Apple Macintosh

The Macintosh, or Mac for short, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured and marketed by Apple Computer, Inc.

Effects on the industry

From its inception, the Macintosh has introduced or popularized a number of innovations adopted later by other PCs and operating systems.

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Innovations introduced or popularized — at least in the field of personal computers — by the original 128k Macintosh:

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• A graphical user interface (GUI) consisting of icons, a desktop, etc. (a metaphor often called the WIMP model, for Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer)
• The use of a mouse or other pointing device in personal computing
• The "double click" and "click-and-drag" behaviors to perform actions with a pointing device
• WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") text and graphics editing
• Long file names permitting whitespace and not requiring a file extension
• The 3.5" hard-shelled floppy disk as a standard feature
• RF-quality audio as a standard feature, including a built-in RF-quality speaker
• Aesthetic and ergonomic industrial "All in One" design that reduced clutter
• Separation of a program's code from its resources to allow localization, etc.
• Networking built-in

Innovations introduced or popularized—at least in the field of personal computers—by later Macintosh products:

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• The PostScript laser printer (LaserWriter, 1985)
• Desktop publishing
• User programmability (first through HyperCard, then through AppleScript, and now through Automator)
• The SCSI interface (Mac Plus, 1986)
• A single desktop environment that can span multiple monitors
• Audio input/output as a standard feature (Mac IIsi & Mac LC, 1990)
• First laptop with keyboard behind a palmrest (PowerBook 100, 140 and 170 1991)
• First laptop with built-in pointing device (PowerBook 100 series, 1991), a trackball (although the Macintosh Portable, released in 1989, also had a trackball, it was, at 16.8 pounds, not considered a laptop by later standards)
• A CD-ROM drive as a standard feature (IIvx, 1992)
• First notebook computer with dock/port replicator (PowerBook Duo, 1992)
• First true touchpad as a pointing device on a notebook (PowerBook 500, 1994)
• First notebook with built-in Ethernet support (PowerBook 500, 1994)
• First notebook with built-in CD-quality stereo sound, both input and output (PowerBook 500, 1994)
• Flat-panel displays as a standard feature on a desktop (Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, 1997)
• The abandonment of the floppy disk (original iMac, 1998)
• The first notable coloration of computer hardware, in contrast to the ubiquitous beige, gray or black shades that computers had used (including previous Macs), (original iMac, 1998)
• The first commercially available computer to rely primarily on USB for peripheral connection (original iMac, 1998)
• FireWire, also known as IEEE 1394 serial bus, an Apple-developed standard also promoted by Sony under the name i.LINK (Blue and White G3, 1999)
• IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g wireless networking, branded AirPort and AirPort Extreme by Apple, also monikered as WiFi, (original iBook, 1999, PowerBook G4, 2003, respectively)
• The first affordable DVD-R drive ("SuperDrive", Power Mac G4, 2001)
• First full-size notebook computer with widescreen display (PowerBook G4, 2001)
• First notebook computer with a 17-inch display (PowerBook G4, 2003)
• First notebook computer to have a keyboard with automatically-adjusted fiber-optic backlight (PowerBook G4, 2003)
• First wireless base station to have audio delivered to a stereo system or entertainment center using Wi-Fi (AirPort Express, June 2004)
• First 30-inch high-definition computer display (June 2004)
• First easily affordable 64 bit based personal computer (Power Mac G5 and iMac G5 using the IBM PowerPC 970 processor)
• First notebook computer to provide the dual-link DVI required to run the 30" display (PowerBook G4, 2005)
• First operating system to use hardware acceleration (OpenGL) for the graphical user interface, (Quartz-Extreme) (Mac OS 10.3 (Panther), 2003)