The real rise of personal laser printers took off after Steve Jobs got involved. Up until then, they were the office behemoths that the obit writes about. Jobs brilliantly saw the combination of the Mac, the new PostScript printing language, low-cost laser printers, the AppleTalk communications protocol and personal computer software for desktop publishing. From Wiki...
Jobs saw the LPB-CX at Xerox while negotiating for supplies of 3.5" floppy disk drives for the upcoming Apple Macintosh computer.John Warnock had left Xerox to found Adobe Systems in order to commercialize PostScript and AppleTalk in a laser printer they intended to market. Jobs was aware of Warnock's efforts, and he started working on convincing Warnock to allow Apple to license PostScript for a new printer that Apple would sell. Negotiations between Apple and Adobe over the use of Postscript began in 1983 and an agreement was reached in December 1983, one month before Macintosh was announced. Jobs eventually arranged for Apple to buy $2.5 million in Adobe stock.
At about the same time, Jonathan Seybold introduced Paul Brainerd to Apple, where he learned of Apple's laser printer efforts and saw the potential for a new program using the Mac's GUI to produce PostScript output for the new printer. Arranging his own funding through a venture capital firm, Brainerd formed Aldus and began development of what would become PageMaker. The VC coined the term "desktop publishing" during this time.
The LaserWriter was announced at Apple's annual shareholder meeting on January 23, 1985, the same day Aldus announced PageMaker. Shipments of the LaserWriter began in March 1985 at the retail price of $6,995, significantly more than the HP model. However, the LaserWriter featured AppleTalk support that allowed the printer to be shared among as many as sixteen Macs, meaning that its per-user price could fall to under $450, far less expensive than HP's less-advanced model. In 1988, the LaserWriter II was introduced at a much lower price point.
My wife worked at Apple during the Apple II, Apple III and Mac development days, leaving in 1988. After using a horrendous, screeching dot-matrix printer at home, we were able to purchase a LaserWriter II at a deep company discount in 1988.
So MANY brilliant minds came together during that period in the early and mid 80s that transformed everything we do in business. The irony is that laser printers are so commoditized today and people are finding less and less need to print pages that HP and Xerox are now in acquisition / merger discussions and are trying to figure out how to eventually get out of that money-losing business. HP thinks their printing future may be 3D additive printing.
They were the product of a decentralized and individualized education system that has since been homogenized and forced into a one size fits all mold by politicians, unions, Big Pharma and petty beaurocrats.