On January 24th, Apple’s venerable, indomitable Macintosh, the computer on which basically every other personal computer today is based, turns forty years old. As the Mac enters its fifth decade, Apple says it will continue to evolve.
My own relationship with the computer dates back to its beginnings, when I got a prelaunch peek some weeks before its January 1984 launch. I even wrote a book about the Mac—Insanely Great—in which I described it as “the computer that changed everything.” Unlike every other nonfiction subtitle, the hyperbole was justified. The Mac introduced the way all computers would one day work, and the break from controlling a machine with typed commands ushered us into an era that extends to our mobile interactions. It also heralded a focus on design that transformed our devices.
That legacy has been long-lasting. For the first half of its existence, the Mac occupied only a slice of the market, even as it inspired so many rivals; now it’s a substantial chunk of PC sales.
Even within the Apple juggernaut, $30 billion isn’t chicken feed! What’s more, when people think of PCs these days, many will envision a Macintosh. More often than not, the open laptops populating coffee shops and tech company workstations beam out glowing Apples from their covers… Apple’s creation remains the pinnacle of PC-dom. “It’s not a story of nostalgia, or history passing us by,” says Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in a rare on-the-record interview with five Apple executives involved in its Macintosh operation. “The fact we did this for 40 years is unbelievable.”
[I]n an industry where the standard is ephemeral, the machine that Steve Jobs introduced might be immortal.
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the Vision Pro/Macintosh synergy will be unstoppable. Mac virtual display is next level.
watch @ 7:20 and tell me if you think the vision pro will help increase Mac adoption.
Everyone who is buying a Vision Pro already has a Mac and at least a dozen other Apple products, including other Macs. It’s the MAC that will increase Vision Pro adoption. It didn’t do that for iPhone or iPad because the synergy it has now with those devices didn’t exist at their launch.
Just give me a 32″ iMac retina, please!
Personally, have no use for fake reality heavy face Vision Pro over $3000. To each, his own.
Long ago the Mac RULED and jumpstarted Apple greatness in the 1984. No other Apple product, including the iPhone, is CAPABLE of world class computer work to this day.
My continuing concern with Macs is the higher price and failure NOT delivering best in world class performance matching or exceeding Intel and AMD chips…
If that means Vision Pro and fundamentally changing basic functionally in dot releases of their software for no apparent reason whatsoever – I’ll pass. Tim Cook has wrecked this company, and at this point, I honestly don’t think there’s anyone to take his place and do better. Throw your stickers in the trash, fight back for the Mac is over and done. It is impossible to distinguish between companies in Silicon Vally in 2024. They are all pretty much varying degrees of the worst, a paradigm Microsoft created and Google nursed along. Makes me wish Linux HAD become a viable alternative, which it still isn’t. If there is a renaissance in SV, it will come from lighting the status quo on fire, and that’s just kinda it. I don’t care how much money people are making. It used to be about empowerment, not disenfranchisement for the privileged few.
Sadly Jamie, I agree Tim Cook has RUINED Apple innovation and turned the company into an iPhone profit machine. We need another visionary leader like Scott Forstall or Elon Musk to define the creative computing future…
They really screwed over Scott F. A damned shame; I’ll bet that they rushed and pressured him to get the Maps app out, and that he resisted but had to follow (Tim’s?) orders. Thus, the rest of the lesser-gifted staff secured their comfort jobs and got rid of Scott, the big threat to the nascent bureaucrat group in Apple.
So they forestalled Scott? 🙁