Happy 35th birthday, Mac

On January 22, 1984, Apple released the 1984 commercial - a campaign that only aired once and promised massive disruption in the technology space. Directed by Ridley Scott and featuring Anya Major storming a brainwashing session by PC drones, the commercial changed the way people thought about technology and the subsequent system - the Apple Lisa which morphed into the Macintosh - changed the way people thought about computers.

There is little more to be said about "thinking different" in the crypto space - crypto's creators think different everyday - but it's important to look to the Macintosh as the purest example of the perfect marriage of UX, UI, and hardware. While the PC seemed always the winner - Microsoft's efforts to get DOS and Windows onto millions of machines ensured that - the Macintosh snuck up from behind and is now the default OS and hardware for millions of creatives, programmers, and dreamers.

If we take any lessons from Apple it's that thinking about the way people use hardware and not the hardware itself is of vital importance. Just because it works - and the C: prompt worked just fine - doesn't mean it's a success. The real test of success is the ease with which the average person takes up a piece of technology and uses it to their benefit.

Usability and good design are vital to adoption. Let's not forget that as we build the next thirty-five years of computing.