When you think about it, the original Apple Macintosh was a ridiculous computer. It had a 9-inch monochrome display that was tiny even by 1984 standards. There were no expansion slots, which was a standard feature of most personal computers, including the venerable Apple IIe. And there was no way to add a hard drive without going to a third-party provider such as General Computer Corporation.

So by all rights, the Macintosh should have been a failure like Apple’s two prior attempts to enter the business computing market–the Apple III and the Lisa–but it wasn’t. This was largely thanks to the work of third-party hardware developers like GCC–but especially third-party software companies like Aldus and Adobe, which made the Macintosh the go-to in the newly emerging field of desktop publishing.