--- title: "Which came first, the Macintosh or TikTok?" description: "the Macintosh vs TikTok: the Macintosh came first, by 32 years — 1984 against 2016. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently." url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-tiktok/ site: "At One Place" --- # Which came first, the Macintosh or TikTok? **Which came first, the Macintosh or TikTok?: the Macintosh** 1984 — 32 years before TikTok the Macintosh came first, by 32 years. Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert. ## Side by side | | the Macintosh | TikTok | | --- | --- | --- | | Year | 1984 | 2016 | | Date | 1984-01-24 | — | | Category | technology | technology | | What happened | Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert. | ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017. | ## 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. ## TikTok The app launched in China as Douyin in September 2016 and internationally as TikTok in 2017. What made it global was the 2018 acquisition and merger of Musical.ly, a lip-sync app that had launched in 2014 and already had a large Western user base — so part of TikTok is two years older than TikTok. Douyin and TikTok remain separate apps on separate infrastructure. ## Common questions ### Which came first, the Macintosh or TikTok? the Macintosh, by 32 years — 1984 against 2016. ### When did the Macintosh start? 1984. Apple launched the first Macintosh, two days after the Super Bowl advert. ### When did TikTok start? 2016. ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017. ## Related pages - [Apple or the Macintosh?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-macintosh/) - [the internet (ARPANET) or the Macintosh?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-macintosh/) - [the internet (ARPANET) or TikTok?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-tiktok/) - [email or the Macintosh?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-macintosh/) - [email or TikTok?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-tiktok/) - [the Macintosh or Microsoft?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-microsoft/) - [the Macintosh or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-windows/) - [the Macintosh or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-world-wide-web/) - [the Macintosh or Python?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-python/) - [the Macintosh or Netflix?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-netflix/) - [the Macintosh or Wikipedia?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-wikipedia/) - [the Macintosh or YouTube?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-youtube/) ## Sources - Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0] - Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place (/about/)