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Macworld Reexamines Apple’s 1976–1985 Breakthroughs

The piece argues those early products set the blueprint for today’s Mac interface, including desktop publishing workflows.

Overview

  • Macworld launched the first installment of a 50-year series with a retrospective on Apple’s earliest decade and how it defined personal computing.
  • The Apple I arrived as a bare circuit board with about 200 units produced, a 1.02MHz 6502 chip, 4K of RAM, and an initial $666.66 price later cut to $475.
  • Apple II shifted the company from hobbyist roots to the mass market, winning wide adoption and sustaining a product line that lasted 16 years.
  • Lisa introduced the first graphical user interface on a personal computer and directly shaped the Macintosh, which kept core elements like the Finder, menu bar, and Control Panel that persist in macOS today.
  • Apple’s ImageWriter opened printing across Apple II and Mac, and the LaserWriter added PostScript and networked printing at $6,995, which enabled the desktop publishing boom.