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Happy birthday, Mac!
The Macintosh turns 40 today. Here's how it's changed over the years.
Leander Kahney
January 24, 2024
My dear old dad, who passed a few years ago, was a huge fan of Apple.
He worked as a professor at the Open University in the U.K., and as such, had access to one of the first Macs imported into the country.
The OU had a computer lab with an original Macintosh 128K.
My dad used to sneak my brothers and me into the lab at night, when no one was around, and we’d spend hours playing with MacPaint and Lode Runner.
We’d never seen anything like it. At school, we were taught BASIC on horrible early personal computers like the BBC Micro and Apple II. We had no aptitude for programming and found these machines’ prompt-based interfaces and programs boring and irrelevant.
But the Mac was different — really different. It was immediately obvious and intuitive how it worked. It was joyful.
For arty kids like me and my brothers, who were more interested in drawing than programming, the Mac was immediately accessible and useful. We soon graduated to writing and word processing (even if the darn thing often crashed before you had a chance to save hours of work).
Looking at how his kids took to the computer, my dad saw the Mac’s revolutionary potential. He often talked excitedly about how Apple was democratizing computing, and how it’d take over the world.
He was right, of course, even if it was Microsoft’s rip-off OS, Windows, that introduced most people to point-and-click interfaces.
But the Mac set the standard; it pointed the way.
As Tim Cook notes today on the Mac’s 40th anniversary (see the tweet below), the Mac is still around and as strong as ever. In fact, today’s lineup of machines is probably the best Apple has ever made. Happy birthday, Macintosh!
Here’s how the Mac evolved over the years.
Also in today’s newsletter:
Shocker! Apple wants to retain control over sideloading iPhone apps, even in the face of a looming EU mandate.
The fabulous 15-inch MacBook Air — a great computer for most people — is on sale, and includes AppleCare+.
Woot! has some good deals on refurbished Apple Watch Series 8, which come with a standard one-year warranty. Amazon also has a great 46% off deal on a GPS and cellular model. They all include the Blood Oxygen app that Apple was forced to remove from Series 9.
This nice setup uses not one but two MacBooks as extra displays.
— Leander Kahney, EIC.
A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team
A message from the Cult of Mac Deals team
Tweetz o’ the day
Mac changed everything when it was introduced 40 years ago, and through the years it has done so again and again and again. Today’s Mac lineup is the best in the history of the personal computer, and it’s built on decades of revolutionary innovation. Happy birthday Mac!
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook)
Jan 24, 2024
Would you have liked the black option for Apple Vision Pro?
— Majin Bu (@MajinBuOfficial)
Jan 21, 2024
One more thing ...
When people look at an iMac, they think the design is really great, but most people don't understand it's not skin deep. There's a reason why, after two years, people haven't been able to copy the iMac. It's not just surface. The reason the iMac doesn't have a fan is engineering. It took a ton of engineering and that's true for the Cube and everything else.
Today’s poll
When did you get your first Mac? |
Results from yesterday’s poll: Should 'Oppenheimer' or 'Killers of the Flower Moon' get Best Picture?
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