Gadgets dominate, just 30 years after Mac started on road to becoming an icon

Computers at the time typically required people to type in commands. Once the 
Mac came out, people could instead navigate with a graphical user interface.

Available options were organised into menus. People clicked icons to run programs and dragged and dropped files to move them.

The Mac introduced real-world metaphors such as using a rubbish bin to delete files. It brought us fonts and other tools once limited to professional printers. Most importantly, it made computing and publishing easy enough for everyday people to learn and use.

Apple sparked a revolution in computing with the Mac. In turn, that sparked a revolution in publishing as people began creating fancy newsletters, brochures and other publications from their desktops.

The Mac has had “incredible influence on pretty much everybody’s lives all over the world since computers are now so ubiquitous,” said Brad Myers, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. “Pretty much all consumer electronics are adopting all of the same kinds of interactions