Four decades ago a company was born, one that its founders didn’t even know would have a profound impact upon nearly every human being in years to come, one that would revolutionise the personal computer and would pave the way for smartphones. 40 years ago, Apple.Inc was formed in a home by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple I personal computer kit.
Built in 1976, the Apple I shipped with no keyboard or monitor or any other basic features. Show it to anyone born at the turn of the century and they would have never guessed that this little machine would someday slim down into a Macbook.
In 1976, Steve (Wozniak) invented the Apple II which featured an (at the time) impressive 4KB of RAM; in retrospect most modern day iPhones have 500,000 times more RAM and knocks the Apple II’s 1MHz MOS Technology processor clean out of the park. It was also chosen to be the desktop platform for the first “killer app” of the business world: VisiCalc, a spreadsheet program. Near the end of the 1970’s Apple had a fleet of computer designers and in 1980 the company went public at $22 per share.
1984 was a big year for the company as it released both the Apple IIc, a portable computer that defined the term at the time. While it looks bulky it was seen as a miracle at the time, weighing only 3.4 kg along with featuring numerous expansion cards, though it didn’t feature a battery.
Also released in 1984 was the first ever Macintosh, the first ever affordable computer with a graphical interface. It retailed at $2,495 at the time. The computer didn’t debut as most products lacklusterly do today; a $1.5 million commercial called “1984” was directed by Ridley Scott and aired during the Super Bowl.
Unlike the previous year, 1985 proved to be quite controversial as a power struggle emerged with Jobs eventually being booted from the company leaving the company without direction from its founders; Wozniak had departed the company as he saw more fun in engineering instead of managing. After Jobs’ departure the company the Macintosh product line underwent a steady change of focus to higher price points. Ultimately the policy began to fire near the end of the decade and as a result the 90s proved to be a time for the company to restructure.
But they didn’t stop churning out products. In 1991, the PowerBook 100, was designed and manufactured by Sony for Apple. It cost $2,500 at the time and was seen as Apple’s first true laptop.
The next year saw the birth of Apple’s first PDA, the Newton Message pad was Apple’s first attempt at a pocket computer. It took 6.5 years to develop, had the first real handwriting recognition and coined the term “Personal Digital Assistant”.
In 1994 the Power Macintosh was released, which were the collective name for workstation-class personal computers. They were based on a variety of PowerPC microprocessors that were developed, marketed and supported by Apple Inc.
1997 proved to be quite the dramatic year, mostly because it saw the return of Steve Jobs to the company after Jobs’ rival Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio as CEO; Amelio made a number of\ changes and acquisitions, including NeXT, the company Jobs had created upon his departure from Apple, and its operating system. Unfortunately for Amelio he was soon ousted and Jobs was made CEO once again; he chose to cancel several projects and focused on bringing the company back to profitability with the help of then Senior Vice President Tim Cook.
The next two years saw the introduction of the iMac, the first in the “i” series of products by Apple. It was the brainchild of Jobs and Jony Ive and was aimed at low end, internet enabled market, something that was nearly and exclusively in Microsoft’s grip. The iBook came out the next year and housed a number of features never before seen in an Apple product including Wi-Fi.
2001 saw the birth of OS X, after Apple dumped its legacy operating system for OS X 10.0 Cheetah which is the ancestral predecessor of both the latest versions of iOS and OS X 1o.11 El Capitan. But that wasn’t all that happened in 2001. That year also saw the inception of a product that would change the landscape of mobile devices forever, the iPod. Featuring 5GB of space and an LCD screen, it was “all the craze,” not because it was revolutionary but because it was well marketed. The first Apple stores were also opened in 2001.
2003 saw the creation of the iTunes store; service offered online music downloads for $0.99 a song and integration with the iPod.
The MacBook, Mac Pro and MacBook pro flooded stores and homes in 2006 and also marked the transition to Intel chips. The consecutive year saw the release of the first generation iPhone which shipped with 4GB of storage, a 3.5in capacitive multi-touch screen and 620MHz Samsung processor. It was the year which marked the beginning of success Apple would have with mobile devices.
Following the widespread success of the iPod, the iPhone was soon launched and it propelled Apple into a new age. It awed and amazed consumers with its (at the time) high specs such as its 4GB of storage space, 3.5in capacitive multi-touch screen and 620MHz Samsung processor. It spent 2 years in development and didn’t even support native apps for a year.
2010 saw the introduction of the iPad which sold more than 300,000 units on its first day, and 500,000 by the end of the first week. In May of the same year, Apple’s market cap exceeded that of competitor Microsoft for the first time since 1989.
2011 was the year of mourning (and the year which gave birth to numerous biopics) as Apple Co-Founder Steve Jobs passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer; the Apple logo was slightly altered to feature an impression of his face where the usual “bite” mark was. However before his passing Jobs came out of his leave of absence to unveil iCloud, the cloud based file sharing and storage platform. Tim Cook took over as interim CEO.
In subsequent years Apple would release numerous products such as the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, the third and fourth generation iPads and the iPad Mini.
2014 was the year of music as Apple bought Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s Beats, which made headphones and ran a music service, for $3bn in 2014. The headphones continue to be sold, but Beats Music morphed into the Apple Music subscription service The same year Apple struck a deal with U2, to release the band’s latest album for free, forcing it to be downloaded to every user of iTunes, sparking major backlash.
2015 marked the first new product line since the death of Steve Jobs: the Apple Watch, which quickly cornered the smartwatch market, beating back opponents like Samsung. And now in 2016 it’s been revealed that Apple is scripting its own original series, a 6-episode drama about the life of Dr. Dre.
Who knows, perhaps in 40 more years we’ll be using the latest Macs and iPhones as we journey through the stars, listening to dulcet tones of Bono in the background.
