There are a lot of nice articles today about the Mac’s 40th Anniversary. My favorite was at the Steve Jobs Archive. The Mac was not a big “boil-the-ocean” project at Apple but something else, designed by a small team and largely left alone by the corporate types. The later “Think Different” ad campaign easily applies to the people who brought the Mac to life. I was a junior in high school when the Mac first arrived, and it was immediately obvious to me that computers would be “just like this” going forward.

If you’re interested in more of the story behind the development of the Mac, I recommend Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org. It’s a gold mine of early Apple anecdotes. I’ll finish by saying that despite it’s age, my Mac remains the bit of Apple technology that I continue to use and rely upon the most.