History Main article: History of Apple See also: Apple Inc. litigation 1976–1980: The early years The Apple I, Apple’s first product. Sold as an assembled circuit board, it lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case. The owner of this unit added a keyboard and a wooden case. Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne,[10] to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. They were hand-built by Wozniak[11][12] and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. 13] The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips)—less than what is today considered a complete personal computer. [14] The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666. 66. [15][16][17][18][19] Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977[5] without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple. [20][21] The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire.
It differed from its major rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because it came with color graphics and an open architecture. While early models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface, the Disk II. [22] The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first “killer app” of the business world—the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. [23] VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II, and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II—compatibility with the office. 23] According to Brian Bagnall, Apple exaggerated its sales figures and was a distant third place to Commodore and Tandy until VisiCalc came along. [24][25] By the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The Apple II was succeeded by the Apple III in May 1980 as the company competed with IBM and Microsoft in the business and corporate computing market. [26] Jobs and several Apple employees including Jef Raskin visited Xerox PARC in December 1979 to see the Xerox Alto. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for $1 million in pre-IPO Apple stock. 27] Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a GUI, and development of a GUI began for the Apple Lisa. [28] 1981–1985: Lisa and Macintosh The heroine from Apple’s 1984 ad, set in a dystopian future modeled after the Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, set the tone for the introduction of the Macintosh. Steve Jobs began working on the Apple Lisa in 1978 but in 1982 he was pushed from the Lisa team due to infighting, and took over Jef Raskin’s low-cost-computer project, the Macintosh. A turf war broke out between Lisa’s “corporate shirts” and Jobs’ “pirates” over which product would ship first and save Apple.
Lisa won the race in 1983 and became the first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI, but was a commercial failure due to its high price tag and limited software titles. [29] The Macintosh 128K, the first Macintosh computer. In 1984, Apple next launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by the now famous $1. 5 million television commercial, “1984”. It was directed by Ridley Scott, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984,[30] and is now considered a watershed event for Apple’s success[31] and a masterpiece. [32][33]
The Macintosh initially sold well, but follow-up sales were not strong. [34] The machine’s fortunes changed with the introduction of the LaserWriter, the first PostScript laser printer to be offered at a reasonable price point, and PageMaker, an early desktop publishing package. The Mac was particularly powerful in this market due to its advanced graphics capabilities, which were already necessarily built-in to create the intuitive Macintosh GUI. It has been suggested that the combination of these three products was responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market. [35]
With continued strong sales of the Apple II, and the introduction of the Macintosh, Apple’s sales reached new highs and the company had its initial public offering on September 7, 1984. A power struggle developed between Jobs and new CEO John Sculley in 1985. [36] Apple’s board of directors sided with Sculley and Jobs was removed from his managerial duties. [34] Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc. the same year. [37] Apple’s sustained growth during the early 1980s was partly due to its leadership in the education sector, attributed to their adaptation of the programming language LOGO, used in many schools with the Apple II.
The drive into education was accentuated in California with the donation of one Apple II and one Apple LOGO software package to each public school in the state. 1986–1993: Rise and fall See also: Timeline of Apple II family and Timeline of Macintosh models The Macintosh Portable was Apple’s first “portable” Macintosh computer, released in 1989. Having learned several painful lessons after introducing the bulky Macintosh Portable in 1989, Apple introduced the PowerBook in 1991, which established the modern form and ergonomic layout of the laptop computer. 38] The same year, Apple introduced System 7, a major upgrade to the operating system which added color to the interface and introduced new networking capabilities. It remained the architectural basis for Mac OS until 2001. The success of the PowerBook and other products led to increasing revenue. [36] For some time, it appeared that Apple could do no wrong, introducing fresh new products and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 and 1991 as the “first golden age” of the Macintosh.
Following the success of the LC, Apple introduced the Centris line, a low end Quadra offering, and the ill-fated Performa line which was sold in several confusing configurations and software bundles to avoid competing with the various consumer outlets such as Sears, Price Club, and Wal-Mart, the primary dealers for these models. The end result was disastrous for Apple as consumers did not understand the difference between models. During this time Apple experimented with a number of other failed consumer targeted products including digital cameras, portable CD audio players, speakers, video consoles, and TV appliances.
Enormous resources were also invested in the problem-plagued Newton division based on John Sculley’s unrealistic market forecasts. Ultimately, all of this proved be too-little-too-late for Apple as their market share and stock prices continued to slide. Apple saw the Apple II family as too expensive to produce, while taking away sales from the low end Macintosh. [39] In 1990 Apple released the Macintosh LC with a single expansion slot for the Apple IIe Card to migrate Apple II users to the Macintosh platform. [40] Apple stopped selling the Apple IIe in 1993.
Microsoft continued to gain market share with Windows, focusing on delivering software with cheap commodity PCs while Apple was delivering a richly engineered, but expensive, experience. [41] Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response. Instead they sued Microsoft for using a graphical user interface similar to the Apple Lisa in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation. [42] The lawsuit dragged on for years before being thrown out of court. At the same time, a series of major product flops and missed deadlines destroyed Apple’s reputation and Sculley was replaced by Michael Spindler. 43] 1994–1997: Attempts at reinvention The Newton was Apple’s first foray into the PDA markets, as well as one of the first in the industry. A financial flop, it helped pave the way for the Palm Pilot and Apple’s own iPhone in the future. By the early 1990s, Apple was developing alternative platforms to the Macintosh, such as the A/UX. The Macintosh platform was becoming outdated since it was not built for multitasking, and several important software routines were programmed directly into the hardware. In addition, Apple was facing competition from OS/2 and UNIX vendors like Sun Microsystems.
The Macintosh would need to be replaced by a new platform, or reworked to run on more powerful hardware. [44] In 1994, Apple allied with IBM and Motorola in the AIM alliance. The goal was to create a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform), which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple’s software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP’s performance and Apple’s software would leave the PC far behind, thus countering Microsoft. The same year, Apple introduced the Power Macintosh, the first of many Apple computers to use IBM’s PowerPC processor. [45]
In 1996, Michael Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio as CEO. Gil Amelio made many changes at Apple, including massive layoffs. [46] After multiple failed attempts to improve Mac OS, first with the Taligent project, then later with Copland and Gershwin, Amelio chose to purchase NeXT and its NeXTSTEP operating system, bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple as an advisor. [47] On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted by the board of directors after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses. Jobs became the interim CEO and began restructuring the company’s product line.
At the 1997 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would join Microsoft to release new versions of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh, and that Microsoft made a $150 million investment in non-voting Apple stock. [48] On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced the Apple Store, tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing strategy. [49][50] 1998–2005: New beginnings Company headquarters on Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California. On August 15, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the Macintosh 128K: the iMac.
The iMac design team was led by Jonathan Ive, who would later design the iPod and the iPhone. [51][52] The iMac featured current technology and a groundbreaking design. It sold close to 800,000 units in its first five months and returned Apple to profitability for the first time since 1993. [53] Through this period, Apple purchased several companies to create a portfolio of professional and consumer-oriented digital production software. In 1998, Apple announced the purchase of Macromedia’s Final Cut software, signaling its expansion into the digital video editing market. 54] The following year, Apple released two video editing products: iMovie for consumers, and Final Cut Pro for professionals, the latter of which has gone on to be a significant video-editing program, with 800,000 registered users in early 2007. [55] In 2002 Apple purchased Nothing Real for their advanced digital compositing application Shake,[56] as well as Emagic for their music productivity application Logic, which led to the development of their consumer-level GarageBand application. [57][58] iPhoto’s release the same year completed the iLife suite. [59]
Mac OS X, based on NeXT’s OPENSTEP and BSD Unix was released on March 24, 2001, after several years of development. Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, Mac OS X aimed to combine the stability, reliability and security of Unix with the ease of use afforded by an overhauled user interface. To aid users in migrating from Mac OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of OS 9 applications through Mac OS X’s Classic environment. [60] The entrance of the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City is a glass cube, housing a cylindrical elevator and a spiral staircase that leads into the subterranean store.
On May 19, 2001, Apple opened the first official Apple Retail Stores in Virginia and California. [61] The same year, Apple introduced the iPod portable digital audio player. The product was phenomenally successful — over 100 million units were sold within six years. [62][63] In 2003, Apple’s iTunes Store was introduced, offering online music downloads for $0. 99 a song and integration with the iPod. The service quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over 5 billion downloads by June 19, 2008. 64] Since 2001 Apple’s design team has progressively abandoned the use of translucent colored plastics first used in the iMac G3. This began with the titanium PowerBook and was followed by the white polycarbonate iBook and the flat-panel iMac. [65][66] 2005–present: The Intel partnership Main article: Apple Intel transition The MacBook Pro (15. 4″ widescreen) was Apple’s first laptop with an Intel microprocessor. It was announced in January 2006 and is aimed at the professional market.
At the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would begin producing Intel-based Mac computers in 2006. [67] On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to utilize Intel’s Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006 Apple had transitioned the entire Mac product line to Intel chips, over 1 year sooner than announced. [67] The Power Mac, iBook, and PowerBook brands were retired during the transition, the Mac Pro, MacBook, and Macbook Pro became their respective successors. 68][69] Apple also introduced Boot Camp to help users install Windows XP or Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X. [70] Apple’s success during this period was evident in its stock price. Between early 2003 and 2006, the price of Apple’s stock increased more than tenfold, from around $6 per share (split-adjusted) to over $80. In January 2006, Apple’s market cap surpassed that of Dell. [71] Nine years prior, Dell’s CEO Michael Dell said that if he ran Apple he would “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders. “[72]
Delivering his keynote at the Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs announced that Apple Computer, Inc. would from that point on be known as Apple Inc. The event also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV. [73] The following day, Apple shares hit $97. 80, an all-time high. In May, Apple’s share price passed the $100 mark. [74] On February 7, 2007, Apple indicated that it would sell music on the iTunes Store without DRM (which would allow tracks to be played on third-party players) if record labels would agree to drop the technology. 75] On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI’s catalog in the iTunes Store, effective in May. [76] On July 11, 2008, Apple launched the App Store to sell third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. [77] Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and brought in $1 million daily on average, with Steve Jobs speculating that the App Store could become a billion-dollar business for Apple. [78] Three months later, it was announced that Apple had become the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone. 79] On December 16, 2008, Apple announced 2009 would be the last year Apple would be attending the Macworld Expo, and that Phil Schiller would deliver the 2009 keynote in lieu of the expected Steve Jobs. [80] On January 14, 2009, an internal Apple memo from Steve Jobs announced that he would be taking a six-month leave of absence, until the end of June 2009, to allow him to better focus on his health and to allow the company to better focus on its products. [81]