The Mac Turns 20

The Mac Turns 20From 'insanely great' to 'think different,' what has Apple taught--and learned?Peggy Watt, PC World

It was insanely great, the computer for the rest of us, and out to change the world. The Apple Macintosh marks its twentieth birthday this week, and--hubris and hype aside--the Mac has made an acknowledged impact on personal computing.

A graphical user interface manipulated via mouse, new usability standards, still-evolving multimedia support, and simply cool design are among the Mac's credits, say industry observers, PC users, and Apple pioneers. PC World asked many longtime industry players, including some involved in the Mac's early days, what the Macintosh has taught the PC--and, essentially, the computing industry. And, on the flip side, what has the PC taught the Macintosh?

Who Caught the Mouse?

"The question is, really, what did the Xerox Star teach the Macintosh?" says Vern Raburn, who helped direct application development at Microsoft between 1978 and 1982, then served as an executive at both Lotus and at Symantec. Today, he is CEO of Eclipse Aviation, developer of personal jet aircraft.

He--and others--point out that Apple CEO Steve Jobs lifted many innovations, from the graphical user interface to laser printers to mouse pointing devices and even, Raburn says, "the vaunted trash can" icon from research performed at Xerox PARC.

But it was Apple that put those features into products and marketed them, notes Tim Bajarin, president of the consultancy Creative Strategies.

"Obviously, the PC got two key components from the Mac: the graphical user interface and the introduction of a mouse for navigating information," Bajarin says. "Until that point, everything around the PC was driven by a very text-based architecture."

Bajarin also credits the Macintosh with introducing desktop publishing and multimedia computing, in which the Macintosh is "not only handling drawing and pictures, but true imaging and sound and video," he says.

"From the early publishing [we see] a continuum to the multimedia that is Apple's emphasis today," agrees Raines Cohen, a cofounder of the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group. He, too, cites the GUI as the key: "The Mac helped us get away from event-driven, menu-driven applications," he says.

Birth of an Application

Desktop publishing reinvigorated the Macintosh, recalls John Scull, who headed that project at Apple in...