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“The Mac was reimagining what a computer could be.”
“You could tell there was a vision behind it.”
On 28th of January 1984, Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh 128k. After thirty years, the Macintosh is still here, with different shapes and designs, but with the same idea that built the first version. What didn’t change in the last thirty years is the way Apple is selling the Macintosh. Steve jobs knew what people wanted and that’s why he was introducing the Mac as the leader of innovation and a tool for those who think different.
What the Mac has brought to the world is another way to look at computers. Apple was the first company to bring computers in people’s houses and the only way to do that was to make the devices beautiful. What really matters is the design and shape, not how the transistors work.
These last thirty years have been full of history and stories, from the time Apple fired its founder to the time Jobs returned to Apple and built one of the most valuable companies in the world. As the company says in the video they released to celebrate the Mac, these were 30 years of innovation. It’s true, because they were one of the first pioneers to work on something like this and there wasn’t much to copy.
Even though, there have been dark sides in the last thirty years. Starting from Apple stealing the mouse and the graphical interface from Xerox; but that’s how most of the big tech corporations behave today.
When Jobs produced this ad for the Super Bowl, his enemy was IBM and he was trying to overwhelm a corporation that was founded in 1911. Nowadays, after years, the Mac doesn’t have any competition that can be at its level, there is no one. The only competition that Apple has is the price of the product they release.
People buy Apple’s products because they are beautiful and efficient, not because of the hardware or the internal components. If there is someone who doesn’t buy the Mac, it’s mostly because Apple doesn’t sell its devices at a cheap price. If they try to reduce this barrier, they will massively expand their user base. The last desktop version can be priced up to $20k, with all the extra hardware components.
By looking at how the Mac has changed in the last years, we can understand how the company has changed. The first versions seemed to have a vision and an appealing design, thanks to Steve Jobs. After its departure, they lost momentum and Apple was going to fail, but as soon as Jobs was back at Apple and met Jonathan Ive, everything changed.
In the last years, the Mac has found out its own ecosystem with a constant design that makes it beautiful. After years of experimenting new designs, the only challenge that Apple has to face now is the hardware. The product needs to become lighter and faster, because beauty is already on the table waiting.
