Apple’s 4 Most Iconic Mac Computers of All Time
While some of Apple's products unfortunately failed to catch on with average consumers, others have interestingly gone on to amass worldwide popularity and acclaim.
The iPod, iPhone, and iPad are just a few of the Silicon Valley tech giant’s most popular product lines — but the Mac, will always be what ultimately put Apple on the map as a worldwide leader in tech. Press the right arrow to take a closer look at 4 of Apple’s most iconic computer designs of all time.
4 Apple II
Designed almost entirely by Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, the Apple II is regarded by fans and experts as "the PC that started it all."
While it wasn’t the company’s first computer, the Apple II (released in 1979) was, for its time, Apple’s most successful and fastest selling machine. It ultimately pushed over 300,000 units (creating over $79 million in revenue) during its first year on the market.
Apple’s success with the Apple II can be attributed in part to the machine’s lower, introductory price point of just $1,298. And while that might seem steep for 1979, it’s worth pointing out that the Apple III — introduced just one year later in 1980 — came to market with a whopping $4,300 sticker price.
Despite its lower, more appealing price point, the Apple II was a stellar performer. It was also one of the first PCs to boast color graphics, inherently advanced gaming features, and customization/expandability courtesy of its eight inbuilt slots, which allowed users to plug in anything from extra graphics, more memory, a printer, floppy disk drive, or more.
Interestingly, the Apple II was so successful that the company went on to expand the model into a whole line of computers, which included subsequent releases like the Apple IIgs and, ultimately, the Apple IIe, which ceased production in November of 1993.
3 The Mac
After Apple II, the company went on to release the Apple III — which was not only almost four times the cost of its predecessor, but unfortunately turned out to be a colossal flop that took years for the company to recover from.
During that period of gloom in the early 1980s, however, Steve Jobs and his team were working on an entirely new Mac like the world had never seen before. And on January 22, 1984, during a prime-time Super Bowl XVIII commercial, Jobs unveiled The Mac with much fanfare.
Initially dubbed ‘Apple Macintosh’, The Mac offered users a revolutionary PC experience unavailable on other machines, including the Apple II. While its price was nearly double the Apple II's at $2,495 a unit, The Mac boasted a number of inherently impressive features, including its advanced graphical user interface (GUI), its distinctive, beige design, and a color-matched keyboard and mouse to complete the package.
Unlike Apple II, The Mac was not expandable — but what ultimately set the machine apart was its blissful combination of aesthetics and performance, a theme that’s clearly stuck with Apple’s design team over the years.
2 iMac
One of the first things Steve Jobs did when he returned to the helm of Apple as CEO in 1997 was work with Jony Ive to create a revolutionary new Mac.. And at Macworld, 1998, Jobs officially took the wraps off Apple's first generation iMac: the iMac G3.
Known for its distinctively curved outer shell, the G3 was Apple’s first all-in-one computer boasting a CRT monitor which housed the CPU and other key components. Interestingly, the system was designed to allow users to peek inside at its internal components, and was ultimately made available in May of 1998 for just $1,299 in one of 12, semi-transparent colors.
The iMac line has evolved considerably over the last 20 years or so — even going Pro last month when Apple unveiled its first- and most powerful-ever iMac Pro.
1 MacBook
Apple was churning out fantastic laptops like the iBook and PowerBook long before the MacBook was unveiled in 2006. And while the original MacBook was a breakout success in itself, Apple ultimately decided to expand the line and incorporate a number of models in the years since — such as the MacBook Air from 2008, 12-inch MacBook from 2015, and the MacBook Pro with OLED Touch Bar introduced in 2016.
It all started with the Retina-equipped, aluminum unibody MacBook Pro from 2012, which not only came to be the the most iconic and widely adopted form-factor, but has served as a template of sorts for all the newer, faster, thinner MacBook offerings released since then.
The 2012 MacBook Pro with 13-inch Retina display, in particular, is so popular that’s it’s even still available for sale on Apple’s website. It’s the last MacBook Pro model to boast a side-loading DVD/ROM drive, and the last featuring user-upgradeable RAM, according to blogger and software developer, Marco Armani.
Since its release in 2008, meanwhile, Apple’s ultra-portable MacBook Air has been “reimagined” in the form of just about every Windows- or Chrome OS-powered netbook available. It’s a wildly popular and impossibly thin form-factor, which has since been hailed as one of the company’s most successful product launches to date, according to DigitalTrends.