About Apple Macbook



Connect with adapters for your MacBook. If the cable from your external device doesn't connect to the USB-C port on your MacBook, you might need an adapter. Learn how to use the USB-C port and adapters. Sep 10, 2020. The MacBook is a line of Macintosh notebook computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Inc. From May 2006 to February 2012. A new line of computers by the same name was released in 2015, serving the same purpose as an entry-level laptop. It replaced the iBook series and 12-inch PowerBook series of notebooks as a part of Apple's transition from PowerPC to Intel processors.

Apple’s goal for the MacBook was to engineer a full‑size experience into the lightest and most compact notebook. The result is more than just a light, thin, functional and capable computer. It’s the future of the notebook.

Contents

  • 1 Interesting MacBook Facts

Interesting MacBook Facts

There are so many reasons to love the MacBook, and here we will list some facts to show you why! These facts may help you to use your notebook, and to better understand it. Enjoy this article!

Interesting Facts

  • On the MacBook Air, you can watch a DVD using another computer’s drive over a Wi-Fi network by using the Remote Disc feature.
  • If you can’t open the DVD Player, or if you want to use an alternate player as your default player, alter the settings in System Preferences – CDs & DVDs.
  • Whichever applications you use on your Mac, you can speed up your work by manipulating text with the keyboard rather than the mouse. Many developers and other professionals use shortcuts to work faster and make the entire process easier.

Standard Shortcuts

Command key + S – a standard shortcut for Save.

Command key + Shift + S – Save As.

Command key + D – when you are specifying where to save your work, this combination leads you to the desktop.

Command key + Shift + H – takes you to your Home folder.

▲/▼ button reveals or hides the file browser.

Moving around: Use the arrow keys to move around by letter and line. Add the Command key (or the Options key in some applications), to move by word and paragraph.

Selecting text: Hold down the Shift key and the arrow keys become tools for selecting text.

Use the Command key or Option key to select by words and paragraphs rather than letters and lines

Cut:Command key + X f.

Copy:Command key + C.

Paste:Command key + V.

(Cut, Copy and Paste are easy to remember and fast to use, as X, C and V are adjacent on the keyboard).

Jumping around: Use the Home and End keys to jump to the beginning or end of a line.

Many text shortcuts are available in each application. In Microsoft Word, Shift + ^ + Arrow Up or Shift + ^ + Arrow down move paragraphs up and down. Shift + F3 toggles selected text between upper and lower case.

A search box will help you to find folders to save into. You can also create a new folder using the button at the bottom-left. Just as in Finder, you can navigate back and forward or change views by using the button on the top-right.

You can drag the Sidebar pane on the left in and out.

  • Start-Up Modes: When troubleshooting your Mac, there are various key combinations that do useful things during start-up. In each case you have to make sure the Mac is switched off. If you are not sure if the machine is switched off, hold down the power button for five seconds. Then switch on and as soon as you hear the startup chime hold down one of the following until something appears on the screen:

Shift – Safe Mode.

Command Key + S – Single User Mode.

C – Boot from CD.

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  • The first MacBook Air was very similar to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, except that the MacBook Air was shrunk down to an ultra-thin case. The case measured just 0.76 inches thick. As its name suggests, the MacBook Air is all about being light-weight, as it is almost two pounds lighter than the MacBook. The MacBook Air’s lightweight structure makes it a popular choice for users who travel for work and carry the device with them. Although the MacBook Air lacks the glass trackpad from the MacBook and MacBook Pro, this notebook does have multi-touch capability.
  • The MacBook Air’s screen remains the full 13-inch size. It has the same full-sized backlit keyboard as the MacBook Pro.
  • The MacBook Air has no optical drive. Users can purchase the optical drive separately and attach it to the notebook via USB. However, Apple’s Disc Sharing feature enables a MacBook Air to borrow the optical drive from another Mac or even PC computer.
  • Despite costing more than previous MacBooks, Apple’s MacBook Air has much lower specifications. By shaving two pounds off the weight of a MacBook, without compromising on the screen and keyboard, Apple made a popular notebook for users who carry around a notebook all day long. Indeed, when walking around all day with a notebook, the extremely low weight is very convenient.
  • MacBook Pro: The MacBook Pro is a portable notebook which has higher specifications and a wider range of features compared to other MacBook models. This ensures that the MacBook Pro is a much more powerful unit. As well as the 13-inch screen, it also has 15- and 17-inch display options. The MacBooks with these larger screen options have more powerful innards, for example, graphic cards with their own memory (unlike the integrated graphics option used on the MacBook, which shares the memory with the main system). The MacBook Pro can thus be used for graphics-intensive tasks, such as video editing, digital image, games or programs that use 3-D graphics, and more. The MacBook Pro features a backlit keyboard. When the light in the environment fades, the keys light up, enabling the user to easily continue working.

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  • It’s hard to part with, but is your eyes are on a new MacBook, we are here to help. You can sell your old Mac to us: Sell MacBook online for the best price. Free instant quote, free shipping, fast and secure payment.

Ten Things to Know about MacBook Pro (Late-2016) [Video]

Ten things you need to know about the Apple’s MacBook Pro (Late-2016). Video uploaded by TechnoBuffalo, on October 27, 2016.

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Steven Levy
Senior editor, Newsweek, New York City. Author of Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology and others.
Alternative Titles: Apple Computer, Inc.

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, Inc., American manufacturer of personal computers, computerperipherals, and computer software. It was the first successful personal computer company and the popularizer of the graphical user interface. Headquarters are located in Cupertino, California.

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Apple Inc. had its genesis in the lifelong dream of Stephen G. Wozniak to build his own computer—a dream that was made suddenly feasible with the arrival in 1975 of the first commercially successful microcomputer, the Altair 8800, which came as a kit and used the recently invented microprocessor chip. Encouraged by his friends at the Homebrew Computer Club, a San Francisco Bay area group centred around the Altair, Wozniak quickly came up with a plan for his own microcomputer. In 1976, when the Hewlett-Packard Company, where Wozniak was an engineering intern, expressed no interest in his design, Wozniak, then 26 years old, together with a former high-school classmate, 21-year-old Steve Jobs, moved production operations to the Jobs family garage—and the Silicon Valley garage start-up company legend was born. Jobs and Wozniak named their company Apple. For working capital, Jobs sold his Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak his programmable calculator. Their first model was simply a working circuit board, but at Jobs’s insistence the 1977 version was a stand-alone machine in a custom-molded plastic case, in contrast to the forbidding steel boxes of other early machines. This Apple II also offered a colour display and other features that made Wozniak’s creation the first microcomputer that appealed to the average person.

Commercial success

Though he was a brash business novice whose appearance still bore traces of his hippie past, Jobs understood that in order for the company to grow, it would require professional management and substantial funding. He convinced Regis McKenna, a well-known public relations specialist for the semiconductor industry, to represent the company; he also secured an investment from Michael Markkula, a wealthy veteran of the Intel Corporation who became Apple’s largest shareholder and an influential member of Apple’s board of directors. The company became an instant success, particularly after Wozniak invented a disk controller that allowed the addition of a low-cost floppy disk drive that made information storage and retrieval fast and reliable. With room to store and manipulate data, the Apple II became the computer of choice for legions of amateur programmers. Most notably, in 1979 two Bostonians—Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston—introduced the first personal computer spreadsheet, VisiCalc, creating what would later be known as a “killer app” (application): a software program so useful that it propels hardware sales.

While VisiCalc opened up the small-business and consumer market for the Apple II, another important early market was primary educational institutions. By a combination of aggressive discounts and donations (and an absence of any early competition), Apple established a commanding presence among educational institutions, contributing to its platform’s dominance of primary-school software well into the 1990s.

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Competition from IBM

Apple’s profits and size grew at a historic rate: by 1980 the company netted over $100 million and had more than 1,000 employees. Its public offering in December was the biggest since 1956, when the Ford Motor Company had gone public. (Indeed, by the end of 1980, Apple’s valuation of nearly $2 billion was greater than Ford’s.) However, Apple would soon face competition from the computer industry’s leading player, International Business Machines Corporation. IBM had waited for the personal computer market to grow before introducing its own line of personal computers, the IBM PC, in 1981. IBM broke with its tradition of using only proprietary hardware components and software and built a machine from readily available components, including the Intel microprocessor, and used DOS (disk operating system) from the Microsoft Corporation. Because other manufacturers could use the same hardware components that IBM used, as well as license DOS from Microsoft, new software developers could count on a wide IBM PC-compatible market for their software. Soon the new system had its own killer app: the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, which won an instant constituency in the business community—a market that the Apple II had failed to penetrate.

Macintosh and the first affordable GUI

Apple had its own plan to regain leadership: a sophisticated new generation of computers that would be dramatically easier to use. In 1979 Jobs had led a team of engineers to see the innovations created at the Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto (California) Research Center (PARC). There they were shown the first functional graphical user interface (GUI), featuring on-screen windows, a pointing device known as a mouse, and the use of icons, or pictures, to replace the awkward protocols required by all other computers. Apple immediately incorporated these ideas into two new computers: Lisa, released in 1983, and the lower-cost Macintosh, released in 1984. Jobs himself took over the latter project, insisting that the computer should be not merely great but “insanely great.” The result was a revelation—perfectly in tune with the unconventional, science-fiction-esque television commercial that introduced the Macintosh during the broadcast of the 1984 Super Bowl—a $2,500 computer unlike any that preceded it.

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Quick Facts
date
  • 1976 - present
related people
did you know?
  • Co-founder Ronald Wayne sold his 10% stake in Apple for $800.
  • Apple was founded on April Fool's Day in 1976.
  • The Apple logo was designed with a bite so that it wouldn't be mistaken for a cherry from afar.
  • Apple's market cap is greater than the GDPs of the Netherlands, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and Norway.
  • In 2011, Apple's financial reserves were greater than the U.S. Treasury's operating cash balance.