Introduced by Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984, the Macintosh or Mac is a line of personal computers (PCs) designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. It was the first mass-market personal computer featuring a modern graphical user interface and mouse. Initially targeted mainly at the home, education, and creative professional markets, the Macintosh computer has evolved into one of the most popular general purpose computers on the market today, targeting business, science, finance and most other markets.

The Macintosh computers saw their early success especially in education and desktop publishing due to their ease of use and strong graphics support. However, the introduction of Microsoft Windows in the 1990s allowed IBM Personal Computers and their accompanying clones to have similar graphical capabilities which took significant market share from the more expensive Macintosh systems. The performance advantage of Macintosh systems was eroded by the rival Wintel platform powered by Intel's Pentium.

The Macintosh computers saw their revival when Apple introduced the iMac in 1998 which was an all-in-one computer. Its translucent plastic case, originally Bondi blue and later various additional colors, was considered an industrial design landmark. In 2006, Apple discontinued the use of its PowerPC microprocessors and began shipping all new Macs using x86 processors made by Intel.

The name Mac was originally selected by Apple project manager Jef Raskin for his favorite kind of apple. The spelling was changed to avoid potential lawsuits from audio equipment manufacturer McIntosh.