A quick look back at the launch of the Apple Macintosh 40 years ago today

Just a few days ago, Apple started taking pre-orders for its latest hardware product, the Vision Pro mixed reality headset. While that device has certainly received a lot of press and attention already, it didn't come close to the huge launch of what is likely Apple's single most important hardware product in its history.

That happened 40 years ago today, on January 24, 1984, with the release of the Apple Macintosh. It was considered a revolution in PC design at the time, as it integrated a PC with a monitor and Apple's graphical user interface.

The hardware specs of the Macintosh were, of course, well below the PCs, or even smartphones, that are available today. If you are curious, EveryMac has all the hardware details. The first Macintosh included an 8MHz 68000 processor, 128K of RAM that could be updated up to 512K via an authorized Apple reseller, 64K of ROM, a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, and a monochrome 9-inch 512 x 342 monitor. It even had a built-in handle for people to hold and transport the 16.5-pound PC.

The Macintosh was also sold with its own keyboard and a mouse and it included an extra port in the back for any external disk drives you wanted to connect. It also had two additional serial ports in the back to connect other peripherals to the PC like a printer, a modem, and more.

At the time graphical user interfaces for PCs were a rarity (Microsoft's first Windows OS would not go on sale until over a year later in November 1985). The release of Apple's new PC helped to popularize operating systems with GUIs and the use of a mouse to interact with the interface.

Apple first announced the Macintosh a few months before the actual launch. One of the things the company did to promote the PC was to release detailed brochures that showed how people could use the PC for art creation, word processing, gaming, and more. You can check out one of these early brochures over at DigiBarn.

The brochure also had quotes and pictures from other PC executives praising the Macintosh. Yes, it included Microsoft co-founder and then-CEO Bill Gates offering his thumbs up for Apple's PC, and he even wore a shirt with the Macintosh logo.

We cannot talk about the launch of the Macintosh without a mention of the famous "1984" TV commercial. Apple commissioned the 1-minute video to promote the PC to run during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984.

The ad, directed by Alien and Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, showed a dystopian future society similar to the one depicted in George Orwell's novel 1984. A rebellious woman throws a sledgehammer into a giant screen showing a "Big Brother" type of figure. The implication is that the Apple Macintosh will help to not make that kind of oppressive future come to pass.

The commercial helped not only to promote the launch of the Macintosh two days later, but it cemented the Super Bowl as a major TV event for companies to show off their products with big-budget commercials that continue to this day.

One thing that sometimes gets forgotten about the Macintosh launch is its price tag. Like the Vision Pro, it was a very expensive product at $2,495. Taking inflation into account, that means the Macintosh would be priced at over $7,000 in today's dollars.

However, Apple still managed to sell about 70,000 units of the first Macintosh by May 1984. That was a pretty impressive number at the time for a PC with such a high price tag.

Today, Apple still sells PCs that are considered to be more expensive than those that run on Microsoft's Windows. It also still sells all-in-one PCs with the iMac. While it has expanded its product lineup to include the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, and now the Vision Pro, all of those devices would not have been possible without the success of the original Macintosh 40 years ago.

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