Mac (computer)

The Mac, short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple. The name Macintosh is a reference to a type of apple called McIntosh. The product lineup includes the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, and the iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro desktops. Macs are sold with the macOS operating system.

Jef Raskin conceived the Macintosh project in 1979, which was usurped and redefined by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1981. The Macintosh was launched in January 1984, after Apple's "1984" advertisement during Super Bowl XVIII. The system has a 9-inch monochrome monitor and 3 1/2-inch floppy drive built into the case and shipped with a one-button mouse. A series of incrementally improved models followed, sharing the same integrated case design. Jobs left Apple in 1985.

In 1987, the Macintosh II brought color graphics, but priced as a professional workstation and not a personal computer. Beginning in 1994 with the Power Macintosh, the Mac transitioned from Motorola 68000 series processors to PowerPC. Despite the significant performance increase, the Mac was not fully competitive with commodity IBM PC compatibles throughout the 1990s.

The 1996 acquisition of NeXT returned Steve Jobs to Apple, whose focused product oversight pushed the Mac mainstream with the 1998 iMac G3, the OS X operating system (renamed to macOS in 2016), and the Mac transition to Intel processors from 2005 to 2006. High pixel density Retina displays debuted in the iPhone 4 in 2010 and the MacBook Pro in 2012. In the 2010s, the Mac was neglected under CEO Tim Cook, especially for professional users, but was reinvigorated with new high-end Macs and the transition to Apple silicon, which had originated in iOS devices.