On the Mac’s 30th birthday, Apple does some horn tooting

Outside of product announcements and keynote addresses, Apple tends to be a fairly reserved company, to put it lightly. For years, the company has been called tight-lipped and secretive. So the fact that the company added a section to its website Friday marking the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh home computer’s emergence on the market seems uncharacteristic. It isn’t just a timeline and a few words about the computer’s introduction on Jan. 24, 1984, either. There’s a video with gushing interviews with computer experts, teachers, designers, artists, and Moby: Beyond that, the company is asking fans to share their stories in a section called “Your first Mac.” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, even opened up to MacWorld about the anniversary. “Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they’re all gone,” he said. “We’re the only one left. We’re still doing it, and growing faster than the rest of the PC industry because of that willingness to reinvent ourselves over and over.” That may not seem like much, but for Apple, it’s an uncommon level of candor. Of course, Apple left some of the heavy lifting to websites that were more than happy to publish retrospectives on its behalf. Forbes has this collection of quotes about the machine. Mashable offered this brief history, which included a mention of the iconic “1984” Super Bowl ad that introduced the Macintosh.