That was in 1984, the year of Big Brother and the year of the Apple Macintosh. This is what The Times said about the new Apple PC on February 7, 1984:
The long-awaited new computer from Apple, the Macintosh, has, it seems, been launched not a moment too soon. On the day selected for a joint US-European launch, the company reported a huge drop in earnings, attributable, it says, to a had price war.
Apple has invested heavily, spending $80 million on R&D, and $20 million on a new factory. The new machine is aimed directly at the IBM personal computer buyer, and is offering the now familiar windows, pull-down menus and mouse. Ease of use is one of the big selling points and to this end there is a 40-minute audio training session included in the pack.
The main unit, which has a desk footprint of only 10 inches square, contains a nine-inch black and white monitor, a single 3½ inch disk drive holding 400K and weighs less than some “portables”, at only 17lb. Macintosh has 129K of RAM and 64K of ROM.