Macworld is a web site and monthly computer magazine dedicated to Apple Macintosh products. It is published by Mac Publishing, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Published since 1984, the magazine has the largest audited circulation (both total and newsstand) of Macintosh-focused magazines in North America, more than double its nearest competitor, Mac|Life (formerly MacAddict). Macworld was founded by David Bunnell (publisher) and Andrew Fluegelman (editor). It is the oldest Macintosh magazine still in publication.

In 1997, the publication was renamed to Macworld, incorporating MacUser (a name reflected subtly on the magazine's Table of Contents page) to reflect the consolidation of the Ziff-Davis-owned MacUser magazine into the International Data Group-owned Macworld within the new Mac Publishing joint venture between the two publishers. In 1999, the combined company also purchased the online publication MacCentral Online, because Macworld didn't have a powerful online news component at the time. In late 2001 International Data Group (IDG) bought out Ziff-Davis' share of Mac Publishing, making it a wholly owned subsidiary of IDG.

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.