Almost forgot: January 24, 1984, was the launch of Apple's Macintosh. Yes, a lot of the ideas were already present in Xerox's Star, but the Mac did have include many inventions (I guess that today we'd call them "innovations") and it did mean that all of these things were within the realm of the affordable. More importantly, the Mac forced the rest of the industry to improve.

Some time ago I found online a copy of the famous '1984' ad that launched the Mac, directed by Ridley Scott. It's really great. I can only imagine the impression it must have caused at the time. I mean, a computer being advertised, quite literally, as part of a revolution? These days all "revolutionary" icons have been turned into marketing gimmicks (say, images of Che Guevara being used to sell T-Shirts, Jeans and such), but 20 years ago that must have been quite the thing to see. And to sell a computer no less.

One more thing: something interesting from this CNN article:

Twenty years ago, on January 24, 1984, Apple Computer launched the Macintosh. It contained virtually unknown features, including simple icons, and an odd little attachment called a mouse.

Many newspaper stories at the time had to include a definition. Silicon Valley's newspaper The San Jose (California) Mercury News, for example, described the mouse as "a handheld device that, when slid across a table top, moves the cursor on the Mac's screen."