Suddenly, there was an alternative to the white or gray IBM PC boxes and a whole new way to interact with your PC. People learned the phrase "Desktop Interface" and, ultimately, the computing world was better for it.

Yet over the last two decades, the Macintosh and its eponymous operating system have been going in and out of style (thanks to Microsoft's aggressive embrace of the Graphical User Interface, or GUI, and Apple's own mid-'90s missteps). Regardless, the very image of today's Macintosh is guaranteed to raise a smile (even though the "smiling Mac" startup screen, like so many formative Mac hallmarks, has been consigned to the dustbin of high-tech history).

When the smile fades, though, here's something to ponder: Is today's Apple PC really the Mac you've known for all these years?

In almost every aspect of design or technology, the dispassionate answer is "no."

Evolution of the Elegant

The original Mac systems ran on Motorola CISC processors; today's machines employ IBM RISC chips. The Mac 128k introduced a rudimentary version of the classic Mac OS, which has given way to a BSD Unix operating system adapted from Apple's 1997 acquisition of NeXT Software Inc. (A move that not incidentally brought Apple co-founder and NeXT CEO Steve Jobs back to the Apple fold and ultimately to the head of the conference table.)

Its humble serial ports have long since faded before a welter of connectivity options, including FireWire, USB and Apple's wireless Airport technology. And despite its early dominance of the GUI desktop (sorry, Amiga diehards), the Mac's market share hasn't exceeded the single digits in more than a decade.

The profound differences between then and now have been illustrated by culture wars within the Mac community over the past few years. Apple has remained aggressively on-message about the inevitability and benefits of Mac OS X.

Out on the independent Mac Web, however, debates have sometimes blown hot and cold between Mac old-timers horrified about the loss of classic Mac technologies and a whole new generation of users who are younger than the platform they espouse and impatient with the nostalgia of graying Mac heads.

Getting Back to Basics

So how is 2004 like 1984?

If there's one strand of DNA connecting today's Mac to its progenitor — and to even earlier models in the Apple family tree — it's Jobs' unshakeable commitment to vertical integration and control of system hardware and software.

When he returned from exile, the prodigal Apple exec's first move was to quash the nascent initiative to license the Mac OS to other manufacturers — an effort that was already a day late and a dollar short in the face of the Windows juggernaut.

Always the minimalist, Jobs also pruned Apple back to its roots, eliminating the Newton PDA operation and chopping away the tangle of Mac models that had threatened to choke the life out of sales and marketing — not to mention quality assurance (QA). Under his guidance, the Mac got back to where it once belonged, with four distinct lines for professional and consumer desktops and laptops. (The company has since added a Mac server line, the rack-mounted Xserve.)

Every step of the way, Jobs and his team reiterated the traditional Mac commitment to a proprietary, tightly integrated vision of personal computing that seems downright anachronistic. After all, the Windows hegemony is built on its ability to span myriad hardware systems — from thousands of PCs to personal digital assistants (PDAs) to watches to automobile dashboards. By contrast, Mac users' choice of a dozen-odd boxes seems almost Amish in its simplicity.

Apple's Tricky Business

That turnkey image is somewhat misleading, to be sure.

Between the open-source kernel of Mac OS X; the joint PowerPC development Apple has engaged in with IBM and Motorola; and the range of connectivity, media and other standards the Mac has pioneered or assimilated, the current Mac line is far more compatible with the wider computing world than ever before. But until Mac OS X installs and runs on a range of third-party systems, there's a chasm between the Mac and Windows worldviews.

This tack has certainly limited the Mac's market penetration, but how well has it served the solid minority that continues to buy Mac? Vertical integration has been a tricky business for Apple, since it leaves the company holding the bag for any QA and marketing debacles that may occur on the system level.

When Motorola failed to ramp clock speeds of the PowerPC G4 processor at rates Mac users had been promised, it was Apple — the sole major PC manufacturer purchasing the chip — that took the hit. When key developers (such as Quark) failed to deliver Mac OS X versions of their software as quickly as Apple had projected, it was Apple alone that suffered a slowdown in sales of new professional systems (according to the company's own chief financial officer, Fred Anderson).

Steps in the Right Direction

However, when the hardware and software are both firing on all engines, the result can be pure poetry. For all its technological limitations, the original Mac 128k combined both to deliver the first viable GUI system for end users; now, the combination of Mac OS X Panther software and the new 64-bit Power Mac G5 delivers performance that even PC zealots can't help but admire.

Between its performance gains, its return to some traditional Mac interface values and its expanded support for heterogeneous environments, Panther (aka Mac OS X 10.3) has won over many of those hard-bitten Mac users loath to forsake Mac OS 9 — and gotten plaudits from our own testers here at Ziff Davis.

"In Mac OS X Version 10.3, Apple Computer Inc. combines its latest ideas with pieces drawn from the open-source world, from Mac OS versions past and from operating system rival Microsoft Corp.'s Windows," eWEEK Labs' Jason Brooks wrote in his first look at the new cat. "In so doing, Apple delivers what's probably the most polished desktop operating system available today."

Not too shabby — especially considering that Windows users will wait until 2006 for Longhorn, Microsoft's next big operating system (OS).

And on hardware fronts, Apple's embrace of the 64-bit desktop has propelled it out of the G4 doldrums. PC Magazine tells us that "The Apple Power Mac G5 has the horsepower to hang with any of the leading Windows PCs."

Whether they value the Mac as a keystone of personal-computing history, as a crucial part of their current work environment or as a continuing source of creative cross-pollination with the larger Windows world (and the emerging sphere of desktop Linux), Apple watchers of all stripes have good reason to celebrate the Mac's anniversary — and applaud Apple's focus on its core values.

Mac veteran Matthew Rothenberg is managing editor of Ziff Davis Internet.