The Mac Turns Twenty Five

The Apple Macintosh celebrated its 25th birthday on Saturday, making its debut on January 24, 1984.

The Macintosh, which was the first computer by Apple to bear that name, arrived 25 years ago this past weekend. On January 24, 1984, the new machine debuted, with its graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse – two things that have since become standard for computers.

It was preceded by a groundbreaking ad, created by film director Ridley Scott, that aired two days earlier, during the Super Bowl.

The original Mac boasted a nine-inch screen, a whopping128k of RAM, internal floppy drive, and a keyboard and single-button mouse – and cost $2,495. The Macintosh name was evidently coined by computer maker Jef Raskin, who named the machine after his favorite apple, but the spelling had to be changed when it emerged that McIntosh was already used by another company.

According to legend, the BBC says, the first production run of Macs has the signatures of the design team burned into the interior of the computer case.

The Mac actually wasn’t the first Apple machine, and it wasn’t even the first to use a GUI. But it found a mass audience, and essentially launched the age of home computing.