Mac
The Macintosh, or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple. Named after the McIntosh variety of apple, the original Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984. It was one of the first commercially successful personal computers to use a graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse instead of the then-standard command line interface. The current range of Macintoshes varies from Apple's entry level Mac mini desktop, to a mid-range server, the Xserve. Macintosh systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. Production of the Macintosh is based upon a vertical integration model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its hardware and creates its own operating system that is pre-installed on all Macintoshes. This is in contrast to PCspre-installed with Microsoft Windows, where one vendor provides the operating system and multiple vendors create the hardware. (In both cases, the hardware can run other operating systems; modern Macintoshes, like PC's, are capable of running operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD and Windows.)
