While many know Apple as “iPhone and iPad,” Apple was not started as a company selling portable electronics. Apple’s first invention was the Macintosh, and while many people do not know, the Macintosh was a great invention which made computer use simple and easy. Easy enough, that all it took was a click of a button.  Keep in mind that during this time, much technological advancement did not exist, such as the mouse, so when it came out, people were amazed at all a mouse can do. The Macintosh fulfilled many psychographic and demographic interests of the common people.
The IBM PC was first released in 1981 and was very bulky and heavy. Three years later came the Macintosh, built one year after the Lisa, which was a computer with a separate mouse and a keyboard. The two behind this creation were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The Macintosh was lightweight and very easy to use. It was also very cheap for a computer at the time, costing $2,495. There were over 1,500 dealers of the Macintosh of the time, compared to today’s 444 Apple stores and thousands of certified retailers.
The innovations of the Macintosh were the mouse, windows icons, point and click icons, copy, paste, drop down menus, and a high definition black and white nine inch screen, which were things either never heard of or magnificent for the time being. Inside of the computer, there was a 32-bit microprocessor, 68,000 processor, 192 kilobytes of memory, 128 kilobytes of RAM, and was now built with a slot for a 3.5” floppy disk, which today’s generation barely knows exists, which held about 400,000 times less than what a four gigabyte flash drive holds today. It also had two built-in stereo ports. One main innovation was the voice recognition and sound and speech. Now that was the beginning of what started it all.
Some things you could add to the computer were a numeric keypad, printer, and a carrying case. It had a Graphical User Interface. Some of the programs you could use while inside of the Macintosh were animation of objects, moving pictures, desktop publishing, record keeping, work processing, spreadsheets, and media, the changing of font styles on a document, and an on-screen calculator. If one was to buy a computer today, all of these features listed would be outdated and there would be much more powerful components for a price less than the original Macintosh.
The Macintosh was a computer for the common person. The Macintosh became immediately successful because it sold 50,000 units in seventy-four days. The two primary markets were the 25 million knowledge workers and the 11 million college workers. Only a fraction of the 235 million people knew how to use a computer, but now with the Macintosh it was as easy as a click of the mouse. Today, almost the entire world can use a computer, from little children to grandparents.
Although the Macintosh was a great accomplishment, it was just the beginning of a legacy and as of today continues to get more technologically advanced day by day. These devices are made easier to use than they already are, which is good and bad because we put in less work to use it. These advancements are each individual marvels to my eyes and will continue to amaze me as years pass.