References:

Module Two Analysis:
Apple Macintosh & the GUI.

Module 2 on
T171 website

Apple Home page.

The Apple Museum

"Computer History" at
About.com

© Stephanie Bell
2000 - PI: T4666584

Brief description:
The Apple Macintosh was the first commercialised desktop PC with a Graphical User Interface. It was first released in 1984 for $2,495. The development team, led by Steve Jobs worked long hours and the work even caused nervous breakdowns and marriage break-ups.

Image downloaded from
The Apple Museum

At the time, the Lisa was being developed at Apple which was expensive to buy at $10,000 a time. The 'Mac' was made like the Lisa in that it had a GUI (Graphical User Interface) but without the frills. The GUI was a desktop metaphor in that it had for example, files and folders which were not real ones but metaphors of these on a 'desktop' which was the computer's interface. This was to ensure ease of use by it's operators.
Steve Jobs - who continued developing the Macintosh after Jef Raskin left - was (and still is) known for his eye for beauty and wanted to portray this with the Macintosh. Every component of the Mac (inside or out) had to be beautiful.

 
 Image downloaded from
 View Images.com

Steve Jobs today presenting the new 'iBook' which shows that he still has an eye for beauty.

Effect it had on the PC Industry:
The Macintosh's killer application (main selling point) was 'Page Maker', a desktop publishing program. Jobs needed something to show off his computer's graphical capabilities and this program was most certainly going to do it. To this day, the vast majority of desk top publishing companies use Macintoshes rather than IBM compatible PCs. Although sales of the Mac never overtook the IBM compatible PC because it didn't have an 'open industry standard' which allowed 'clones' to be made of it. Also, Macintoshes were more expensive than IBM PCs and their clones. Clones were computers made exactly like IBM computers and both could use the same software. Large companies were more interested in the seriousness of the IBM PC than the Apple Macintosh which they thought looked too much like a toy. But Steve Jobs' vision was what made a desktop computer what it is  today, a popular, easy to use machine.

Similarities/differences with the story of the Internet:
There are similarities between this story and the development of the World Wide Web.
The Internet could not ever be as successful as it is today without it's own GUI software like e-mail programs and browsers (which enable us to view webpages). Tim Berners-Lee's invention: the WWW made computers more popular in homes and offices. The release of the first successful browser, which was Netscape had a similar impact to the release of the Macintosh in that it had a user-friendly interface with graphics and it was not expensive (free to download).
The Apple Macintosh was the first GUI computer which was easy to use as well as being inexpensive.
Both the Mac and the Internet needed killer applications to be successful as a commercial product which was easy to use in the home and in offices.