Following the famous "1984" television commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, Apple began selling the Macintosh 128K on January 24, with wide retail availability following immediately after. Priced at $2,495, it introduced ordinary consumers to a graphical user interface and mouse-driven navigation, concepts previously confined to expensive research systems, reshaping the trajectory of personal computing.
Steve Jobs unveiled the Macintosh at Apple's annual shareholders meeting, theatrically pulling the machine from a bag and having it introduce itself in a synthesized voice: "Hello, I am Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag." The room, packed with reporters and shareholders, erupted. The machine's friendly beige case and smiling on-screen icon were designed deliberately to feel approachable, a contrast to the intimidating command-line interfaces of IBM PCs.
Underneath the charm was borrowed genius: Apple's engineers, including Jobs, had toured Xerox PARC's research labs years earlier and seen a prototype computer called the Alto, which pioneered windows, icons, and a mouse. Xerox, focused on copiers, never commercialized it. Apple did, refining the concepts into something a novice could use within minutes.
Early sales were modest and the machine's limited memory and lack of software frustrated some buyers, but the Macintosh's influence proved indelible. Every modern computer interface — Windows, macOS, smartphones — descends conceptually from that beige box's desktop metaphor. Jobs, only 28, had bet the company's future on the idea that computers should feel less like machines and more like appliances.