Lisa is a desktop computer developed by Apple, produced from January 19, 1983 to August 1, 1986, and succeeded by Macintosh. It is generally considered the first mass-market personal computer operable through a graphical user interface (GUI). In 1983, a machine like the Lisa was still so expensive that it was primarily marketed to individual and small and medium-sized businesses as a groundbreaking new alternative to much bigger and more expensive mainframes or minicomputers such as from IBM, that either require additional, expensive consultancy from the supplier, hiring specially trained personnel, or at least, a much steeper learning curve to maintain and operate. Earlier GUI-controlled personal computers were not mass-marketed; for example, Xerox PARC manufactured its Alto workstation only for Xerox and select partners from the early to mid-1970s.
MacPaint is a raster graphics editor developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 24, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processing counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate graphics that could be used by other applications. It taught consumers what a graphics-based system could do by using the mouse, the clipboard, and QuickDraw picture language. Pictures could be cut from MacPaint and pasted into MacWrite documents.
Historically, the classic Mac OS used a form of memory management that has fallen out of favor in modern systems. Criticism of this approach was one of the key areas addressed by the change to Mac OS X.
A desk accessory (DA) or desklet in computing is a small transient or auxiliary application that can be run concurrently in a desktop environment with any other application on the system. Early examples, such as Sidekick and Macintosh desk accessories, used special programming models to provide a small degree of multitasking on systems that initially did not have any other multitasking ability.
MultiFinder is an extension for the Apple Macintosh's classic Mac OS, introduced on August 11, 1987 and included with System Software 5. It adds cooperative multitasking of several applications at once – a great improvement over the previous Macintosh systems, which can only run one application at a time. With the advent of System 7, MultiFinder became a standard integrated part of the operating system and remained so until the introduction of Mac OS X.
Andrew Jay Hertzfeld is an American software engineer who was a member of Apple Computer's original Macintosh development team during the 1980s. After buying an Apple II in January 1978, he went to work for Apple Computer from August 1979 until March 1984, where he was a designer for the Macintosh system software.
System 6 is the sixth major release of the classic Mac OS operating system for Macintosh computers, made by Apple Computer. It was released in 1988. It is a monolithic operating system, with cooperative multitasking based on an improved MultiFinder. The boxed version cost US$49, and it was included with all new Macintosh computers until 1991, when it was succeeded by System 7.
Susan Kare is an American artist and graphic designer, who contributed interface elements and typefaces for the first Apple Macintosh personal computer from 1983 to 1986. She was employee #10 and creative director at NeXT, the company formed by Steve Jobs after he left Apple in 1985. She has worked as a design consultant to Microsoft, IBM, Sony Pictures, Facebook, and Pinterest. As of 2023, Kare is employed at Niantic Labs. As a pioneer of pixel art and of the graphical computer interface, she has been celebrated as one of the most significant designers of modern technology.
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 integrated carrying handle; it has a keyboard and single-button mouse.
The Command key, ⌘, formerly also known as the Apple key or open Apple key, is a modifier key present on Apple keyboards. The Command key's purpose is to allow the user to enter keyboard commands in applications and in the system. An "extended" Macintosh keyboard—the most common type—has two command keys, one on each side of the space bar; some compact keyboards have one only on the left.
Guy L. "Bud" Tribble is a software technologist known for his work on the original Apple Macintosh.
Randy Wigginton was Apple Computer's sixth employee, creator of MacWrite, Full Impact, and numerous other Mac applications. He used to work in development at eBay, Quigo, Inc and Move.com. In November 2010, he left his position as a "site reliability engineer" at Google Inc., purportedly after leaking news of a $1,000 holiday cash bonus to employees.
Steve Capps is a pioneering American computer programmer and software engineer, who was one of the original designers of the Apple Macintosh computer and co-designers of the Finder in the 1980s. He also led development of the Apple Newton PDA and designed music software such as SoundEdit, before developing user interface (UI) designs for Microsoft's Internet Explorer and online/mobile payment systems.
MacWorks XL is an Apple Lisa computer program which shipped with the Macintosh XL. It allows 64K Apple Macintosh ROM emulation so the Macintosh XL can run classic Mac OS programs.
FutureBasic is a free BASIC compiler for Apple Inc.'s Macintosh.
Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. in a succession of two major series.
Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made is a nonfiction book written by Andy Hertzfeld about the birth of the Apple Macintosh personal computer. The author was a core member of the team that built the Macintosh system software and the chief creator of the Mac's radical new user interface software. The book is a collection of anecdotes tracing the development of the Macintosh from a secret project in 1979 through its "triumphant introduction" in 1984. These anecdotes were originally published on the author's Folklore.org web site.
Mac OS is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The Macintosh operating system is credited with having popularized the graphical user interface concept. It was included with every Macintosh that was sold during the era in which it was developed, and many updates to the system software were done in conjunction with the introduction of new Macintosh systems.
A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BASIC interpreter to type in programs or to load programs from storage.
