---
title: "Which came first, the Macintosh or Netflix?"
description: "the Macintosh vs Netflix: the Macintosh came first, by 13 years — 1984 against 1997. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-netflix/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the Macintosh or Netflix?

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

1984 — 13 years before Netflix

the Macintosh came first, by 13 years. Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert.

## Side by side

|  | the Macintosh | Netflix |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1984 | 1997 |
| Date | 1984-01-24 | 1997-08-29 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert. | Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company. |

## 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.

## Netflix

Netflix was founded in August 1997, a year before Google, and posted DVDs for a decade before streaming launched in January 2007. The famous origin story — Hastings founding it after a $40 late fee on Apollo 13 — has been called a useful myth by co-founder Marc Randolph. Blockbuster declined to buy the company for $50 million in 2000.

## Common questions

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

the Macintosh, by 13 years — 1984 against 1997.

### When did the Macintosh start?

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

### When did Netflix start?

1997. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.

## Related pages

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## Sources

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