---
title: "Which came first, Amazon or the Macintosh?"
description: "Amazon vs the Macintosh: the Macintosh came first, by 10 years — 1984 against 1994. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/amazon-vs-macintosh/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Amazon or the Macintosh?

**Which came first, Amazon or the Macintosh?: the Macintosh**

1984 — 10 years before Amazon

the Macintosh came first, by 10 years. Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert.

## Side by side

|  | Amazon | the Macintosh |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1994 | 1984 |
| Date | 1994-07-05 | 1984-01-24 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state. | Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert. |

## Amazon

Amazon was incorporated on 5 July 1994, originally as Cadabra, and the website opened in July 1995 selling only books. The 1994 incorporation date is used here because it is the company's own founding date; if you mean the shop, 1995 is the answer. Either way it predates Google by three or four years and eBay by about a year.

## the Macintosh

The Macintosh launched in January 1984 with a graphical interface and a mouse, and beat Windows to market by almost two years. Neither invented the idea — Xerox PARC had built the Alto in 1973, and both Apple and Microsoft were working from what they had seen there. Mac OS X, the ancestor of today's macOS, arrived much later in 2001 and is Unix underneath.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Amazon or the Macintosh?

the Macintosh, by 10 years — 1984 against 1994.

### When did Amazon start?

1994. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

### When did the Macintosh start?

1984. Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]