I Think Different - Do You?

We've all seen those ads -- the ones with the two people, one representing PC and the other representing Mac.

Which do you prefer - Windows or Mac?

Personally, I prefer Macs.  In my opinion, they are generally superior to computers that run Windows.  Also, Apple, Inc. has a very interesting story behind its success.  Please allow me to give you a bit of background.

The whole thing started with two friends - Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.

Together, they created the world's first personal computer, the Apple I.  It first went on sale in 1977 at a price of about $700.

Today, the Apple I is next to impossible to acquire, as so few were originally produced.

In that same year, the Apple II was released.  Making its way into the homes of average families, it became a huge success.

It spawned several more innovations in the Apple II series, including the Apple IIc (1984) and the Apple II Plus (1979), both of which are shown below.

If you look on eBay, you'll easily be able to find one of these.  Many of the available computers may even be in working condition!

The year 1984 was a major milestone for the company.  On January 24th, the Macintosh went on sale.

The reason why it was so special is that it was really the very first computer that used a Graphical User Interface (GUI) (as opposed to typing commands on a screen to get the computer to perform tasks, users could simply click on an icon to make it do things) that was available to the average individual. 

Here's a video of Steve Jobs introducing the product back in 1984.

I've used one of these computers before, except the memory had been upgraded back in the mid 1980s. It belonged to my aunt, who used it for work.  Her's was one of the first 25,000 ever produced!  Unfortunately, the certificate stating this is gone.

  This little computer, which only had 128 kilobytes of memory, would eventually be improved upon again and again until Apple reached the advanced Mac computers of today.  Such computers include the iMac, the MacBook Pro (with which I am writing this blog post), and the Mac Mini.  All of these are shown below.

In more recent years, Apple has expanded to creating other products.  Most notably is the iPod (2001), which revolutionized the music industry forever!

The iPod family has expanded so much since the product's original introduction.  Below is a picture of an original iPod; next to it is a 2012 iPod Touch.

Two other notable Apple products are the iPad and the iPhone.

You might be wondering - Grace, do you have any of these Apple gadgets?  The answer is yes.

I own a MacBook Pro (2010), and iPhone 4, an iPod Touch (2nd generation), an iPod Nano (2nd generation), and an eMac (2004).  The eMac was originally my father's, but he let me have it, although my ownership of it is only nominal, when he received a MacBook Pro in October 2011.

I hope you've learned something from this post!  Hopefully, I didn't bore you too much ;)

Thanks for reading! :)