Computing · 1984

Macintosh

The graphical interface reaches the mass market.

Apple's Macintosh 128K brought windows, icons, a mouse and a menu bar at $2,495. It made the GUI the expected way to use a computer, followed by Windows.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Personal computer 1977
Xerox Alto 1973

Watch

Steve Jobs Introduces the MacintoshComputer History Museum · YouTube

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6

Transistors per microprocessor Latest: 58.2B transistors (2021) Source: Our World in Data