---
title: "Which came first, Instagram or the Macintosh?"
description: "Instagram vs the Macintosh: the Macintosh came first, by 26 years — 1984 against 2010. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/instagram-vs-macintosh/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Instagram or the Macintosh?

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

1984 — 26 years before Instagram

the Macintosh came first, by 26 years. Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert.

## Side by side

|  | Instagram | the Macintosh |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2010 | 1984 |
| Date | 2010-10-06 | 1984-01-24 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | The app launched on iOS. | Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert. |

## Instagram

Instagram launched in October 2010 as an iPhone-only app and took 25,000 users on its first day. Facebook bought it in April 2012 for about $1 billion when it had thirteen employees and no revenue. It is four years younger than Twitter and six years older than TikTok.

## 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, Instagram or the Macintosh?

the Macintosh, by 26 years — 1984 against 2010.

### When did Instagram start?

2010. The app launched on iOS.

### 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]