly dominated the personal computer market, overtaking Apple and other leaders. companies of past decades.
But Apple returned the game in the finals Super Bowl -the most popular advertising space in the US – with an ad directed by Ridley Scott and inspired by George Orwell’s novel 1984, which reveals macs as the antithesis of “Big Brother” in the form of the IBM PC.
A few days later, Jobs took the stage in Cupertino, California, and demonstrated a device that allowed users to simply “point and click” to control it, whereas on the IBM PC, “they had difficulty learning the complex commands and keywords to use the software.” provision” indicates Computer History Museum on their website.
The Macintosh, much more compact in size than the IBM PC, boasted nearly twice the speed, 8 MHz, thanks to the Motorola MC68000 microprocessor with a 16/32-bit chip that made the Macintosh pale. microprocessor Intel 8088 with 8/16-bit chip from the dominant computer at that time.
Although visionary Steve Jobs personally promoted the Macintosh and it became the symbol of Apple, the truth is that the computer was the idea of another engineer, Jef Raskin, who left an indelible mark on the company despite being a part of it for only four years, with 1978 to 1982.
Raskin worked in affordable computer suitable for the masses and he named the project after his favorite Macintosh apple variety, but never tasted the honey of success as he left the firm after several clashes with Jobs, who eventually made it his own.
The seed of the project was a visit by both to the Xerox research center in Palo Alto, California, where the graphical user interface was invented: Apple later created the Lisa microcomputer (1983), which was a commercial failure, and parallel the Macintosh, which went down in history.
What a computer that went on sale for about $2,500.Today it’s a highly prized relic among collectors, but it doesn’t approach the exorbitant prices of “vintage” rarities like the Apple 1 motherboard that sold for $905,000 at Bonham’s in 2014.
Technological evolution has led to the fact that the Macintosh, renamed Mac in 1999, has not just one successor, but an entire line: MacBook Air and Pro laptops, as well as iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro desktop computers, each of which has different power and prices start from 1000 and go up to 7000 dollars.
However, this same development has led to the emergence of competitors in a mature market where Apple products are facing cheaper alternatives with different features, such as laptops. MicrosoftLenovo, Dell, Acer and HP or simple Chromebooks.
While Apple remains one of the world’s largest listed companies at $2.9 trillion, its performance has been declining, with its sales falling over the past four quarters, its worst streak in more than 20 years.
EFE
Source: Aristegui Noticias
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
