The Mac turns 40
Last Tuesday, the Mac turned 40 years old. While the Mac has had its ups and downs over the decades, it’s still a cornerstone of Apple, even if it’s been a long time since it was their main moneymaker.
For the Mac's 40th anniversary, below is a look at some of the Mac’s recent highlights.
The Mac is no longer Apple’s main moneymaker
As shown in this infographic, as a percentage of sales, the Mac went from making up almost all of Apple’s revenue back in 2000 (86.2%) to less than 10% in 2023 (7.7%). Of course, unlike 2000, Apple now has multiple other products to offer, many which don’t require owning or tie into a Mac. Apple’s also earning way more money than it did in 2000, so even if the Mac isn’t driving sales, it’s still pulling in plenty of cash for Cupertino. In 2000, Apple earned about $8 billion in revenue; in 2023, Apple earned $383 billion.
One example of Apple's product diversification is the 2002 launch of the iPod, Apple’s first successful non-desktop computer product. As a result of the iPod's popularity, Mac sales dropped to around 40% of Apple’s revenue by 2006, when they switched to Intel-based processors. Today, Apple’s top seller is the iPhone, which makes up a bit over half of Apple’s revenue.
The Mac’s relative popularity
Of course, the Mac (and MacOS) never dominated the desktop computer world, despite its game-changing influences. Statcounter states that in 2023, Macs only made up 6.57% of global website traffic. (iOS devices, meanwhile, made up 17.71%, almost three times the Mac’s number.) Still, the Mac enjoys popularity in some areas, such as graphic design.
My Mac usage
Other than a recent ill-fated attempt to use Windows, I’m exclusively a Mac or Linux household. There's several reasons why: I never really liked Windows as an operating system; I can play video games on my Xbox (ironically a Microsoft product), negating that reason to use Windows; and nothing I do outside of work (where I have a Windows PC) requires Windows or Windows-only programs.
While Macs have their flaws, I always liked its efforts at being user-friendly and offering a slickly designed desktop user interface. Similar to Linux, there’s also some security advantages; unlike Windows, I'm not having obnoxious AI features pushed at me (yet, anyway). MacOS also has pretty long hardware support, unlike Windows; my Lenovo laptop wouldn’t support Windows 11 for unclear/arbitrary reasons, despite my laptop being relatively new at the time.
I’ve had several Macs over the years; currently, I use a 2020 M1 model Mac Mini. It works well as a desktop computer, as well as a media server.