Macintosh 128K

The Macintosh, later rebranded as the Macintosh 128K, is the original Macintosh personal computer from Apple. It is the first successful mass-market all-in-one desktop personal computer with a graphical user interface, built-in screen and mouse. It was pivotal in establishing desktop publishing as a general office function. The motherboard, a 9 in (23 cm) CRT monochrome monitor, and a floppy drive are in a beige case with an integrated carrying handle; it has a keyboard and single-button mouse.

The Macintosh was introduced by a television commercial titled "1984" during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, directed by Ridley Scott. Sales were strong at its initial release on January 24, 1984, at US$2,495 (equivalent to $7,600 in 2024), and reached 70,000 units on May 3, 1984. Upon the release of its successor, the Macintosh 512K, it was rebranded as the Macintosh 128K. The computer's model number is M0001.

In 1978, Apple began to organize the Lisa project, to build a next-generation machine similar to an advanced Apple II or the yet-to-be-introduced IBM PC. In 1979, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs learned of the advanced work on graphical user interfaces (GUI) taking place at Xerox PARC. He arranged for Apple engineers to be allowed to visit PARC to see the systems in action. The Lisa was immediately redirected to use a GUI, which at that time was well beyond the state of the art for microprocessor abilities; the Xerox Alto has a custom processor spanning several circuit boards in a case the size of a small refrigerator. Things had changed dramatically with the introduction of the 16/32-bit Motorola 68k in 1979, with at least an order of magnitude better performance than existing designs, making a software GUI machine a practical possibility. The basic layout of the Lisa was largely complete by 1982, at which point Jobs's continual suggestions for improvements led to him being kicked off the project.

At the same time that the Lisa was becoming a GUI machine in 1979, Jef Raskin began the Macintosh project. The design at that time was for a low-cost, easy-to-use machine for the average consumer. Instead of a GUI, it intended to use a text-based user interface that allowed multitasking, and special command keys on the keyboard that accessed standardized commands in the programs. Bud Tribble, a member of the Macintosh team, asked Burrell Smith to integrate the Apple Lisa's 68k microprocessor into the Macintosh so that it could run graphical programs. By December 1980, Smith had succeeded in designing a board that integrated an 8 MHz Motorola 68k. Smith's design used less RAM than the Lisa, which made producing 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 more than most other computers which typically had around 4 to 8 KB of ROM; it had 128 kB of RAM, in the form of sixteen 64-kilobit (kb) RAM modules soldered to the logic board. The final product's screen was a 9-inch (23 cm), 512×342 pixel monochrome display.

Smith's innovative design, combining the low production cost of an Apple II with the computing power of Lisa's Motorola 68k CPU, began to receive Jobs's attentions. Jobs took over the Macintosh project after deciding that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, which led former project leader Raskin to leave the team in 1981. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who had been leading the project with Raskin, was on temporary leave from the company at this time due to an airplane crash he had experienced earlier that year, making it easier for Jobs to take over the program. After development had completed, team member and engineer Andy Hertzfeld said that the final Macintosh design is closer to Jobs's ideas than Raskin's. InfoWorld in September 1981 reported on the existence of the secret Lisa and "McIntosh" projects at Apple.

In 1982, Regis McKenna was brought in to shape the marketing and launch of the Macintosh. Later the Regis McKenna team grew to include Jane Anderson, Katie Cadigan and Andy Cunningham, who eventually led the Apple account for the agency. Cunningham and Anderson were the primary authors of the Macintosh launch plan. The launch of the Macintosh pioneered many different tactics that are used today in launching technology products, including the "multiple exclusive," event marketing (credited to John Sculley, who brought the concept over from Pepsi), creating a mystique about a product and giving an inside look into a product's creation.

After the Lisa's announcement, John Dvorak discussed rumors of a mysterious "MacIntosh" project at Apple in February 1983. The company announced the Macintosh 128K—manufactured at an Apple factory in Fremont, California—in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. The Macintosh was introduced by a US$1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial, "1984". It aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, and is now considered a "watershed event" and a "masterpiece". McKenna called the ad "more successful than the Mac itself." "1984" used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by a Picasso-style picture of the computer on her white tank top) as a means of saving humanity from the "conformity" of IBM's attempts to dominate the computer industry. The ad alludes to George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised "Big Brother."

Two days after "1984" aired, the Macintosh went on sale, and came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface: MacWrite and MacPaint. The Macintosh was the first successful mass-market all-in-one desktop personal computer with a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse. It was first demonstrated by Steve Jobs in the first of his famous Mac keynote speeches, and though the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, some labelled it a mere "toy". Apple sold it alongside its popular Apple II line until the others were discontinued in the 1990s. Because the operating system was designed largely for the GUI, existing text-mode and command-driven applications had to be redesigned and the programming code rewritten. This was a time-consuming task that many software developers chose not to undertake, and could be regarded as a reason for an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984, Microsoft's Multiplan migrated over from MS-DOS, with Microsoft Word following in January 1985. In return for Microsoft's commitment to Macintosh, Apple agreed to not provide software development kits and prototype computers to companies with applications competing with Microsoft's. Apple introduced the Macintosh Office concept the same year with the "Lemmings" ad; infamous for insulting its own potential customers, the ad was not successful.