
Raskin named the computer after his favorite type of apple, the McIntosh. Conceived in 1979 by Jef Raskin, the Macintosh was envisioned as an affordable, easy-to-use computer for the masses, with the Lisa's graphical interface. Parallel to the Lisa's development, a skunkworks team at Apple was working on another project. This was to no avail: hampered by its high $9,995 price and lack of available software, the Lisa was commercially unsuccessful. Though the Lisa's graphical user interface was partially inspired by the work of Xerox PARC, it also went far beyond PARC's prototypes, and introduced original innovations: the ability to drag-and-drop files, menu bars, and double-clicking. After IBM introduced the IBM PC in 1981, its sales quickly surpassed the Apple II in response, Apple introduced the Apple Lisa in 1983. In the late 1970s, the Apple II was one of the most popular computers on the American market, especially in education. Steve Jobs with the original Macintosh, January 1984

After Tim Cook replaced Jobs as CEO, the Mac underwent a period of neglect, but was later reinvigorated with the introduction of popular high-end Macs and the ongoing Apple silicon transition, which brought the Mac to the same ARM architecture as iOS devices. Jobs oversaw the release of many successful products, unveiled the modern Mac OS X, completed the 2005-06 Intel transition, and brought features from the iPhone back to the Mac. After a period of initial success, the Mac languished in the 1990s until the 1996 acquisition of NeXT brought Steve Jobs back to Apple. The first Mac was released in 1984, and was advertised with the highly-acclaimed "1984" ad. The product lineup includes the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, as well as the iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro desktops.

Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software engineers.

The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The MacBook Air, Apple's best-selling Mac model
