Macintosh
{{dablink|For other uses, see
Macintosh (disambiguation) and
Mac.}}
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- Macintosh 128k transparency.png -
The Macintosh 128K, the first Macintosh, was the first commercially successful personal computer to use images, rather than text, to communicate.
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- imac 2007.png -
The late-2007 revision of the iMac.
Macintosh, commonly nicknamed
Mac is a
brand name which covers several lines of
personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by
Apple Inc. The
Macintosh 128K was released on
January 24 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a
mouse and a
graphical user interface (GUI) rather than a
command line interface. Through the second half of the 1980s, the company built market share only to see it dissipate in the 1990s as the personal computer market shifted towards
IBM PC Compatible machines running
MS-DOS and
Microsoft Windows. Apple consolidated multiple consumer-level desktop models into the 1998
iMac all-in-one, which sold extremely well and saw the Macintosh brand revitalized. Current Mac systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. They are: the aforementioned (though upgraded) iMac and the entry-level
Mac mini desktop models, the
workstation-level
Mac Pro tower, the
MacBook,
MacBook Air and
MacBook Pro laptops, and the
Xserve server.Production of the Mac is based on a
vertical integration model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its
hardware and creates its own
operating system that is pre-installed on all Macs. This is in contrast to most
IBM compatible PCs, where multiple vendors create hardware intended to run another company's software. Apple exclusively produces Mac hardware, choosing
internal systems,
designs, and prices. Apple does use third party components, however; current Macintosh
CPUs use
Intel's
x86 architecture. Previous models used the
AIM alliance's
PowerPC and early models used
Motorola's
68k. Apple also develops the operating system for Macs, currently
Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard". The modern Mac, like other personal computers, is capable of running alternative operating systems such as
Linux,
FreeBSD, and
Microsoft Windows, the latter of which is considered to be the Mac's biggest competitor.
History
{{seealso|History of Apple}}
1979 to 1984: Development
The Macintosh project started in the late 1970s with
Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. In September 1979, Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype.
Bill Atkinson, a member of Apple's
Lisa team (which was developing a similar but higher-end computer), introduced him to
Burrell Smith, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year. Over the years, Raskin assembled a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh
hardware and
software; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith, the team included
Chris Espinosa,
Joanna Hoffman,
George Crow,
Jerry Manock,
Susan Kare,
Andy Hertzfeld, and
Daniel Kottke.Smith’s first Macintosh board was built to Raskin’s design specifications: it had 64
kilobytes (KB) of
RAM, used the
Motorola 6809E microprocessor, and was capable of supporting a 256×256
pixel black-and-white bitmap display.
Bud Tribble, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisa’s graphical programs on the Macintosh, and asked Smith whether he could incorporate the Lisa’s
Motorola 68000 microprocessor into the Mac while still keeping the production cost down. By December 1980, Smith had succeeded in designing a board that not only used the 68000, but bumped its speed from 5 to 8
megahertz (MHz); this board also had the capacity to support a 384×256 pixel display. Smith’s design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which made production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. The final Mac design was self-contained and had the complete
QuickDraw picture language and interpreter in 64 Kb of
ROM - far than most other computers; it had 128 KB of RAM, in the form of sixteen 64
kilobit (Kb) RAM chips
soldered to the
logicboard. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 KB by means of soldering sixteen chip sockets to accept 256 Kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips. The final product's screen was a 9-inch, 512x342 pixel
monochrome display, exceeding the prototypes.
(1)missing image!
- Apple Macintosh Desktop.png -
The original 1984 Mac OS desktop featured a radically new graphical user interface. Users communicated with the computer not through abstract lines of code but rather using a metaphorical desktop that included items that the user was already familiar with.
The design caught the attention of
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, he began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and the final Macintosh design is said to be closer to Jobs’ ideas than Raskin’s.
(2) After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being developed at
Xerox PARC, Jobs had negotiated a visit to see the
Xerox Alto computer and
Smalltalk development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were partially influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh group's own ideas.
(3) Jobs also commissioned industrial designer
Hartmut Esslinger to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the
"Snow White" design language; although it came too late for the earliest Macs, it was implemented in most other mid- to late-1980s Apple computers.
(4) However, Jobs’ leadership at the Macintosh project was short-lived; after an internal power struggle with new CEO
John Sculley, Jobs angrily resigned from Apple in 1985, went on to found
NeXT, another computer company, and did not return until 1997.
1984: Introduction
The
Macintosh 128k was announced to the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December.
(5) The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million
Ridley Scott television commercial, "
1984".
[BOOK
], Linzmayer
, Owen W.
, Apple Confidential 2.0
, No Starch Press
, 2004
, 113
, www.owenink.com
,
,
, 1-59327-010-0, The commercial most notably aired during the third quarter of
Super Bowl XVIII on
22 January,
1984 and is now considered a "watershed event"
(6) and a "masterpiece."
[WEB,weblink Why 2006 isn't like '1984', 2008-05-10, Leopold, Todd, 3 February 2006, CNN
] 1984 used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white
tank top with a
Picasso-style picture of
Apple’s
Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from "conformity" (
Big Brother).
(7) These images were an
allusion to
George Orwell's noted novel,
Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a
dystopian future ruled by a televised "
Big Brother." For a special post-election edition of
Newsweek in November 1984, Apple spent more than US$2.5 million to buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue.
(8) Apple also ran a “Test Drive a Macintosh” promotion, in which potential buyers with a credit card could take home a Macintosh for 24 hours and return it to a dealer afterwards. While 200,000 people participated, dealers disliked the promotion, the supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many were returned in such a bad shape that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from
US$1,995 to US$2,495 (adjusting for inflation, about $5,000 in 2007).
(9)(10)Two days after the 1984 ad aired, the Macintosh went on sale. It came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface:
MacWrite and
MacPaint. Although the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, it was too radical for some, who labeled it a mere "
toy." Because the machine was entirely designed around the GUI, existing text-mode and
command-driven applications had to be redesigned and the programming code rewritten; this was a challenging undertaking that many
software developers shied away from, and resulted in an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984
Microsoft's
MultiPlan migrated over from
MS-DOS, followed by
Microsoft Word in January 1985.
(11) In 1985,
Lotus Software introduced
Lotus Jazz after the success of
Lotus 1-2-3 for the
IBM PC, although it was largely a flop.
(12) Apple introduced Macintosh Office the same year with the
lemmings ad. Infamous for insulting its own potential customers, it was not successful.
(13)missing image!
- MacII.jpg -
The Macintosh II, one of the first expandable Macintosh models.
Other issues remained, particularly the low processor speed and limited graphics ability, which had hobbled the Mac’s ability to make inroads into the business computing market. Updated Motorola CPUs made a faster machine possible, and in 1987 Apple took advantage of the new Motorola technology and introduced the
Macintosh II, which used a {{nowrap|16 MHz}}
Motorola 68020 processor. The primary improvement in the Macintosh II was Color
QuickDraw in ROM, a color version of the graphics language which was the heart of the machine. Among the many innovations in Color QuickDraw were an ability to handle any display size, any color depth, and multiple monitors.The Macintosh II marked the start of a new direction for the Macintosh, as now, for the first time, it had an open architecture, with several expansion slots, support for color graphics, and a modular break-out design similar to that of the IBM PC and inspired by Apple’s other line, the expandable Apple II series. It had an internal hard drive and a power supply with a fan, which was initially fairly loud.
(14) One third-party developer sold a device to regulate fan speed based on a heat sensor, but it voided the warranty.
(15) Later Macintosh computers had quieter power supplies and hard drives.In September 1986 Apple introduced the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, or
MPW that allowed software developers to create software for Macintosh on Macintosh, rather than cross-developing from a Lisa. In August 1987 Apple unveiled
HyperCard, and introduced
MultiFinder, which added cooperative multitasking to the Macintosh. In the Fall Apple bundled both with every Macintosh.Alongside the Macintosh II, the
Macintosh SE was released, the first
compact Mac with a 20 MB internal hard drive
(16)(17) and one expansion slot. The SE also updated
Jerry Manock and Terry Oyama's original design and shared the Macintosh II's
Snow White design language, as well as the new
Apple Desktop Bus (ADB)
mouse and
keyboard that had first appeared on the
Apple IIGS some months earlier.In 1987, Apple spun off its software business as
Claris. It was given the code and rights to several applications that had been written within Apple, notably MacWrite, MacPaint, and
MacProject. In the late 1980s, Claris released a number of revamped software titles; the result was the “Pro” series, including MacPaint Pro, MacDraw Pro, MacWrite Pro, and FileMaker Pro. To provide a complete office suite, Claris purchased the rights to the
Informix Wingz spreadsheet on the Mac, renaming it
Claris Resolve, and added the new presentation software
Claris Impact. By the early 1990s, Claris applications were shipping with the majority of consumer-level Macintoshes and were extremely popular. In 1991, Claris released
ClarisWorks, which soon became their second best-selling application. When Claris was reincorporated back into Apple in 1998, ClarisWorks was renamed AppleWorks beginning with version 5.0.
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The Macintosh Portable was Apple's first portable Macintosh. It was available from 1989 to 1991 and could run System 6 and System 7.
In 1988, Apple
sued Microsoft and
Hewlett-Packard on the grounds that they infringed Apple’s copyrighted GUI, citing (among other things) the use of rectangular, overlapping, and resizable windows. After four years, the case was decided against Apple, as were later
appeals. Apple’s actions were criticized by some in the software community, including the
Free Software Foundation (FSF), who felt Apple was trying to monopolize on GUIs in general, and boycotted GNU software for the Macintosh platform for seven years.
(19)(20)With the new
Motorola 68030 processor came the
Macintosh IIx in 1988, which had benefited from internal improvements, including an on-board
MMU. It was followed in 1989 by a more compact version with fewer slots (the
Macintosh IIcx) and a version of the Mac SE powered by the {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68030 (the
Macintosh SE/30, breaking the existing naming convention to avoid the name "SEx"). Later that year, the
Macintosh IIci, running at {{nowrap|25 MHz}}, was the first Mac to be “
32-bit clean,” allowing it to natively support more than 8 MB of RAM, unlike its predecessors, which had “32-bit dirty” ROMs (8 of the 32 bits available for addressing were used for OS-level
flags).
System 7 was the first Macintosh operating system to support 32-bit addressing.
(21) Apple also introduced the
Macintosh Portable, a {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68000 machine with an active matrix
flat panel display that was
backlit on some models.
(22) The following year the
Macintosh IIfx, starting at US$9,900, was unveiled. Apart from its fast {{nowrap|40 MHz}}
68030 processor, it had significant internal architectural improvements, including faster memory and two
Apple II-era CPUs dedicated to
I/O processing.
(23)1990 to 1998: Growth and decline
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- Macintosh classic.jpg -
The Macintosh Classic, Apple's early 1990s budget model.
Microsoft Windows 3.0, which began to approach the Macintosh operating system in both performance and feature set, was released in May 1990 and was a usable, less expensive alternative to the Macintosh platform. Apple's response was to introduce a range of relatively inexpensive Macs in October 1990. The
Macintosh Classic, essentially a less expensive version of the Macintosh Plus, sold for US$999,
(24) making it the least expensive Mac until early 2001. The 68020-powered
Macintosh LC, in its distinctive “
pizza box” case, was available for US$1800; it offered color graphics and was accompanied by a new, low-cost 512 × 384 pixel monitor.
(25) The
Macintosh IIsi, essentially a {{nowrap|20 MHz}} IIci with only one expansion slot, cost US$2500.
(26) All three machines sold well,
(27) although Apple’s profit margin was considerably lower than on earlier machines.
(28) and 900,
(29) the first Macs to employ the faster
Motorola 68040 processor. They were joined by improved versions of the previous year’s top sellers, the
Macintosh Classic II(30) and
Macintosh LC II, which used a {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68030 CPU.
(31) Also during this time, the Macintosh began to shed the "Snow White" design language, along with the expensive consulting fees they were paying to
Frogdesign, in favor of bringing the work in-house by establishing the
Apple Industrial Design Group to establish a new fresh look to go with the new operating system.
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The PowerBook 100 (shown here), 140 and 170 introduced a line of professional laptop Macs. They pioneered notebook ergonomics by placing the keyboard behind a palm rest.
In October 1991, the Macintosh Portable was replaced by the first three models in Apple’s enduring
PowerBook range—the
PowerBook 100, a miniaturized Portable; the {{nowrap|16 MHz}} 68030
PowerBook 140; and the {{nowrap|25 MHz}} 68030
PowerBook 170.
(33) They were the first portable computers with the keyboard behind a palm rest, and with a built-in pointing device (a
trackball) in front of the keyboard.
(34) In 1992, Apple started to sell a low-end Mac, the
Performa, through nontraditional dealers. At Apple dealers, a mid-range version of the Quadra series called the
Macintosh Centris was offered, only to be quickly renamed Quadra when buyers became confused by the range of Classics, LCs, IIs, Quadras, Performas, and Centrises.
(35) Apple also unveiled the miniaturized
PowerBook Duo range. It was intended to be docked to a base station for desktop-like functionality in the workplace, and was sold until early 1997. In May 1994, Apple released the second-generation PowerBook models, the
PowerBook 500 series, which introduced the novel
trackpad.Also in 1994, Apple abandoned Motorola CPUs for the
RISC PowerPC architecture developed by the
AIM alliance of Apple Computer, IBM, and Motorola.
(36) The
Power Macintosh line, the first to use the new chips, proved to be highly successful, with over a million PowerPC units sold in nine months.
(37)Despite these technical and commercial successes,
Microsoft and
Intel began to rapidly lower Apple's
market share with the
Windows 95 operating system and
Pentium processors respectively. These significantly enhanced the multimedia capability and performance of
IBM PC compatible computers, and brought Windows still closer to the Mac
GUI. In response, Apple started the
Macintosh clone program, by which third-parties manufactured hardware to run Apple's System 7. This succeeded in increasing the Macintosh's market share somewhat and provided cheaper hardware for consumers, but hurt Apple financially. As a result, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he ordered that the OS that had been previewed as version 7.7 be branded
Mac OS 8. Since Apple had licensed only System 7 to third-parties, this move effectively ended the clone line. The decision caused significant financial losses for companies like Motorola and
Power Computing Corporation, which had invested substantial resources in creating their own Mac-compatible hardware.
(38)1998 to 2005: New beginnings
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- IMac Bondi Blue.jpg -
The original "Bondi Blue" iMac G3, introduced in 1998. One of the first products produced under CEO Steve Jobs since he left the company in the mid eighties, it brought Apple back into profitability.
In 1998, a year after Steve Jobs had returned to the company, Apple introduced an all-in-one Macintosh called the
iMac. Its translucent plastic case, originally
Bondi blue and later many other colors, is considered an
industrial design hallmark of the late 1990s. The iMac did away with most of Apple's standard (and usually proprietary) connections, such as
SCSI and
ADB, in favor of two
USB ports. It also had no internal
floppy disk drive and instead used
compact disks for removable storage.
(39) It proved to be phenomenally successful, with 800,000 units sold in 139 days,
(40) making the company an annual profit of US$309 million—Apple's first profitable year since
Michael Spindler took over as CEO in 1995.
(41) The "blue and white" aesthetic was applied to the
Power Macintosh, and then to a new product: the
iBook. Introduced in July 1999, the iBook was Apple's first consumer-level laptop computer. More than 140,000 pre-orders were placed before it started shipping in September,
(42) and by October it was as much a sales hit as the iMac.
(43) Apple continued to add new products to their lineup, such as the Cube,
(44) the
eMac for the education market and
PowerBook G4 laptop for professionals. The
original iMac used a
G3 processor, but the upgrades to
G4 and then to
G5 chips were accompanied by a new design, dropping the array of colors in favor of white plastic. Current iMacs use aluminum enclosures. On
January 11,
2005, Apple announced the release of the
Mac mini priced at US$499,
(45) the least expensive Mac to date.
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- Leopard Desktop.png -
Mac OS X Mac OS X v10.5|v10.5 "Leopard"
is the latest in the long line of Macintosh operating systems, including numerous functionality and appearance changes.Mac OS continued to evolve up to version 9.2.2, but its dated architecture—though retrofitted a few times (for example, as part of the PowerPC port, a
nanokernel was added and
Mac OS 8.6 was modified to support
Multiprocessing Services 2.0 in
Mac OS 8.6)
(46)—made a replacement necessary. As such, Apple introduced
Mac OS X, a fully overhauled
Unix-based successor to
Mac OS 9, using
Darwin,
XNU, and
Mach as
foundations, and based on
NEXTSTEP. Mac OS X was not released to the public until September 2000, as the
Mac OS X Public Beta, with an
Aqua interface. At US$29.99, it allowed adventurous Mac users to sample Apple’s new operating system and provide feedback for the actual release.
(47) The initial release of Mac OS X,
10.0 (nicknamed Cheetah), was released on
March 24,
2001. Older Mac OS applications could still run under early Mac OS X versions, using an environment called
Classic (though Apple has since removed Classic from Mac OS X in version 10.5,
"Leopard"). Subsequent releases of Mac OS X were
10.1 "Puma", (
September 25,
2001),
10.2 "Jaguar", (
August 24,
2002),
10.3 "Panther", (
October 24,
2003),
10.4 "Tiger", (
April 29,
2005) and
10.5 "Leopard" (
October 26,
2007). The Intel version of Leopard received certification as a
Unix implementation by
The Open Group.
2006 onward: Intel era
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- MacBook Pro.jpg -
The MacBook Pro is the first Mac notebook to use an Intel processor. It was released at Macworld 2006.
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- MacBook white.png -
The MacBook is a mid-range notebook released on May 16, 2006.
Partially because of a failure to produce laptop-ready
G5 chips, Apple
discontinued the use of
PowerPC microprocessors in 2006. At WWDC 2005, Steve Jobs revealed this transition and also noted that Mac OS X was in development to run both on Intel and PowerPC architecture from the very beginning. All new Macs now use
x86 processors made by
Intel, and some Macs were given new names to signify the switch. Intel-based Macs can run pre-existing PowerPC-based software using an
emulator called
Rosetta, although at noticeably slower speeds than native programs, but the
Classic environment is unavailable. With the release of Intel-based Mac computers, the potential to natively run Windows-based operating systems on Apple hardware without the need for emulation software such as
Virtual PC was introduced. In March 2006, a group of hackers announced that they were able to run
Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac. The group has released their software as open source and has posted it for download on their website.
(48) On
April 5,
2006 Apple announced the public beta availability of their own
Boot Camp software which will allow owners of Intel-based Macs to install Windows XP on their machines; later versions added support for
Windows Vista. Starting with Mac OS X 10.5, Boot Camp is now a standard feature.In recent years, Apple has seen a significant boost in sales of Macs. Many claim that this is due, in part, to the success of the
iPod, a
halo effect whereby satisfied iPod owners purchase more Apple equipment. The iPod
digital audio players have recaptured a brand awareness of the Mac line that had not been seen since its original release in 1984. From 2001 to 2007, Mac sales increased continuously on an annual basis. On
October 22,
2007, Apple released its fourth quarter results, reporting shipment of 2,164,000 Macs—exceeding the previous company record for quarterly Macintosh shipments by over 400,000.
(49){{Timeline of Macintosh models|headerextension==}}
Product line
{|class="wikitable"
|!Ultracompact!Consumer!Professional
!style="background:#cccce5;"|Desktop| Mac miniMac mini |
Entry-level; ships without keyboard, mouse, or monitor; uses Intel Core 2 Duo processorsiMac (Intel-based) |
The iMac |
All-in-one; available in 20" and 24" screen sizes; uses Intel Core 2 Duo processorsMac Pro |
Macpro BW.pngThe Mac Pro |
Workstation desktop; highly customizable with dual processors; uses up to two quad-core Intel Xeon processors
!style="background:#cccce5;"|Portable
(MacBook)MacBook Air |
MacBook Air.pngThe MacBook Air |
13.3" ultraportable with aluminum casing; uses Intel Core 2 Duo processorsMacBook |
Macbook white redjar 20060603.jpgThe white MacBook |
13.3" laptop with polycarbonate casing; available in black and white; uses Intel Core 2 Duo processorsMacBook Pro |
MacBook Pro.jpgThe MacBook Pro |
15.4" or 17" models with aluminum casing; uses Intel Core 2 Duo processors
!style="background:#cccce5;"|Server| n/a | Xserve#Intel Xserve |
Xserve G5.png>105px |
rack unit>1U 19-inch rack | ; uses dual quad-core Intel Xeon#Dual-Core Xeon>Intel Xeon processors for up to 8 cores |
Hardware and software
Hardware
IMacG5guts.png -
, maintaining a high degree of control over the end product. By contrast, most other companies (including
hardware. The current Mac product family uses
. All Mac models ship with at least 1
as standard. Current Mac computers use an
s. Macs that ship with optical media drives include either a
, a dual-function DVD and CD burner. Macs include two standard data transfer ports:
. USB was introduced in the 1998
and is ubiquitous today; FireWire is mainly reserved for high-performance devices such as hard drives or video cameras. Starting with a new iMac G5 released in October 2005, Apple started to include built-in
for accessing media stored on the computer.
. In fact, the Mac operating system did not natively support more than one mouse button until Mac OS X arrived in 2001{{Fact|date=July 2008}}. Apple released the four-button
and began to ship it with new desktop Macs.
. It used a
s onscreen. The
. In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X, based on
user interface. The most recent version is
"Leopard". In addition to Leopard, all new Macs are bundled with assorted Apple-produced applications, including
users.
Worms as well as potential vulnerabilities were noted in February 2006, which led some industry analysts and anti-virus companies to issue warnings that Apple's Mac OS X is not immune to viruses, as is commonly misconceived.
However, there has not been an outbreak of Mac malware, and Apple routinely issues security updates for its software.Following the release of the Intel-based Mac, third-party
or previously Windows-only software, on Macs at near native speed. A
compatibility module for Intel-based Macs allows users to run Windows natively. Apple also released
between Mac OS X and Windows, on these Macs. Because Mac OS X is less common than Microsoft Windows, less third-party software is available,
and Mac versions run without Windows emulation.Throughout the history of the Macintosh platform, various versions of Linux have been ported to the platform with varying degrees of acceptance, including
.
Macintosh advertisements have usually attacked the established market leader, directly or indirectly. They tend to portray the Mac as an alternative to overly complex or unreliable PCs. Apple hyped the introduction of the original Mac with the now-famous
. It was supplemented by a number of printed pamphlets and other TV ads demonstrating the new interface and emphasizing the mouse. Many more brochures for new models like the
followed. In the 1990s Apple started the “What's on your PowerBook?” campaign, with print ads and television commercials featuring celebrities describing how the PowerBook helps them in their businesses and everyday lives. In 1995, Apple responded to the introduction of Windows 95 with several print ads and a television commercial demonstrating its disadvantages and lack of innovation. In 1997 the
followed. The most recent advertising strategy by Apple is the
campaign, with North American, UK and Japanese variants.
Today, Apple focuses much of its advertising efforts around “special events”, and
. The events typically draw a large gathering of media representatives and spectators. In the past, special events have been used to unveil its desktop and notebook computers such as the iMac and MacBook, and other consumer electronic devices like the
.
Since the introduction of the Macintosh, Apple has struggled to gain a significant
of the personal computer market. At first, the Macintosh 128K suffered from a dearth of available software compared to IBM's PC, resulting in disappointing sales in 1984 and 1985. It took 74 days for 50,000 units to sell.
Statistics from late 2003 indicate that Apple had 2.06 percent of the desktop share in the United States, which had increased to 2.88 percent by Q4 2004.
As of October 2006, research firms IDC and Gartner reported that Apple's market share in the U.S. had increased to about 6 percent.
Figures from December 2006, showing a market share around 6 percent (IDC) and 6.1 percent (Gartner) are based on a more than 30 percent increase in unit sale from 2005 to 2006. The
to 16 percent.
Three ways of measuring market share are: i) by browser hits, ii) by sales, and iii) by installed base. If using the browser metric, Mac market share has increased substantially in 2007
. However, results for market share measured as a percentage of current sales provides different results than when market share is measured by installed base. Whether the size of the Mac’s market share and installed base is actually relevant, and to whom, is a hotly debated issue. Industry pundits have often called attention to the Mac’s relatively small market share to predict Apple's impending doom, particularly in the early and mid 1990s when the company’s future seemed bleakest. Others argue that market share is the wrong way to judge the Mac’s success. Apple has positioned the Mac as a higher-end personal computer, and so it may be misleading to compare it to a low-budget PC.
Because the overall market for personal computers has grown rapidly, the Mac’s increasing sales numbers are effectively swallowed by the industry’s numbers as a whole. Apple’s small market share, then, gives the false impression that fewer people are using Macs than did (for example) ten years ago.
Others try to de-emphasize market share, citing that it's rarely brought up in other industries.
Regardless of the Mac’s market share, Apple has remained profitable since Steve Jobs’ return and the company’s subsequent reorganization.
Notably, in a report published in the first quarter of 2008, it was found that the Apple Macintosh computers made up a total of 66% of all computers sold that were above $1,000, and 14% of all computers sold.
indicates that Apple draws its customer base from a higher-income demographic than the mainstream PC market. Higher income theoretically correlates with well-educated social behaviors, which may explain the platform’s visibility within certain youthful, avant-garde subcultures.
Steve Jobs speculates that “maybe a little less” than half of Apple’s customers are
This perception may or may not be accurate—several prominent conservatives, including
and surely not least by Jobs’ own personal history.
