The Macintosh SE was introduced by Apple at the same time as the Macintosh II. It fit in the same size case as the original Macintosh computer.

The SE's notable new features, compared to its similar predecessor the Macintosh Plus, were:

• First compact Macintosh with space for an internal hard disk, or, if the user preferred, dual floppy drives.
• First compact Macintosh that featured an expansion slot (SE stood for "System Expansion").
• Used the new Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) for keyboard and mouse interface.

Originally the SE could use only Single Density (SD) (400K) and Double Density (DD) (800K) formatted floppy disks. In August 1989, Apple introduced the Macintosh SE FDHD with the new SuperDrive, a floppy disk drive that could handle 1.4MB High Density (HD) floppy disks. HD floppies would become the de facto standard on both the Macintosh and PC computers from then on.

After Apple introduced the Macintosh SE/30 in January 1989, they sold an SE/30 motherboard as a rather expensive, optional upgrade for the SE.

The SE was discontinued in October 1990, with the introduction of the Macintosh Classic.