Macintosh 128K

The Flint Center, 24 January 1984

Steve Jobs unveiled the Macintosh at Apple’s annual shareholders’ meeting on 24 January 1984, held at the Flint Center on the De Anza College campus in Cupertino. He demonstrated its graphical interface, mouse-driven applications and synthesized speech, and replayed the “1984” advertisement.

The event overflowed the hall, leaving many Apple shareholders outside and producing an immediate crowd-control controversy.

What you could buy that day

Apple’s same-day press release said the machine was already available through dealerships — not announced for future shipment. The price was US$2,495.

The launch configuration had 128 KB of RAM and 64 KB of ROM, an 8 MHz processor, a nine-inch 512×342-pixel monochrome screen, a mouse and a graphical desktop, with MacWrite and MacPaint included during the introductory offer. Apple’s Lisa had launched the previous year at US$9,995.

Three things the anniversary usually gets wrong

The Super Bowl commercial aired on 22 January; the unveiling and dealer launch were the 24th. Jobs then repeated the presentation for the Boston Computer Society on 30 January, and footage from that better-recorded demonstration is often mislabeled as launch day.

Apple invented neither the graphical interface nor the mouse — Xerox systems and Apple’s own Lisa came first. Its distinction was an integrated GUI machine that reached a broad market.

And the first year undershot: 275,000 Macintoshes sold in 1984 against a preliminary projection of 563,000.