The evolution of the Apple Mac

Transcript

The evolution of Apple's Macintosh. Today, Macs are known for their premium design, powerful Apple Silicon chips, and Mac OS. But the Mac has gone through some incredible transformations over the past 40 years. And at one point, Apple almost lost the entire computer market. Let's go back to 1984. Apple introduces the original Macintosh, a small beige computer with a built-in black and white screen. But here's what made it revolutionary. Most computers back then ran on typed text commands. The Macintosh made the visual approach popular instead. Windows, icons, menus, and a mouse. Instead of memorizing commands, you could just point and click. It had only 128 kilobytes of memory, less than a single photo on your phone today. But it changed how people used computers. Now fast forward to the 1990s. Apple was struggling. Its product lineup was confusing. Windows PCs dominated the market, and the company was losing its direction. Then Steve Jobs returned. And in 1998, Apple introduced the iMac G3, a colorful see-through all-in-one computer. No floppy drive, USB ports instead. It helped bring Apple back to life. But the next big change wasn't hardware. It was the software. In 2001, Apple released Mac OS X. Built-on Unix, the same rock solid foundation used by many servers, inherited from next, the company Jobs founded after leaving Apple. If one app crashed, it no longer took the whole computer down with it. That foundation became the Mac OS we used today. Then, in 2005, another shock. Apple dropped its power PC processors, the chips it had been using for over a decade and moved Macs to Intel. Why? Apple wanted more performance without the heat and battery drain. And for the first time, Macs could officially run Windows 2. In 2008, Steve Jobs pulled the MacBook Air out of a paper envelope. Over the next decade, Macs got thinner, sharper screens, and faster storage. But Apple was preparing its biggest transformation yet. In 2020, it introduced the N1 chip. This time, Apple wasn't switching suppliers. It was designing its own chips. Apple Silicon is based on ARM. The same kind of chip design used in smartphones built to be fast while using very little power. It packs the processor, graphics, and memory into one tightly connected chip. Instead of keeping separate memory for the processor and graphics, both share the same pool. So data doesn't have to be copied back and forth. The result? Fast Macs with incredible battery life. So the Mac has survived four completely different kinds of processors, from Motorola to power PC, to Intel to Apple Silicon. And from a tiny black and white computer to machines that edit movies and run AI models locally. The Mac story isn't just about faster computers. It's about Apple rebuilding the technology underneath, again and again, while keeping the same idea. Make powerful computing simple. And it all started with a little beige computer in 1984.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.