Apple.com today reads:
In 1984, Apple introduced the world to Macintosh.
It was designed to be so easy to use that people could actually use it.
And it came with a promise-that the power of technology taken from a few and put in the hands of everyone, could change the world.
That promise has been kept.
Today, we create, connect, share, and learn in ways that were unimaginable 30 years ago.
Imagine what we can accomplish in the next 30 years.
Explore 30 years of innovation on the Mac.
Apple has also produced a 2:52 “Mac 30” video featuring Moby, Maki Sugimoto, April Greiman, Daito Manabe, Hans Zimmer, Tinker Hatfield, Iris van Herpen, John Maeda, Noemi Trainor, Nick Knight, and Theodore Gray. See it here.
Apple also invites visitors to “Think back to your first Mac: However you discovered the Mac, we’d love to hear about it. Because your story is our story. Add your experience to those of other Mac users around the world, and help chronicle where Mac has been and what it’s been up to for the past 30 years. Tell us about your first Mac.” Tell Apple about your first Mac here.
MacDailyNews Note: MacDailyNews’ founder’s first Mac was a Macintosh 128K that was used in an advanced placement art class in high school in winter/spring 1984 – one of the very first Macs ever used! The Mac was procured by a very smart high school art teacher who could obviously see the future.
MacDailyNews Take: Here’s to the greatest computing platform the world has ever known!
Happy Birthday, Mac!
Related article:
Happy 30th Birthday, Apple Macintosh! – January 24, 2014
I have experienced quite a journey with Apple since my Apple ][+ in the late 1970s. Just stick to your core values, Apple, and we will still be celebrating for many decades to come.
I remember…. eeh…..shoot! I forgot what it is I remember after 30 years!!!! 🙂
Oh Yes! I remember!! Happy Birthday Apple iMac!
I remember using my nephews Mac Classic. When the IIci came out I bought into Apple and have never any other brand. My nephew sure is getting old.
lol. SOMEONE is!
The first thing Steve Jobs did after his return in 1997 was eliminating the “Mac museum” with every model of Apple production to date in the headquarters. I don’t think he would allow mentioning the models of 1985 to 1997. Or mentioning the anniversary at all.
Happy Birthday Apple inc.
May you have many more
May you never listen to the anal ysts
May Steve Jobs force be with you!
Sung to the Happy Birthday tune.
$10k for my first setup including a scanner and printer in 1997…I don’t miss those prices.
Sometimes it’s the Little Things that are life-changing. The first time I used a Mac (the 512K version), I experienced cut and paste in a document with MacWrite, and I had a Revelation. No white-out, no pulling out the paper from the typewriter and starting over. Never looked back. Hard to believe it’s been 30 years.
I feel your pain. Before I began my real career I was trained as a typewriter and adding machine mechanic.
I bought a IIfx for work, for desktop publishing in the leisure department within local government (UK) in 1988. Then, I spent £10,000 on a IIfx, LaserWriter II, Scanner, Display, and software. The corporate printing department had a fit, and were convinced we were about to take all their work away from them. That was small fry compared to the corporate IT department who tried to obliterate the Mac presence. Neither succeeded. I won the battles to keep our Macs. I went on to buy Iici, SE30 and LC630’s for the department in those early years.
It wasn’t until Macs became more affordable for home use that I bought my own LC in 1991, followed by LC630, 8200, and then 3 x Mac Mini’s. I’m now waiting for the next iteration of the Mac Mini.
Long live Macintosh!
My first Mac was an 8500/180 I was given at work. I had just started following BeOS, and their developer releases would run on a Mac or PC, so I bought a dual 604/200MHz CPU card and ran MacOS or BeOS on it, and it was amazing!
In response to MDN, we only had Apple II+ systems for students in my high school. The Mac came out when I was in middle school and I could only dream about it. I would go to our local authorized retailer. I would play with their Mac – they even had the Lisa, though it was mysterious and rather uninteresting at the time. I both coveted Macs and new Apple II designs as they came out. I had a //e of my own… I recall talking with others, about a mysterious “Super Apple II” but that may have turned out to be the GS… Anyway, I only know the first Mac that ever showed up in school, was in the admin office, and I graduated before seeing another.
I was a miserable Windows user up until 2001. I liked Macs, and used them in college (class of ’89), but I bought into the myth that there just wasn’t enough good software available to them. So I suffered with Windows. And I mean suffered. God, I hated those slow, buggy, crashy pieces of sh*t.
Anyway, in 2001, my Windows 98 machine was grinding to a halt, and I knew I had to get a new computer. But I also knew that computer would have to have XP on it, which I didn’t want (there was a lot of controversial crap about it when it was released). Meanwhile, my friend the Mac user just loved the hell out of his machines. So I said, “the hell with it, I’m taking the plunge”, and bought a 733 MHz QuickSilver G4 PowerMac. Best decision of my life.
(Speaking of Macs in college: There was this program pranksters loved to load on them, called MacPuke. It made the Mac make a vomiting noise when it ejected the disk. One time, some glorious a**hole loaded that on every Mac in the lab, filling the room with barf noises and pissing everyone off, except me, who was nearly on the floor laughing.)
——RM
Did you also encounter the Talking Moose?
I thought it was hilarious, my wife (“She Who Must Be Obeyed” as Rumpole says) made me delete it… Sigh. I still raise a beer to all those whose spouses think they should “just grow up already!”
Very cool and well done from Apple. Love the page design and WOW a 20th Anniversary Mac. Say what you will, but that thing is Gorgeous!
I provided tech support for the PCs for years, but our first computer for home use was the Mac, because I did not want to be tearing it apart and bleeding over the internal components and also pay ridiculous training fees for every application I wanted to use on it. Back then, once you learned one program on the Mac, you pretty much knew how to use any other that was added to it due to look-and-feel. At work, I was not allowed to get a 3.5 floppy drive added to my machine, so I spent the $10K for a color printer and scanner and Mac system and did nearly all my engineering design work from home thereafter. We had to give network presentations with overhead transparencies for peer reviews. Mine were in color. Everyone wanted to know how I did it – but the Mac was still considered a toy in government circles. It was my productivity machine.
My first Mac was the Mac 128k. I was fanatically drawn to it without any idea that it in the future would take over and define what I did (and still do) for a living – photography.
In 1984 Apple granted many Mac 128k to my university Carnegie Mellon. At GSIA, Graduate School of Industrial Administration, we had two labs full of Macs and printers.
We used them to prepare our Papers. In 1985, the labs across campus were upgraded to Mac 512k and laser printers.
We felt so much ahead compared to others students from nearby University of Pittsburgh !!!!
an Apple a day
Apple you little beauty
You changed my life
I ditched the Windows PC
And bought your little cutie
A proper operating system
Not crashing all the time
Chance to hone my skills
Learned how to design
I’ve had a 128K machine
Still got my old SE30
Dumped my PC in the skip
It was so ugly and dirty
Performa 5320CD
then a G4 (Mirror Doors)
I run an old G5 right now
Yes I’m truly yours
I’ve iPhones 2, 3, 4 and 5
iMac, iBook and iPad
An Android or a Surface?
I’d have to be quite mad
Can’t always buy the latest
Kit that you you produce
But stuff that’s secondhand
Is put to working use
Bang in more memory
Keep it clean an’ cool
Cranks through stuff
Though it’s old school
Apple based since ’85
There is no better gear
Killing off the MacPro
Is thus my biggest fear.
©2015 Tez Watson