At launch, the Macintosh was far from a hit, far from being affordable and even far from being completely workable. Yet, the that original model did succeed in forever changing computing not just for fans, but for the entire world.
“You’ve just seen some pictures of Macintosh,” said Steve Jobs at the official launch of the Mac. He was on stage at the Flint Center in De Anza College, Cupertino, on Tuesday, January 24, 1984. “Now I’d like to show you Macintosh in person.”
The Mac he unveiled looks little like today’s machines. It had a small, monochrome monitor, blocky graphics and the kind of synthesized voice that you wouldn’t even get in a toy now. Yet crucially, it also looked nothing like the computers of its time.
“Up until that moment,” wrote Steven Levy of when he saw a preview of the Mac, “when one said a computer screen ‘lit up,’ some literary licence was required. By the end of the demonstration, I began to understand that these were things a computer should do. There was a better way.”
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