The Macintosh was unveiled in January 1984 by Steve Jobs; a small self-contained system with a graphical user interface which was a contrast to the IBM Personal Computer that ran PC-DOS with a text interface (I was one of those who came from that CP/M and DOS based world of PC’s and later used TOPS-20, Unix (SunOS and Ultrix), and DEC VMS operating system environments in college, and then early OS/2 before I even touched a Mac in the early 90’s.
The Mac turned out to be key for the graphics/multimedia service bureau business I started for obvious reasons (WYSIWYG that made tasks like color scanning, graphics editing, layouts, and early CD premastering, much easier to do).
David Pogue moderated an event at the Computer History Museum that includes a bunch of the people who were instrumental in the design, hardware, software, and marketing like Bill Atkinson, Steve Capps, Andy Cunningham, Andy Hertzfeld, Bruce Horn, Susan Kare, Dan’l Lewin, and Mike Murray. Key Apple insiders like Chris Espinosa, Guy Kawasaki, and Steven Levy also provided additional insight.
