For other uses, see
Macintosh (disambiguation) and
Mac.Macintosh, commonly known as Mac, is a
brand name which covers several lines of
personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by
Apple Inc. Named after the
McIntosh variety of apple, the
original Macintosh was released on
January 24,
1984. It used 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 most
IBM compatible PCs, where one vendor provides the operating system and multiple vendors create the hardware. The modern Macs, like other PCs, are capable of running operating systems such as
Linux,
FreeBSD,
Windows, etc.
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