The LaserWriter was a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter introduced by Apple in 1985. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMaker, that operated on top of the graphical user interface of Macintosh computers, the LaserWriter was a key component at the beginning of the desktop publishing revolution.

Laser printing traces its history to efforts by Gary Starkweather at Xerox in 1969, which resulted in a commercial system called the Xerox 9700. IBM followed this with the IBM 3800 system in 1976. Both machines were large, room-filling devices handing the combined output of many users. During the mid-1970s, Canon started working on similar machines, and partnered with Hewlett-Packard to produce 1980's HP 2680, which filled only part of a room. Other copier companies also started development of similar systems.

HP introduced their first desktop model with a Ricoh engine for $12,800 in 1983. Sales of the non-networked product were unsurprisingly poor. In 1983 Canon introduced the LPB-CX, a desktop laser printer engine using a laser diode and featuring an output resolution of 300 dpi. In 1984, HP released the first commercially available system based on the LPB-CX, the HP LaserJet.