For seven of the past 30 years that the Mac has existed, Apple has been reinventing itself as the "post-PC" company, with its mobile operating system, iOS, and iPhones and iPads to run it. Yet Apple's changes in the Mac's OS X operating system and a crystallization of recent management and security features are spurring a Mac surge in an unlikely market: the enterprise.
The Apple Mac, celebrating its 30th birthday Friday, January 24, is an anomaly wrapped in a paradox: the most successful personal computer ever with single-digit market share, from the company reinventing itself as the "post PC" leader, is likely to keep growing in the enterprise, even though Apple's whole approach is consumer focused.
The Macintosh has influenced me in countless ways over the years. I was first introduced to computers way back in 1983, when I encountered a Commodore 64 at a friend's house.
I saw the commercial. Buying a Mac would throw a rock through the window of mundane, non-graphical computing.
The Apple Mac has played an important part of my professional journalism career for at least 20 of the years that I have been a writer. One Mac or another has been my main writing machine since 1990, and has been in daily use, traveling around the world several times and my more-or-less constant work companion. It is a tool not a religion, yet I have been quite fond of the various machines that I have used.