Macintosh


Mac (formerly Macintosh) is a range of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Inc.. Named after the McIntosh variety of apple, the original Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984. It was the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse instead of the then-standard command line interface. The current range of Macs varies from Apple's entry level Mac mini desktop, to a mid-range server, the Xserve. Mac systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. Production of the Mac is based upon a vertical integration model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its hardware and creates its own operating system that is pre-installed on all Macs. This is in contrast to PCs pre-installed with Microsoft Windows, where one vendor provides the operating system and multiple vendors create the hardware. (In both cases, the hardware can run other operating systems; modern Macs, like PC's, are capable of running operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD and Windows.)