Apple Macintosh
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Dull Technical Bit
The Apple Macintosh was introduced in 1984 as "the computer for the rest of us" and it brought unprecedented ease of use to what had been, until then, fundamentally character-based desktop computers. The idea of windows, icons, mouse and so on were not new, but their application in a desktop computer was.
Apple rapidly established a loyal user-base, and others began to play catch-up. The zenith for Apple was probably the Quadra 650 models, and the nadir was unquestionably the 7500 and PowerBook 5300 models which were introduced with MacOS 7.5 to try to combat the few additions which Microsoft had made to the Mac feature-base in Windows 95. With Microsoft promising thet Win95 would be "just like a Mac" this period also saw a downturn in the company's financial fortunes, although their capitalization was still in the order of £3 billion.
The release of the iMac in 1998 reversed the company's fortunes again, and marked a return to Macs being unashamedly unique, rather than chasing the clone-makers in the beige box market. It also represented a change in the market dynamic, where the Mac had always been weighed down by its graphical interface and slightly slower processors. The PowerPC G3 chip, and the massive feature bload in Windows 95, 98 and NT, combined to make the Mac a real competitor in speed. The Macintosh G4 is officially a supercomputer, with processing rates in excess of 1 gigaflop.
And now the emotion...
Mac users are pasisonate about their Macs. It's very strange to anyone who routinely uses another type of computer, since the normal experience of computers is frustration, delay and inconsistent behaviour. There is still, for most users, a feeling that if one is not initiated in the arcana, one is doomed to fail.
The Mac, by contrast, somehow gives the impression that it's on your side. It smiles when it starts up; all the applications are laid out much the same; with the same keyboard shortcuts for the same things; the keyboards give you international characters without having to remember strings of code numbers. And Mac users form a community almost immediately they land anywhere. Subscribers to the Mac-Mgrs mailing list will tackle any question, no matter how odd, on the grounds that some day they might need information in return. Or even if they might not, they just do it because they are nice people.
Famous Mac users include Douglas Adams; Chris Bonnington; Bill Gates (yes, really!); Seinfeld and many others.
It's a right-brain thing.
