The Macintosh (mainly Mac since 1998) is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Inc. (originally as Apple Computer, Inc.) since January 1984.
The original Macintosh is the first successful mass-market all-in-one desktop personal computer to have featured a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse.
Apple sold the Macintosh alongside its popular Apple II, Apple IIGS, Apple III, and Apple Lisa families of computers until the other models were discontinued in the 1990s.
Early Macintosh models were relatively expensive, hindering competitiveness in a market dominated by the much cheaper Commodore 64 for consumers, as well as the IBM Personal Computer and its accompanying clone market for businesses, although they were less expensive than the Xerox Alto and other computers with graphical user interfaces that predated the Mac, except Atari ST.
Macintosh systems were successful in education and desktop publishing, making Apple the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade.
In the early 1990s, Apple introduced the Macintosh LC II and Color Classic which were price-competitive with Wintel machines at the time.
However,
the introduction of Windows 3.1 and Intel's Pentium processor, which
beat the Motorola 68040 used in then-current Macintoshes in most
benchmarks, gradually took market share from Apple, and by the end of
1994 Apple was relegated to third place as Compaq became the top PC
manufacturer.
More information: Mac-History
Even after the transition to the superior PowerPC-based Power Macintosh line in the mid-1990s, the falling prices of commodity PC components, poor inventory management with the Macintosh Performa, and the release of Windows 95 contributed to continued decline of the Macintosh user base.
Upon his return to the company, Steve Jobs led Apple to consolidate the complex line of nearly twenty Macintosh models in mid-1997 (including models made for specific regions) down to four in mid-1999: the Power Macintosh G3, iMac G3, 14.1" PowerBook G3, and 12" iBook.
All four products were critically and commercially successful due to their high performance, competitive prices, and aesthetic designs, and helped return Apple to profitability.
Around this time, Apple phased out the Macintosh name in favor of Mac, a nickname that had been in common use since the development of the first model. After their transition to Intel processors in 2006, the complete lineup was Intel-based. This changed in 2020 when the M1 chip was introduced to the MacBook Air, entry level MacBook Pro and Mac Mini.
Its current lineup includes three desktops, the all-in-one iMac and the desktop Mac Mini and Mac Pro, and two notebooks (the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro). Its Xserve server was discontinued in 2011 in favor of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro.
Apple has developed a series of Macintosh operating systems. The first versions initially had no name but came to be known as the Macintosh System Software in 1988, Mac OS in 1997 with the release of Mac OS 7.6, and retrospectively called Classic Mac OS.
Apple produced a Unix-based operating system for the Macintosh called A/UX from 1988 to 1995, which closely resembled contemporary versions of the Macintosh system software. Apple does not license macOS for use on non-Apple computers, however, System 7 was licensed to various companies through Apple's Macintosh clone program from 1995 to 1997. Only one company, UMAX Technologies, was legally licensed to ship clones running Mac OS 8.
In 2001, Apple released Mac OS X, a modern Unix-based operating system which was later rebranded to simply OS X in 2012, and then macOS in 2016. Its final version was macOS Catalina, as Apple went on to release macOS Big Sur in 2020. The current version is macOS Monterey, first released on June 7, 2021.
Intel-based Macs can run native third party operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, and Microsoft Windows with the aid of Boot Camp or third-party software. The same feat has been accomplished on ARM-based Apple silicon, but it requires an operating system built for it. Volunteer communities have customized Intel-based macOS to run illicitly on non-Apple computers.
The Macintosh family of computers has used a variety of different CPU architectures since its introduction. Originally they used the Motorola 68000 series of microprocessors.
More information: Computer History
In the mid-1990s they transitioned to PowerPC processors, and again in the mid-2000s they began to use 32- and 64-bit Intel x86 processors. Apple began transitioning CPU architectures to its own ARM based Apple silicon for use in the Macintosh beginning in 2020.
The Macintosh project began in 1979 when Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. He wanted to name the computer after his favorite type of apple, the McIntos /ˈmækɪnˌtɒʃ/ MAK-in-tosh), but the spelling was changed to Macintosh for legal reasons as the original was the same spelling as that used by McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., an audio equipment manufacturer.
Steve Jobs requested that McIntosh Laboratory give Apple a release for the newly spelled name, thus allowing Apple to use it. The request was denied, forcing Apple to eventually buy the rights to use this name.
A 1984 Byte magazine article suggested Apple changed the spelling only after early users misspelled McIntosh. However, Jef Raskin had adopted the Macintosh spelling by 1981, when the Macintosh computer was still a single prototype machine in the lab.
More information: History Computer
that the people working on it were musicians,
poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians.
They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.
But if it hadn't been computer science,
these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.
Steve Jobs
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