PageMaker, the company's most well-known product, ushered in the modern era of desktop computers such as the Macintosh seeing widespread use in the publishing industry.

[1] Paul Brainerd, the company's co-founder, coined the term desktop publishing to describe this paradigm.

[4][5][6] Aldus was founded by Brainerd (who also served as chairman of the company's board), Jeremy Jaech, Mark Sundstrom, Mike Templeman, and Dave Walter.

[9] In early 1990, Aldus bought Silicon Beach Software, acquiring many consumer titles for the Macintosh, including SuperPaint, Digital Darkroom, SuperCard, Super3D, and Personal Press (later renamed Adobe Home Publisher).

[12] At that time, PageMaker was steadily losing market share to QuarkXPress, but Adobe was still five years from launching their own desktop publisher, InDesign.