Apple got the interface part right with the Mac, but it wasn't until Unix was underneath it, with Mac OS X that it became all that I wanted. Examples abound – the graphical user interface, Ethernet, USB, WiFi and Bluetooth, which hasn’t taken off yet, but will.īill Joy, cofounder of Sun and co-creator of Berkeley Unix, which underlies Mac OS X: "What I had always wanted was to combine the reliability and beauty of Unix with the user interface genius that was Xerox. If Apple embraces a technology, the industry usually follows suit down the line. The company’s products are still a couple of years ahead of the rest of the industry, and in many ways set the standards that all the others adopt. Twenty years ago, the Mac pointed the way forward for the PC industry, and Apple continues to lead to this day. They had Microsoft DOS, and DOS was lines you had to type… And the funny thing is, when they switched over – Windows 95, Windows 98 – now they've got a Macintosh." "There was a time when Windows wasn't Windows. "It's real easy to see that every computer in the world's a Macintosh," said Steve Wozniak, Apple's co-founder, in an interview with the Baltimore Sun. Windows, after all, is the sincerest compliment Microsoft has paid to Apple. Although Apple is now a relative minnow in the PC industry, it is fair to say that every personal computer these days is essentially a Macintosh clone, even if it runs Microsoft's Windows. (The Mac took off several years later, when married to a laser printer and desktop publishing software).īut 20 years on, it's obvious the machine has had the most profound impact. It was widely dismissed as childlike and trivial: a toy. When it debuted, the Mac impressed some, but many were unmoved.
(The Mac's 1984 Super Bowl ad aired only once but became one of the most famous in advertising history). Not only was the technology a good 10 years before its time – Windows 95 debuted a decade later – but the launch of the Mac was also an early taste of Apple's special magical formula: a unique ability to blend cutting-edge technology with great design and memorable marketing.
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