New York: From the start, Apple's Macintosh shattered conventional notions of what a computer should be.
In a 1984 Super Bowl commercial that is still considered one of the best ads ever, an athlete tries to save humanity from conformity. The 60-second ad, which aired 30 years ago this week, alluded to Big Brother from George Orwell's "1984" and was seen as a dig at Apple's leading rival at the time, IBM Corp. The Mac, the ad implied, would save people from a computing future dominated by IBM.
Apple's Macs never succeeded in toppling IBM's PCs, which live on through clones made by countless other manufacturers. But Macs did make a lasting impact. By 1995, Windows PCs came to look much like Macs.
The Mac's user-friendly approach to computing is now a fundamental part of all consumer electronics. The Mac was the first successful computer to incorporate a graphical user interface and a mouse, rather than require people to type in commands.
The first Mac had a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive at a time when a 5.25-inch drive was the standard. The Mac used the smaller drive for practical reasons; the larger floppies weren't reliable. But it paved the way for computers to get even smaller.
Over the next three decades, Apple Inc. would release several other notable Macs:
