From Macintosh to losing the plot
How the Mac grabbed victory from an expensive defeat and changed computing forever
The Mac was never intended to be Apple’s star: that was the Lisa, Apple’s first computer with a graphical interface. While impressive, the Lisa was also unreliable and incredibly expensive: when it launched in 1983 it cost $9,995. An IBM PC was around $1,500.
While the Lisa was busy bombing, Jef Raskin’s skunkworks project was working on something much less expensive and, as it would turn out, much more important.
ClassicMac: Macintosh128K
The very first Apple Macintosh, launched in 1984, was a little underpowered – the Macintosh 512K addressed that shortly afterwards – but the 0G Mac delivered on the Lisa’s promises for considerably less cash. It was simple to set up and use, came with the wonderful MacPaint and would soon invent desktop publishing too.
Raskin, Burrell Smith and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak were working on a more modest Apple computer without a hard disk, multitasking or as much memory. The team was joined by Steve Jobs, who effectively took it over when Wozniak was recovering from a plane crash. Their project, the Macintosh, was an instant hit.