Apple Inc. - A Brief History

In 1976, friends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak quit their jobs and moved into Steve's garage in Cupertino, CA. Here they came up with the idea of creating an inexpensive and user-friendly computer. Wozniak being the engineer had been working on an encased circuit board which included switches with flashing lights. Jobs insisted that he and Wozniak try to sell this play toy for computer hobbyists which they called the Apple I. That day the Apple Computer was born and the rest, as they say, is history.

After the Apple I was released, Wozniak and Jobs set off to improve the design and functions of their product. On June 5, 1977 the compact and self-contained Apple II computer was released. It was priced at $1,298.00 for 4KB of RAM or $2,698.00 for 48KB of RAM. The features included a 16-bit processor using MOS technology, 65021 MHz microprocessor and sound capabilities. The result was pure genius - a personalized computer that was attractive and easy to operate for the everyday user. Through the years Jobs and Wozniak created and sold over 2 million subsequent models that improved on the speed and original design of the Apple II. These models included the: Apple II Plus, Apple IIe, and Apple IIc.

In February 1981, Steve Wozniak left Apple after a he crashed his airplane while taking off from Santa Cruz Sky Park. As a result of the accident, he had temporary Anterograde Amnesia, but was able to restore his short-term memory with the help of his girlfriend, Candi Clark. On the board now, to take Wozniak's place was Jeff Raskin and Bill Atkinson who came up with the Lisa project and the extension of the Apple II. Both of these systems had switched to the Motorola 6809E processors, 64 KB of RAM and monochrome graphics fitting a 256x256 pixel display.

During 1983, Jobs did some research at the labs of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) and Alto's GUI (Graphical User Interface) systems. After various visits to these labs, Jobs was convinced that he should add the GUI to both the Macintosh and Lisa systems to heighten its marketability. On January 22, 1984, following the Super Bowl Half-Time marketing blitz, which premiered the Macintosh commercial with a woman throwing a sledgehammer into an Orwellian "Big Brother" video screen representing the competitor: IBM. The final Macintosh featured 128KB RAM (2 64KB chips soldered onto the motherboard) and expandable to 512KB, the Motorola 68000 processor operating at 8Mhz, an internal, 3.5” floppy disk drive, and 384x256 pixel bitmap display. Included were the Xerox-inspired GUI and two user-friendly programs – MacWrite, a word processor, and MacPaint, a simple graphics program. The Mac retailed at a price of $2,495.00, much less than the similarly designed and financially disastrous Lisa model (at $9,995.00 and including an internal hard drive) released a year earlier.

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By 1984 the Apple Company faced several internal struggles between the CEO John Scully and Steve Jobs; eventually Jobs was forced out of Apple. During Jobs absence, Apple released Macintosh-specific packages such as, MacPublisher and Aldus PageMaker, along with the first LaserWriter Printer; this created a firm foundation for Apple's reputation of desktop publishing. The following year, Apple released the Macintosh Plus to combat the issues of the original Mac. The Mac Plus featured 1MB of RAM (expandable to 4MB), a SCSI hard drive controller that allowed for the possibility of adding 6 additional devices, and increased floppy disk capacity of 800KB.

In 1987 Apple upgraded to the faster Motorola 68020 for the Macintosh II and introduced color graphics and open architecture. The Mac SE, (a lower-cost version of the Mac II), was released in the same year to follow-up with the declining PC clone prices.

Later, the Mac IIx, Mac IIxi, Mac IIcx, Mac IIci, Mac II SE, and Mac IIfx were released into the 90's. During 1992, the sales of Macintosh computers suffered from the accumulation of inexpensive PC clones, and finally for the first time in its history, Apple resorted to creating clones. Eventually in 1997, Steve Jobs the founding leader of Apple returned. He maneuvered the company away from the clones and reversed their direction with a back-to-basics approach. In 1998 Apple released the all-in-one iMac, designed much like the original Macintosh in a clear plastic and trimmed in translucent shades of red, blue, green and orange. The unit design utilized SCSI and Apple desktop bus (ADB) ports and priced at $999.00. Later the iMac portable followed in 1999, using the same clear plastic and trimmed translucent colors. Mac released upgrades to the iMac that followed with the G3, G4, G5 and eMac systems. In 2001 Apple released the invention of the iPod MP3 player using a 1.8" hard disk and 5 GB. In 2004 and 2005 Apple released the iPod mini, iPod photo, iPod nano and iPod video along with the Mac mini, becoming the least expensive of all Apple computers. In 2006 and 2007, Apple switched to Intel's Core Duo processor which made operating Intel-processor based applications and software possible along with releasing the Apple tv.

Today, Jobs continues to lead the Apple Corporation into bold and revolutionary products and ideas that have changed the way we live our lives worldwide through technology.



Apple Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells personal computers, portable digital music players, and mobile communication devices, as well as related software, services, peripherals, and networking solutions worldwide. The company's products include desktop and notebook computers, iPods, server and storage products, the Mac OS X Leopard operating system; iLife, a suite of software for creation and management of digital photography, music, movies, DVDs, and Web sites; and iWork, a suite of software for the creation and management of business presentations, newsletters and spreadsheets.