Paris (awp/afp) – The first Macintosh, which came onto the market on January 24, 1984, celebrated its 40th anniversary. A look back in numbers at this technological antique from Apple that was ahead of its time and paved the way to modern computers.
A compact object with a built-in screen and floppy drive, the Macintosh democratized computing thanks to an interface that made it possible to simply click on icons with the mouse, a device from the 1960s that is widely used on the Mac. Previously, only those in the know had access to computers that responded to complicated command lines.
1984
The launch of the first Macintosh was met with great fanfare.
On January 22, 1984, two days before the release, he took part in one of the most watched events, the Super Bowl, the final of the American football championship, which, according to the Nielsen group, which specializes in audience measurement, scored 77.6 that year was watched by millions of viewers.
The 60-second commercial, titled “1984,” directed by Ridley Scott (“Alien,” “Blade Runner”), is inspired by the world of George Orwell's novel “1984,” with a screen depicting “Big Brother.” represents – and its competitor IBM – trumps with a sports car in Apple colors.
According to the book “Apple Confidential 2.0,” the Apple brand paid $800,000 ($2.5 million today) at the urging of its co-founder Steve Jobs to secure a spot in the Super Bowl, in addition to the hundreds of thousands who paid for it the production of the advertising was spent. by Owen Linzmayer.
$2495
The first Macintosh was a luxury product. It was marketed in the United States on January 24, 1984 at a price of $2,495, equivalent to almost $7,400 (6,415 Swiss francs) today. The price will quickly drop to $2,195.
The Mac is cheaper than its main competitor, the IBM PC, which cost $3,270 at the time ($10,000 today), but it is twice as expensive as the Apple II, then an entry-level bestseller for the brand.
Today, original Macs are being auctioned for up to 2,000 euros. Even more popular with collectors are the October 1983 internal Macintosh presentation documents, which sold for more than $12,000 at RR Auction in 2022.
370,000 sales
According to the New York Times in April 1984, Apple hoped to sell 250,000 Macintosh devices in 1984. Keeping the official numbers secret, the brand ultimately sold 372,000 in its first year, plus a million Apple IIs, according to tech history blogger Jeremy Reimer.
These figures are honorable at a time when computing was not yet democratized, they are 15 times more modest than today's Apple computer sales.
According to Gartner and IDC, the Cupertino (California) company sold almost 22 million of them (MacBook, iMac, etc.) in 2023. With 8 to 9% of global sales, Apple is in fourth place behind Lenovo, HP and Dell.
9 inches
The screen of the first Mac is a far cry from today's giant screens and has a diagonal of 9 inches or about 23 cm.
In comparison, the latest iMacs offer a 23.5-inch (60 cm) screen, with some portable MacBooks reaching 16 inches (41 cm).
With a height of 34.5 cm, a width of 24.4 cm and a depth of 27.7 cm, the first Mac can be taken anywhere, even on a plane, despite its 7.5 kg, according to an AFP -Report from January 1984.
128KB
The first Mac has 128 KB of RAM, or about 131,000 bytes. For example, 128 KB is the size of a low-definition photo or a very small Excel file.
There are few computers today with less than 8GB (8.6 billion bytes) of RAM, and Apple's most powerful computer, the Mac Pro, has up to 1.6 million times more RAM (192GB) than its predecessor.
RAM allows the computer to temporarily store the data needed to complete a task. The higher it is, the more complex and simultaneous tasks the computer can perform.
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