Macintosh Plus 1MB Computer

Apple Macintosh Plus computer, with upgraded hard drive by Rodime PLC, 1987.

The Apple Macintosh Plus was an upgraded version of the Macintosh personal computer, a revolutionary design of user-friendly personal computer, commonly known as the Apple Mac.

Most early personal computers were used through text displays and typing in commands, making them quite difficult to use. In 1984 the American computer company Apple introduced the Macintosh, the first widely available computer to feature a graphical user interface (GUI). Instead of typing commands to control the machine, Macintosh users moved a pointer around the screen and clicked on icons and menus using a mouse controller, a novelty at the time. This made it far more user friendly than other computers. Supported by clever advertising and the very neat industrial design of the all-in-one computer case, the Macintosh was a huge success in many countries and highly influential on the design of later personal computers. In Britain, they were comparatively expensive at over £2000, but found many fans, particularly amongst people in the creative industries.

This particular computer is an Apple Macintosh Plus, an upgraded version launched in 1986, which featured a larger 1-megabyte memory and several other improvements. This example is also fitted with a 20-megabyte hard disk drive, a novel feature at the time, which offered far more data storage than the Macintosh Plus's standard 800-kilobyte floppy disk drive.