istory of Apple Inc.

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For more general information about the company, see Apple Inc.

Current Apple Inc. logo, introduced in 1998, discontinued in 2000, and re-established in 2014 [citation needed]

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, Inc., is a multinational corporation that

creates consumer electronics, personal computers, servers, and computer software,
and is a digital distributor of media content. The company also has a chain of retail
stores known as Apple Stores. Apple's core product lines are
the iPhone smartphone, iPad tablet computer, iPod portable media players,
and Macintosh computer line. Founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created Apple
Computer on April 1, 1976,[1] and incorporated the company on January 3, 1977,
[2]
 in Cupertino, California.
For more than three decades, Apple Computer was predominantly a manufacturer of
personal computers, including the Apple II, Macintosh, and Power Mac lines, but it
faced rocky sales and low market share during the 1990s. Jobs, who had been ousted
from the company in 1985, returned to Apple in 1996 after his company NeXT was
bought by Apple.[3] The following year he became the company's interim CEO, [4] which
later became permanent.[5] Jobs subsequently instilled a new corporate philosophy of
recognizable products and simple design, starting with the original iMac in 1998.
With the introduction of the successful iPod music player in 2001 and iTunes Music
Store in 2003, Apple established itself as a leader in the consumer electronics and
media sales industries, leading it to drop "Computer" from the company's name in 2007.
The company is now also known for its iOS range of smart phone, media player, and
tablet computer products that began with the iPhone, followed by the iPod Touch and
then iPad. As of 30 June 2015, Apple was the largest publicly traded corporation in the
world by market capitalization,[6] with an estimated value of US$1 trillion as of August 2,
2018.[7] Apple's worldwide annual revenue in 2010 totaled US$65 billion, growing to
US$127.8 billion in 2011[8] and $156 billion in 2012.[9]
 Contents

 11975–1985: Jobs and Wozniak

o 1.1Pre-foundation

o 1.2Apple I and company formation

o 1.3Apple II

o 1.4Apple III

o 1.5Apple IPO

o 1.6Competition from the IBM PC

o 1.7Xerox PARC and the Lisa

o 1.8Macintosh and the "1984" commercial

o 1.91985: Jobs and Wozniak leave Apple

 21985–1997: Sculley, Spindler, Amelio

o 2.1Corporate performance

o 2.2The Mac family

o 2.3Early-mid-1990s

 31997–2001: Apple's comeback

o 3.1Return of Steve Jobs

o 3.2Microsoft deal

o 3.3iMac, iBook, and Power Mac G4

o 3.4Mac OS X

o 3.5Retail stores

 42001–2007: iPods, iTunes Store, Intel transition

o 4.1iPod

o 4.2Moving on from colored plastics and the PowerPC G3

o 4.3Retail store expansion

 o 4.4Apple and "i" Web services

o 4.5iTunes Store

o 4.6Intel transition

 52007–2011: Apple Inc., iPhone, iOS, iPad

o 5.1iOS evolution: iPhone and iPad

o 5.2Resurgence compared to Microsoft

 62011–present: Restructuring and Apple Watch

 7Financial history

o 7.1Stock

 8Timeline of Apple Inc. products

 9References

 10Further reading

 11External links

1975–1985: Jobs and Wozniak[edit]

Pre-foundation[edit]

Steve Wozniak's "blue box" at the Computer History Museum.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak first met in mid-1971, when their mutual friend, Bill

Fernandez, introduced then 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. [10][11] Their first
business partnership began later that year when Wozniak, a self-educated electronics
engineer, started to build his original “blue boxes” that enabled one to make long-
distance phone calls at no cost.[12] Jobs managed to sell some two hundred blue boxes
for $150 each, and split the profit with Wozniak. [10][11] Jobs later told his biographer that if it
hadn't been for Wozniak's blue boxes, "there wouldn't have been an Apple." [13]
Jobs and Wozniak, also referred to collectively as "the two Steves", had withdrawn
from Reed College and UC Berkeley respectively by 1975. Wozniak designed a video
terminal that he could use to log on to the minicomputers at Call Computer. Alex
Kamradt commissioned the design and sold a small number of them through his firm.
Aside from their interest in up-to-date technology, the impetus for the two Steves seems
to have had another source. In his essay From Satori to Silicon Valley (published 1986),
cultural historian Theodore Roszak made the point that the Apple Computer emerged
from within the West Coast counterculture and the need to produce print-outs, letter
labels, and databases. Roszak offers a bit of background on the development of the two
Steves' prototype models.
In 1975, the two Steves started attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club.
[14]
 New microcomputers such as the Altair 8800 and the IMSAI inspired Wozniak to build
a microprocessor into his video terminal and have a complete computer. At the time the
only microcomputer CPUs generally available were the $179 Intel 8080 (equivalent to
$850 in 2019), and the $170 Motorola 6800 (equivalent to $808 in 2019). Wozniak
preferred the 6800, but both were out of his price range. So he watched, and learned,
and designed computers on paper, waiting for the day he could afford a CPU.
When MOS Technology released its $20 (equivalent to $90 in 2019) 6502 chip in 1976,
Wozniak wrote a version of BASIC for it, then began to design a computer for it to run
on. The 6502 was designed by the same people who designed the 6800, as many in
Silicon Valley left employers to form their own companies. Wozniak's earlier 6800
paper-computer needed only minor changes to run on the new chip.
By March 1, 1976, Wozniak completed the machine and took it to a Homebrew
Computer Club meeting to show it off.[15] When Jobs saw Wozniak's computer, which
would later become known as the Apple I, he was immediately interested in its
commercial potential.[16] Initially, Wozniak intended to share schematics of the machine
for free, but Jobs insisted that they should instead build and sell bare printed circuit
boards for the computer.[17] Wozniak also originally offered the design to Hewlett-
Packard (HP), where he worked at the time, but was denied by the company on five
different occasions.[18] Jobs eventually convinced Wozniak to go into business together
and start a new company of their own.[19] In order to raise the money they needed to
produce the first batch of printed circuit boards, Jobs sold his Volkswagen Type
2 minibus for a few hundred dollars, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 programmable
calculator for $500.[17][15][20][21]
Apple I and company formation[edit]
Steve Jobs' parents' home on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, where Apple Computer was founded. Initial
work took place in his bedroom and later moved to the home's garage. [14]

Wozniak's Apple I design was sold as an assembled circuit board and lacked basic features such as a
keyboard, monitor, and case.

The first Apple logo, drawn by Ronald Wayne, depicts Isaac Newton under an apple tree.

Created by Rob Janoff in 1977, the Apple logo with the rainbow scheme was used from April of that year [22] until
August 26, 1999.[citation needed]
On April 1, 1976, Apple Computer Company was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve
Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.[23][19] The company was registered as a California business
partnership.[24] Wayne, who worked at Atari as a chief draftsman, agreed to become a
co-founder of the company in return for a 10% stake. [25][19][1] However, Wayne was
somewhat gun-shy due to the failure of his own venture four years earlier. On April 12,
less than two weeks after the company's formation, Wayne left Apple, selling his 10%
share back to the two Steves for only $800 and leaving them as the active primary co-
founders.[26][27]
According to Wozniak, Jobs proposed the name “Apple Computer” when he had just
come back from Robert Friedland’s All-One Farm in Oregon.[27] Jobs told Walter
Isaacson that he was "on one of my fruitarian diets," when he conceived of the name
and thought "it sounded fun, spirited and not intimidating ... plus, it would get us ahead
of Atari in the phone book."[28]
Soon after the company was formed, the two Steves made one last trip to the
Homebrew Computer Club and demonstrated the finished version of the Apple I.[29] Paul
Terrell, who operated a computer store chain named the Byte Shop, was in attendance,
and became impressed with the machine.[25] He handed the two Steves his card, and
told them to "keep in touch."[30] The following day, Jobs dropped in on Terrell at the Byte
Shop store in Mountain View, and tried to sell him the bare circuit boards for the Apple I.
[27]
 Terrell told Jobs that he was interested in purchasing the machine, but only if it came
fully assembled, saying he would order 50 assembled computers and pay US$500 each
on delivery (equivalent to $2,200 in 2019).[31][32][25] Jobs then took the purchase order that
he had been given from the Byte Shop to Cramer Electronics, a national electronic parts
distributor, and ordered the components he needed to assemble the Apple I. The local
credit manager asked Jobs how he was going to pay for the parts and he replied, "I
have this purchase order from the Byte Shop chain of computer stores for 50 of my
computers and the payment terms are COD. If you give me the parts on net 30-day
terms I can build and deliver the computers in that time frame, collect my money from
Terrell at the Byte Shop and pay you."[33][34]
The credit manager called Paul Terrell, who was attending an IEEE computer
conference at Asilomar in Pacific Grove and verified the validity of the purchase order.
Amazed at the tenacity of Jobs, Terrell assured the credit manager if the computers
showed up in his stores, Jobs would be paid and would have more than enough money
to pay for the parts order. The two Steves and their small crew spent day and night
building and testing the computers, and delivered to Terrell on time to pay his suppliers.
Terrell was surprised when Jobs delivered him a batch of assembled circuit boards, as
he had expected complete computers with a case, monitor and keyboard. [35]
[36]
 Nonetheless, Terrell kept his word and paid the two Steves the money he had
promised them.[37][35][36][38]
The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 as an assembled circuit board with a retail price
of $666.66.[39][40][41] Wozniak later said he had no idea about the relation between the
number and the mark of the beast, and that he came up with the price because he liked
"repeating digits".[37] Eventually, about 200 units of the Apple I were sold. [42]
The Apple I computer had a few notable features. One was the use of a TV as the
display system, whereas many machines had no display at all. This was not like the
displays of later machines, however; the text was displayed at 60 characters per
second. However, this was still faster than the teleprinters used on contemporary
machines of that era. The Apple I also included bootstrap code on ROM, which made it
easier to start up. Finally, at the insistence of Paul Terrell, Wozniak also designed a
cassette interface for loading and saving programs, at the then-rapid pace of 1200 bit/s.
Although the machine was fairly simple, it was nevertheless a masterpiece of design,
using far fewer parts than anything in its class, and quickly earning Wozniak a
reputation as a master designer.
Encouraged by the success of the Apple I, Jobs started looking for investments to
further expand the business,[36] but banks were reluctant to lend him money; the idea of a
computer for ordinary people seemed absurd at the time. In August 1976, Jobs
approached his former boss at Atari, Nolan Bushnell, who recommended that he meet
with Don Valentine, the founder of Sequoia Capital.[36] Valentine was not interested in
funding Apple, but in turn introduced Jobs to Mike Markkula, a millionaire who had
worked under him at Fairchild Semiconductor.[36] Markkula, unlike Valentine, saw great
potential in the two Steves, and decided to become an angel investor of their company.
[43]
 He invested $92,000 in Apple out of his own property while securing a $250,000
(equivalent to $1,120,000 in 2019) line of credit from Bank of America. [43][36] In return for
his investment, Markkula received a one-third stake in Apple. [43] With the help of
Markkula, Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated on January 3, 1977. [36] The new
corporation bought out the old partnership the two Steves formed nine months earlier. [44]
In February 1977, Markkula recruited Michael Scott from National Semiconductor to
serve as the first president and CEO of Apple Computer, as Jobs and Wozniak were
both insufficiently experienced and he was not interested in taking that position himself.
[45][46]
 That same month, Wozniak resigned from his job at Hewlett-Packard to work full-
time for Apple.[44][47]