Apple Computer, Incorporated has come quite a way since it started
On April first, 1976, three enterprising young guys created Apple Computer, Inc., with the intent to make & distribute truly personal computers. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, & Ronald Wayne started with a dream of making computers smaller & readily available to the public. They built their computers in Jobs' parent's garage & rolled out the Apple I personal computer kit in 1976, the same year they founded Apple. Eventually, two hundred of these computers would be sold.
Jobs approached a local computer store, The Byte Shop, which ordered 50 computer kits & paid five hundred dollars 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 & family & selling various items (including a Volkswagen Bus), Jobs managed to acquire the parts required while Wozniak & Wayne built the Apple I kits.
In 1977, the Apple II was introduced & almost immediately became much more popular than its major competition, the TRS-80 (which used cassette tapes for storage, & was known derisively as the TRasH-80) & the Commodore 64, even though the price of the Apple was higher. One of the huge advantages of the Apple was the development of the floppy disk drive & software.
The Apple II was chosen 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 created a huge market for the Apple. The business market attracted many more software & hardware developers to the machine, plus it attracted home users in an effort to be compatible with their business computers.
Over the years, Apple Computer would release many more designs, with each one just slightly better than the previous one. In 1984, Steve Jobs was on hand to introduce the Apple Macintosh as the "Computer for the rest of us". In 1989, Apple introduced the Macintosh Portable. However, this computer was actually quite bulky & cumbersome & 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 notebook computers we know today. This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer of both desktop & notebook machines. The success of this notebook led to increased revenues & 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 eighty percent market share.
Reflecting this branching into other markets, on January 9, 2007, they changed their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to simply Apple, Inc. While they have had their ups & downs over the years, Apple has continued to be a solid presence in the desktop computer & laptop market. Their products have continued to develop to meet the needs of both the business and individual user.
Visit SaleMac.com for lots more Mac-related information, as well as the best prices on Macintosh hardware and software, including Vintage Macs, MacBooks, iPods, iMacs, Mac Pros, and Macintosh related-items. Check out our Mac Videos while you're there!
Published March 8th, 2008
Filed in Technology
