The Berkeley Macintosh Users Group, or more commonly "BMUG", was the largest Macintosh User Group. It was founded in September 1984 by a group of UC Berkeley students including Reese Jones and Raines Cohen as a focal-point for the nascent Apple Macintosh user community. With more than 13,000 members, or "BMUGgers" at its peak in 1993, the group was the largest, and generally understood to be the most important, Macintosh users group. A few of the notable members include John "Captain Crunch" Draper, the Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah, notorious murderer Enrique Zambrano, early hacker-chaser Cliff Stoll, Inktomi founder Eric Brewer, and may prominent computing journalists like John Dvorak, Ilene Hoffman, Leo Laporte and Adam Engst. An example of the group's omnipresent blue-floppy-disk lapel pin is held in the Smithsonian Institution's American History collection. BMUG's history and activities were closely linked with the MacWorld Expo meetings, traditionally held in San Francisco each January and Boston each August.

Macworld/iWorld was an information technology trade show with conference tracks dedicated to Apple's Mac platform. It was held annually in the United States during January. Originally Macworld Expo and then Macworld Conference & Exposition, the gathering dates back to 1985. The conference was organized by International Data Group (IDG), co-publisher of Macworld magazine.