For years, Illustrator was Mac-only. Version 4.0 (1994) was the first native Windows version, but it was a flawed port—slow, buggy, and inferior to the Mac version. Many designers stayed with FreeHand.
The Vector Renaissance: A Historical Analysis of Adobe Illustrator’s Evolution and Impact (1987–Present) adobe illustrator history
When Macromedia acquired FreeHand in 1995, many designers feared Adobe would become complacent. Instead, Adobe released Illustrator 7.0 (1997) , a complete rewrite that integrated seamlessly with Adobe Photoshop (which had become a powerhouse). This was the first version to feel “modern”: floating palettes, docking, and full CMYK color separation for print. For years, Illustrator was Mac-only
The story of Illustrator begins not with a drawing tool, but with a printing language. Adobe Systems, founded by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, developed PostScript in 1985. PostScript allowed a computer to describe a page’s text and images mathematically (using lines and curves) rather than as a grid of pixels. This “vector” approach meant that any printer with a PostScript interpreter could produce high-quality, scalable output. The Vector Renaissance: A Historical Analysis of Adobe
introduced transparency, gradient meshes, and SVG export—features that FreeHand could not match. Illustrator 10 (2001) added web graphics tools, slicing, and live effects.