Macintosh OS

On January 24, 1984, Apple announced the Macintosh to the world. This computer was a radical departure from both Lisa, Apple's first attempt to introduce a computer with a Graphical User Interface (GUI), and the family of MS-DOS computers currently in the market. The GUI implemented within the Macintosh Operating System was developed from Lisa's, which was developed from Xerox's GUI in return for Apple stock. The latest version of the Macintosh operating system is version 10.4, also called Tiger.

All Macintoshes before OS X were descendants of the original Macintosh. Though processing power and hardware capacities had been exponentially increasing, the core idea and the look-and-feel of the OS had been the same until Mac OS X. Another recent radical change was the switch of Central Processing Unit (CPU) from Motorola processors to processors made by Intel.

Macintosh computers are certainly less popular than personal computers running Microsoft Windows, but both systems have their own advantages and disadvantages. Macintosh computers are generally considered better for graphics applications. They also have the advantage of having the computer and operating system made by the same company, so they generally work better together. Out of the box Macintosh computers have excellent support for foreign languages. The iLife suite of software is a great group of easy to use applications. The iLife suite includes iTunes (the only application in iLife available on both Macintoshes and PCs), iPhoto, GarageBand (for creating your own songs), iMovie, and iDVD.