MISLEADING

Hi there! It is a bit of a "yes and no" situation. While Steve Jobs famously claimed in his 2005 Stanford commencement speech that the Macintosh was the first computer with beautiful typography 10, 13, 15, historical records show this isn't strictly true. Technical archaeology reveals that the Xerox Alto actually featured these typographic elements about a decade before the Mac 12. However, the Macintosh (released in 1984) was indeed the first widely available and successful mass-market personal computer to include multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts 1, 9, 11. These fonts, famously designed by artist Susan Kare, allowed for the first true "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) document experience for the general public 8. So, while the Mac didn't technically invent computer typography, it was the first to bring it out of the research lab and into our homes 1, 2, 12.