page_title: Macintosh
section_title: 1984–90: Desktop publishing
hierarchical_section_title: Macintosh / History / 1984–90: Desktop publishing
caption_attribution_description: English: Apple Macintosh Plus at the Design Museum in Göteborg, Sweden.Svenska: En Apple Macintosh Plus-dator på Röhsska museet i Göteborg.
context_page_description: The Macintosh is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Inc. since January 1984.
  The original Macintosh is the first successful mass-market personal computer to have featured a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse. Apple sold the Macintosh alongside its popular Apple II family of computers for almost ten years until the latter was discontinued in 1993.
  Early Macintosh models were expensive, hindering competitiveness in a market dominated by the much cheaper Commodore 64 for consumers, as well as the IBM Personal Computer and its accompanying clone market for businesses, although they were less expensive than the Xerox Alto and other computers with graphical user interfaces that predated the Mac. Macintosh systems were successful in education and desktop publishing, making Apple the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade. In the early 1990s, Apple introduced the Macintosh LC II and Color Classic which were price-competitive with Wintel machines at the time.
context_section_description: Most Apple II sales had once been to companies, but the IBM PC caused small businesses, schools, and some homes to become Apple's main customers. Jobs stated during the Macintosh's introduction "we expect Macintosh to become the third industry standard", after the Apple II and IBM PC. Although outselling every other computer, and so compelling that one dealer described it as "the first $2,500 impulse item", Macintosh did not meet expectations during the first year, especially among business customers. Only about ten applications including MacWrite and MacPaint were widely available, although many non-Apple software developers participated in the introduction and Apple promised that 79 companies including Lotus, Digital Research, and Ashton-Tate were creating products for the new computer. After one year for each computer, the Macintosh had less than one-quarter of the PC's software selection—including one word processor, two databases, and one spreadsheet—although Apple had sold 280,000 Macintoshes compared to IBM's first-year sales of fewer than 100,000 PCs. MacWrite's inclusion with the Macintosh discouraged developers from creating other word processing software.
  Although Macintosh excited software developers, they were required to learn how to write software that used the graphic user interface, and early in the computer's history needed a Lisa 2 or Unix system to write Macintosh software. Infocom had developed the only third-party games for the Mac's launch by replacing the buggy early operating system with the company's own minimal bootable game platform. Despite standardizing on Pascal for software development Apple did not release a native-code Pascal compiler.  Until third-party Pascal compilers appeared, developers had to write software in other languages while still learning enough Pascal to understand Inside Macintosh.
  The Macintosh 128K, originally released as the Apple Macintosh, is the original Apple Macintosh personal computer. Its beige case consisted of a 9 in (23 cm) CRT monitor and came with a keyboard and mouse. A handle built into the top of the case made it easier for the computer to be lifted and carried. This was synonymous with the release of the iconic 1984 TV Advertisement by Apple. This model and the 512k released in September of the same year had signatures of the core team embossed inside the hard plastic cover and soon became collector pieces.
  In 1985 the combination of the Mac, Apple's LaserWriter printer, and Mac-specific software like Boston Software's MacPublisher and Aldus PageMaker enabled users to design, preview, and print page layouts complete with text and graphics—an activity to become known as desktop publishing. Initially, desktop publishing was unique to the Macintosh, but eventually became available for other platforms. Later, applications such as Macromedia FreeHand, QuarkXPress, and Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator strengthened the Mac's position as a graphics computer and helped to expand the emerging desktop publishing market.
  The Macintosh's minimal memory became apparent, even compared with other personal computers in 1984, and could not be expanded easily. It also lacked a hard disk drive or the means to easily attach one. Many small companies sprang up to address the memory issue. Suggestions revolved around either upgrading the memory to 512 KB or removing the computer's 16 memory chips and replacing them with larger-capacity chips, a tedious and difficult operation. In October 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh 512K, with quadruple the memory of the original, at a price of US$3,195. It also offered an upgrade for 128k Macs that involved replacing the logic board.
  Apple released the Macintosh Plus on January 10, 1986, for a price of US$2,600. It offered one megabyte of RAM, easily expandable to four megabytes by the use of socketed RAM boards. It also featured a SCSI parallel interface, allowing up to seven peripherals—such as hard drives and scanners—to be attached to the machine. Its floppy drive was increased to an 800 kB capacity. The Mac Plus was an immediate
caption: The Apple Macintosh Plus at the Design Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden
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