Apple Macintosh celebrates 25 Years

Twenty-five years ago, in SuperBowl weekend, Apple unleashed the Macintosh, with a TV advertisement that has gone down in history as a classic. Based on the George Orwell novel 1984- a fitting choice as that was the launch year- it featured an athlete runner carrying an axe amidst a sea of zombie-like citizens watching a screen with ‘big brother’ on it giving orders. The athlete- presumably being a renegade Mac owner- throws the axe at the screen to destroy the rule of big brother- presumably IBM and compatibles; and the rest is history.

The Mac was the first personal computer to capture the imagination of the masses, to introduce the mouse and incorporate a graphical user interface, relying on images instead of text. It lived up to Apple’s mantra of “Think Different”. Starting with a small, all-in-one box with a monochrome screen, the Mac grew to dominate the graphic design and desktop publishing markets, and become the pick of the cool and trendy.

I had the pleasure of using a Mac as a teenager back in 1991, to produce the page that houses this column in The Star!

It was quite a hit at the time in Jordan, after Ideal Systems brought the Mac to town in 1987, and they did well to put an Apple Computer in hundreds of Jordanian businesses and homes.

Still, the Mac remained somewhat out of the mainstream, till bigger models launched like the Mac II, Mac Performa, Mac Quadra and then the Mac PowerPC range. It managed to grab around 15 percent of the US market. But market share dwindled as PC’s got Windows, and dropped in price eating up the Mac’s share throughout the Nineties till the Mac hit a rock bottom of around 2-3 percent of computers sold.

Then, in the new millennium, a transformation at Apple was led by Steve Jobs who went ‘i’ on everything. Starting with the iMac, then the iPod and iPhone.

Apple’s new clout propelled the iMac range to where it is today, stunningly back to a double digit share of the market, over 10 percent.

The Mac has extreme fans. They blow away their annual vacation savings to visit Macworld conferences, travel to the opening of every Apple store in their country, or shave Apple logos into their heads, have Apple tattoos. Here in the Middle East, we have many Mac fans too.

An interesting example is Emirates Mac (emiratesmac.com), run by Magnus Nystedt, which is a vibrant community that has now spawned a dedicated Arabic/English Apple products magazine called Shufflegazine. Check it out!

Happy birthday to the Mac and all it’s lovers. Stay creative and passionate!

zanasser@gmail.com