Apple, Inc. has come a long way since 1976
On April first, 1976, 3 enterprising young guys created Apple Computer, Inc, with the intent to make and distribute personal computers. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne began with a dream of creating computers smaller and readily available to the general population. They put together their computers in Jobs' parent's garage & rolled out the Apple I personal computer kit in 1976, the same year they started Apple. Eventually, 200 of these computer kits would be sold.
Steve Jobs approached a local pc shop, The Byte Shop, which ordered fifty computer kits and paid $500 for each unit after much persuasion from Jobs, whose persuasive techniques have since become known as "the reality-distortion field". Jobs then ordered components from Cramer Electronics, a national electronics parts distributor. Using a number of techniques, including borrowing space from friends and family and selling various items (including a Volkswagen Bus), Jobs managed to acquire the parts required while Wozniak and Wayne built the Apple I kits.
The next year, the Apple II was introduced and quickly became much more popular than its major competition, the TRS-80 (which used cassette tapes for storage, and was known derisively as the TRasH-80) and the Commodore 64, despite the fact that Apple II's price was higher. One of the big advantages of the Apple was the development of the floppy disk drive and software.
The Apple II was selected by programmers to be the desktop platform for the first "killer application" of the business world. This was a spreadsheet program known as VisCalc. This developed a huge market for the Apple. The business market attracted many more software and hardware developers to the machine, and it also attracted home users who chose the Apple to be compatible with their workplace machines.
Over the years, Apple Computer would release many more designs, with each one just a little better than the last. In 1984, Steve Jobs was on hand to introduce the Mac as the "Computer for the rest of us". In 1989, Apple introduced the Macintosh Portable. However, this computer was actually extremely bulky and cumbersome and was met with mixed reviews. At this point, Apple hired industrial designers to develop a better, more portable personal computer.
In 1991, the Apple PowerBook was introduced. The PowerBook would provide the general layout & form for the laptop computers we know today. This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer of both desktop and notebook machines. The success of this laptop led to increased revenues and growing popularity of Apple in the computer market, and was followed up by the addition of the Apple iMac to their line of personal computers, in 1998. They also branched out into the music arena with the development of the iPod personal music player, which went on to grab an 80% market share.
Reflecting this expansion into other markets, on January 9, 2007, they changed their name from Apple Computer, Inc to simply Apple, Incorporated. While this company has had their ups and downs over the years, Apple has continued to be a solid presence in the desktop computer and notebook market. Their products have continued to develop to meet the needs of both the business and individual user.
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Published March 8th, 2008
Filed in Computer, Technology