Apple Inc. was founded on April 1st, 1976, in Cupertino, California by Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne, and Steve Wozniak. Apple started as a small company in which Steve Jobs would build microcomputers out of his parent’s garage. The company now makes an annual net income of $1,730,000,000. In Apple’s early years, only computers were produced, but in the early 1990s’, they entered the consumer electronics business.
Apple was one of the first companies to integrate a GUI (graphical user interface) into their computers by releasing the Apple II in 1977. Due to the Apple II, Apple became a market leader. Then in May 1980, Apple released the Apple III and struggled to stay on top even with tough competition from Microsoft and IBM. Then in 1983, the Apple Lisa was released, however it failed miserably due to its high price, $9,995. Finally, on January 24, 1984, the Macintosh was born along with the Macintosh operating system. In 1989, Apple entered the portable computer market by releasing the Macintosh Portable. And entered the consumer electronics market in 1993 by releasing the Apple Newton PDA, and later, the QuickTake digial camera (1997),the iPod(2001), the AppleTV(2007), and the iPhone(2007). All of these products convinced Apple Computers Inc. to change its name to Apple Inc. In 1997, Apple purchased a rival company, NeXT, also founded by Steve Jobs after he left Apple in the mid-1980s’ and reincorporated him into the company. Currently, Steve Jobs is the CEO and on the Board of Directors along with Former US Vice President Al Gore and other executives. Apple then opened an online store at www.apple.com. Then in 1998, Apple released the iMac, designed by Jonathan Ive, which revolutionized the computer industry by adding form to function. After that, in 2001, Apple opened retail stores across the world, and currently has 170 locations. Also, at that time, Apple released the iPod, which revolutionized the portable music industry, and Mac OS X, which is still the most advanced operating system on the market, until Apple releases Mac OS X Leopard in Summer 2007. Soon After the release of the iPod, The iTunes Music Store opened, which allows iPod users to download music from the internet at just $.99 per song. Over 2,000,000,000 songs have currently been downloaded from iTunes. In 2006, Apple switched from the outdated PowerPC processors to Intel’s Core Duo chips. These new processors allowed the Macintosh computers to natively run Windows, which gave Apple a large advantage over Microsoft. From all of these high-tech products being released, Apple’s stock went from $6 in 2003 to $98 in 2007.
Apple has always been one step ahead of its competitors by emphasizing innovation and staying on the cutting edge of technology.
