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 Apple
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Apple Inc.
(NASDAQ: AAPL, LSE: ACP, FWB: APC) is an
American consumer electronics corporation with
worldwide annual sales in its fiscal year 2006
(ending September 30, 2006) of US$19.3
billion. Headquartered in Cupertino,
California, Apple develops, sells, and
supports a series of personal computers,
portable media players, computer software, and
computer hardware accessories. The company's
best-known products include the Mac line of
personal computers, its Mac OS X operating
system, and the iPod line of portable media
players. For the iPod and its related iTunes
software, Apple sells audiobooks, games,
music, music videos, TV shows, and movies in
its online iTunes Store.
The company was known as Apple Computer, Inc.
for its first 30 years of existence, but
dropped "Computer" from its corporate name on
January 9, 2007.The name change, which
followed Apple's announcement of its new
iPhone smartphone and Apple TV digital video
system, is representative of the company's
ongoing expansion into the consumer
electronics market in addition to its
traditional focus on personal computers.
Apple also operates over 170 retail stores in
the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom,
Canada, and Italy. The stores carry most of
Apple's products as well as many third-party
products and offer on-site support and repair
for Apple hardware and software. Apple employs
over 20,000 permanent and temporary workers
worldwide.
For a variety of reasons, ranging from its
philosophy of comprehensive aesthetic design
to its countercultural, even indie roots, as
well as their advertising campaigns, Apple has
engendered a distinct reputation in the
consumer electronics industry and has
cultivated a customer base that is unusually
devoted to the company and its brand.
The Apple II microcomputer, introduced in
1977, was a hit with home users. In 1983,
Apple introduced the Lisa, the first
commercial personal computer to employ a
graphical user interface (GUI), which was
influenced in part by the Xerox Alto. Lisa was
also the first personal computer to have the
mouse. In 1984, the Macintosh was introduced,
furthering the concept of a user-friendly
graphical user interface. Apple's success with
the Macintosh became a major influence in the
development of graphical interfaces elsewhere,
with major computer operating systems such as
Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST, appearing on
the market within two years of the
introduction of the Macintosh.
In 1991, Apple introduced the PowerBook line
of portable computers. The 1990s also saw
Apple's market share fall as competition from
Microsoft Windows and the comparatively
inexpensive IBM PC compatible computers that
would eventually dominate the market. In the
2000s, Apple expanded its focus on software to
include professional and prosumer video,
music, and photo production solutions, with a
view to promoting their products as a "digital
hub". It also introduced the iPod, the most
popular digital music player in the world.
Apple was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve
Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne (and
later incorporated January 3, 1977 without
Wayne, who sold his share of the company back
to Jobs and Wozniak) to sell the Apple I
personal computer kit. They were hand-built in
a garage of Jobs' parents, and the Apple I was
first shown to the public at the Homebrew
Computer Club. Eventually 200 computers were
built. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard
(with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips)
— not what is today considered a complete
personal computer. The user was required to
provide two different AC input voltages (the
manual recommended specific transformers),
wire an ASCII keyboard (not provided with the
computer) to a DIP connector (providing logic
inverter and alpha lock chips in some cases),
and to wire the video output pins to a monitor
or to an RF modulator if a TV set was used.
Jobs approached a local computer store, The
Byte Shop, which ordered fifty units and paid
US$500 for each unit after much persuasion
from Jobs. Jobs then ordered components from
Cramer Electronics, a national electronic
parts distributor. Using a variety of methods,
including borrowing space from friends and
family and selling various items including a
Volkswagen Type 2 bus, Jobs managed to secure
the parts needed while Wozniak and Ronald
Wayne assembled the Apple I.
The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977
at the first West Coast Computer Faire.
Despite a price higher than competitors, it
quickly pulled away from its two main rivals,
the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, to become the
market leader (and the symbol of the personal
computing phenomenon) in the late 70s due to
its color graphics, high build quality, and
open architecture. While early models used
ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices,
this was quickly superseded by the
introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive
and interface, the Disk II.
Another key to success for Apple was software.
The Apple II was chosen by programmers Dan
Bricklin and Bob Frankston to be the desktop
platform for the first "killer app" of the
business world—the VisiCalc spreadsheet
program. VisiCalc created a business market
for the Apple II, and the corporate market
attracted many more software and hardware
developers to the machine, as well as giving
home users an additional reason to buy
one—compatibility with the office. (See the
timeline for dates of Apple II family model
releases—the 1977 Apple II and its younger
siblings the II+, IIe, IIc, and IIGS.)
According to Brian Bagnall's book, "On the
Edge" (pg. 109-112), Apple exaggerated their
sales figures and that Apple was a distant 3rd
place until VisiCalc came along. VisiCalc was
first released on Apple II due to the fact
that Commodore and Tandy computers were tied
up at the moment in VisiCalc's software
development office due to their popularity.
VisiCalc's association with Apple was thus
pure happenstance, not a technical decision.
And even after VisiCalc, Apple II didn't
surpass Tandy TRS-80, whose sales were helped
by the large number of Radio Shack stores.
However, VisiCalc did put Apple ahead of
Commodore's PET, at least in the US.
(Commodore later regained the lead for a while
with the Commodore 64 in the mid 80's, the
best selling specific model of computer to
date.)
By the end of the 1970s, Jobs and his partners
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
struggled to compete against IBM and Microsoft
in the lucrative business and corporate
computing market. The designers of the Apple
III were forced to comply with Jobs' request
to omit the cooling fan, and this ultimately
resulted in thousands of recalled units due to
overheating. An updated version was introduced
in 1983, but it was also a failure due to bad
press and wary buyers. Nevertheless, the
principals of the company persevered with
further innovations and marketing.
In the early 1980s, IBM and Microsoft
continued to gain market share at Apple's
expense in the personal computer industry. A
fundamentally different business model
evolved, once cloners forced-open the IBM PC
hardware standard against IBM's will. The IBM
compatible hardware market became highly
competitive, with clones running a bundled
Microsoft MS-DOS OS, or running a competing
IBM-style DOS such as DR DOS.
Apple's sustained growth during the early
1980s was partly due to its leadership in the
education sector because of their adaption of
the programming language LOGO, which was 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. The deal concluded
between Steve Jobs and Jim Baroux of LCSI, and
having required the support of Sacramento,
established a strong and pervasive presence
for Apple in all schools throughout
California. The initial conquest of education
environments was critical to Apple's
acceptance in the home where the earliest
purchases of computers by parents was in
support of children's continued learning
experience. |
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