The guided tour
Timeline
One thread through the whole museum, 1983 to 2006 — machines on the plinths, history in between. Machine entries link to their exhibits.
January 1983
The Lisa points the way — at $9,995
Apple ships the Lisa, its first graphical computer. Brilliant, glacial, and priced like a car, it flops — but its ideas are already walking down the hall to the Macintosh team.
January 24, 1984
Macintosh 128K
The computer for the rest of us. This is where it all starts.
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January 22, 1984
'1984' airs during the Super Bowl — once
Ridley Scott's dystopian launch ad runs a single time nationally and becomes the most famous commercial ever made. The board had tried to kill it.
September 1985
Steve Jobs leaves Apple
After a boardroom struggle with John Sculley, Jobs resigns and founds NeXT. The Mac he leaves behind is struggling; the ideas he takes with him will return twelve years later.
March–July 1985
Desktop publishing saves the Mac
The LaserWriter and Aldus PageMaker give the Mac its killer industry. 'Mac + PageMaker + LaserWriter' becomes the setup that keeps the platform alive through the lean years.
January 16, 1986
Macintosh Plus
The Mac, but enough of it. If the 128K was the promise, the Plus was the delivery.
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March 2, 1987
Macintosh SE
The workhorse in the platinum suit. The SE is the compact Mac grown up and gone to work.
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January 19, 1989
Macintosh SE/30
The greatest compact Mac ever made. Ask a vintage Mac collector to name the best compact Macintosh and you will get one answer.
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September 20, 1989
Macintosh Portable
Sixteen pounds of good intentions. Apple's first battery-powered Macintosh is a monument to refusing to compromise — on exactly the wrong things.
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October 15, 1990
Macintosh Classic
The first Macintosh under a thousand dollars. Six years after the original, Apple finally built the Mac that price-conscious families and schools had been waiting for.
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October 21, 1991
PowerBook 100
The shape of every laptop since. Push the keyboard to the back.
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May 1991
System 7 arrives
The classic Mac OS's biggest leap: color throughout, real multitasking, aliases, file sharing. It will carry the platform for six years — and strain every 68000-based Mac that tries to run it.
February 10, 1993
Macintosh Color Classic
The compact Mac's beautiful goodbye. The last of the classic compacts, and the only one in color.
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March 1994
The PowerPC transition begins
The Power Macintosh 6100 opens Apple's first great processor migration, from Motorola 68k to PowerPC — a playbook (emulate the old, embrace the new) Apple will reuse twice more.
July 1997
Jobs returns to a company 90 days from broke
Apple buys NeXT for its operating system and gets its founder back. Jobs cuts the product line to a two-by-two grid: consumer and pro, desktop and portable. Every machine in our Modern Era wing descends from that grid.
August 15, 1998
iMac G3
Hello (again). A translucent Bondi-blue gumdrop that saved Apple Computer.
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September 1999 (announced July 21)
iBook G3 (Clamshell)
The iMac to go. Apple's consumer laptop arrived looking like nothing else on a store shelf: rubber-bumpered, candy-colored, latch-free, with a fold-out handle that begged to be carried.
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July 19, 2000
Power Mac G4 Cube
A masterpiece nobody bought. An eight-inch cube of computer, suspended in a crystal acrylic shell, with no fan, no visible screws, and a power button that sensed your touch through the plastic.
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March & October 2001
Mac OS X ships. Then the iPod.
Apple's NeXT-derived operating system arrives in March; in October, a 5 GB music player built on Mac profits starts the chain reaction that will make Apple the biggest company on earth.
January 7, 2002
iMac G4
The lamp that smiled. A flat screen floating on a chrome neck above a white half-dome — the iMac G4 remains the most sculptural computer Apple ever shipped.
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2006 · epilogue
The Intel era closes the vintage age
The last PowerPC Macs give way to Intel, ending the architecture family this museum collects. Everything before this line is officially 'vintage.' Everything after it is homework for a future wing.
End of tour · Exit through the gift shop