When the Apple Macintosh was introduced 40 years ago, it wasn’t the first PC on the market. It wasn’t initially a box office hit, but it is still considered a milestone in the history of technology.
It was a historic moment in California’s Silicon Valley. On January 24, 1984, a new type of computer announced itself on stage at the Flint Center in Cupertino: “Hello, I’m Macintosh,” said a robotic voice. The real sensation was not the synthetic voice of the first Apple Macintosh, but rather its user interface.
“Using the Apple Macintosh was revolutionary for users,” says Michael Mikolajcza, curator at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (HNF) and an expert on the history of personal computers. “Using a mouse to operate the cursor or pointer, moving menu windows and clicking on menu bars – a computer that could be operated intuitively has never existed before.”
“The Mother of All Demos”
Apple didn’t invent the mouse or the graphical user interface. Douglas C. Engelbart from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) achieved this at the end of the 1960s. However, after a spectacular demonstration in San Francisco, which went down in history as “The Mother of All Demos”, his invention disappeared into a drawer for around ten years.
It is thanks to Apple founder Steve Jobs and his team that the computer mouse and the graphical user interface were finally discovered for a mass audience. In the meantime, Engelbart’s invention had ended up at the Californian research laboratory Xerox PARC. There, a mouse was connected to the Alto computer, with which one could execute commands on the computer, mark texts and open files. However, only a few of the computers were sold because it cost over 32,000 US dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that’s the equivalent of more than 100,000 euros today.
Apple bought the right to visit PARC in 1979 with a stock deal that was advantageous for Xerox. Jobs brought a whole team with him who questioned Xerox researchers like Adele Goldberg and Larry Tesler. Tesler was fascinated: “After an hour, they understood the technology of our demos and what they meant better than any Xerox executive after all the years we had shown them to them.”
After visiting Xerox PARC, Apple engineers managed to combine the mouse and graphical user interface in a significantly cheaper computer. The rest is history. It wasn’t Xerox that built the first computer with a mouse for the masses, it was Apple.
The hoped-for success did not materialize
However, after a rapid start, the first Apple Macintosh did not prove to be the sales giant that had been hoped for. In the dispute over the causes of the poor sales, Jobs was forced out of the company by then Apple CEO John Sculley. In the following years, the Mac, together with the first laser printers, founded the age of desktop publishing. This was a lucrative niche, after all. However, the Mac continued to fall behind in terms of market share. Sculley was fired in October 1993 and replaced by German Michael Spindler.
The situation for Apple worsened dramatically after Microsoft launched Windows 95 in August 1995, which was largely based on the Mac interface. In conjunction with inexpensive hardware from PC manufacturers such as Compaq and Dell, Windows won. Macintosh sales began to collapse and Spindler couldn’t find a way to save the Mac. In February 1996, “The Diesel” was replaced by restructuring expert Gil Amelio.
The Rescue: Return of Steve Jobs
Amelio’s biggest contribution to saving Apple was turning back to Steve Jobs. The Apple co-founder, who was fired in 1985, used the time to have the next generation of computers developed in his new company NeXT. The hardware business was slow, but the software turned out to be a gem. In February 1997, Apple acquired NeXT for $429 million – largely for the operating system – and brought Jobs back as a consultant. Seven months later, Steve Jobs was back in the company’s executive chair as CEO.
Jobs now had to hurry up to avert bankruptcy at Apple. First, he secured a $150 million loan from Microsoft and concluded a truce with the arch-rival. With the Microsoft money and the ideas of British designer Jony Ive, Apple was now able to make a fresh start in the development of the Mac. “With the market launch of the iMac in 1998, Apple got back on the road to success,” says HNF curator Mikolajcza. “Again, Apple surprised the computer world with a newly designed product. Flashy, available in different colors and as an all-in-one computer, the iMac became a commercial success.”
A lot has also changed behind the scenes. Under Sculley, Apple often had unsaleable Mac models piling up in warehouses, while other models were sold out and couldn’t be delivered. In March 1998, Steve Jobs poached logistics expert Tim Cook from Compaq. Cook quickly closed Apple’s inefficient factories in the United States and moved Mac production to Asia.
Top and flop products from Apple
The laptop models in particular contributed to the renaissance of the Macintosh. The ultra-light MacBook Air, which was introduced in 2008, proved to be a sales hit. But Apple also had a few flops under Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. Because of its unusual design, the Power Mac G4 Cube found a place in the design collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but did not convince Apple’s customers because of its high price. Apple also made a spectacular mistake with the cylindrical Mac Pro (2013), which was hardly expandable and therefore found little acceptance.
A technological shift is currently driving sales of Macs. In 2020, Apple introduced its first Macintosh computers with the new editions of the MacBook Air, the Mac mini and the MacBook Pro, which no longer run with chips from Intel, but with “Apple Silicon”. These are systems that were originally designed by Apple for the iPhone itself and are particularly energy-efficient.
According to analyst Neil Cybart from Above Avalon, Apple now faces a special challenge: “Some of the new Macs are more powerful than what 95 percent of Apple users need for their workflows.”