iPod
A 2nd generation iPod
iPod mini with the user interface
set to German
In October 2001, Apple introduced
its first iPod portable digital audio player. The iPod started as a 5 gigabyte
player capable of storing around 1000 songs. Since then it has evolved into an
array of products including the Mini (now discontinued), the iPod Touch, the
Shuffle, the iPod Classic, the Nano, the iPhone and the iPad. Since March 2011,
the largest storage capacity for an iPod has been 160 gigabytes. Speaking to
software developers on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs said the company's share of the
entire portable music device market stood at 76%.
The iPod gave an enormous lift to
Apple's financial results. In the quarter ending March 26, 2005, Apple earned
US$290 million, or 34¢ a share, on sales of US$3.24 billion. The year before in
the same quarter, Apple earned just US$46 million, or 6¢ a share, on revenue of
US$1.91 billion.
Moving
on from colored plastics and the PowerPC G3
In early 2002, Apple unveiled a
completely redesigned iMac, using the G4 processor and LCD display. The new
iMac G4 design had a white hemispherical base and a flat panel all-digital
display supported by a swiveling chrome neck. After several iterations
increasing the processing speed and screen sizes from 15" to 17" to
20" the iMac G4 was discontinued and replaced by the iMac G5 in the summer
of 2004.
In 2002, Apple also released the
Xserve 1U rack mounted server. Originally featuring two G4 chips, the Xserve
was unusual for Apple in two ways. It represented an earnest effort to enter
the enterprise computer market and it was also relatively cheaper than similar
machines released by its competitors. This was due, in no small part, to
Apple's use of Fast ATA drives as opposed to the SCSI hard drives used in
traditional rack-mounted servers. Apple later released the Xserve RAID, a 14
drive RAID which was, again, cheaper than competing systems.
In mid-2003, Steve Jobs launched the
Power Mac G5, based on IBM's G5 processor. Its all-metal anodized aluminum
chassis finished Apple's transition away from colored plastics in their
computers. Apple claims this was the first 64-bit computer sold to the general
public. The Power Mac G5 was also used by Virginia Tech to build its prototype
System X supercomputing cluster, which at the time garnered the prestigious
recognition of the third fastest supercomputer in the world. It cost only
US$5.2 million to build, far less than the previous No. 3 and other ranking
supercomputers. Apple's Xserves were soon updated to use the G5 as well. They
replaced the Power Mac G5 machines as the main building block of Virginia
Tech's System X, which was ranked in November 2004 as the world's seventh
fastest supercomputer.
A new iMac based on the G5 processor
was unveiled August 31, 2004 and was made available in mid-September. This
model dispensed with the base altogether, placing the CPU and the rest of the
computing hardware behind the flat-panel screen, which is suspended from a
streamlined aluminum foot. This new iMac, dubbed the iMac G5, was the world's
thinnest desktop computer, measuring in at around two inches (around 5
centimeters).
2004, however, was a turning point
for Apple. After creating a sizable financial base to work with, the company
began experimenting with new parts from new suppliers. As a result, Apple was
able to produce new designs quickly over a short amount of time, with the
release of the iPod Video, then the iPod Classic, and eventually the iPod touch
and iPhone.
On April 29, 2005, Apple released
Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" to the general public.
Apple's wildly successful PowerBook
and iBook products relied on Apple's previous generation G4 architecture which
were produced by Freescale Semiconductor, a spin-off from Motorola. Engineers
at IBM had minimal success in making their PowerPC G5 processor consume less
power and run cooler but not enough to run in iBook or PowerBook formats. As of
the week of October 24, 2005 Apple released the Power Mac G5 Dual that features
a Dual-Core processor. This processor contains two cores in one rather than
have two separate processors. Apple has also developed the Power Mac G5 Quad
that uses two of the Dual-Core processors for enhanced workstation power and
performance. The new Power Mac G5 Dual cores run individually at 2.0 GHz
or 2.3 GHz. The Power Mac G5 Quad cores run individually at 2.5 GHz
and all variations have a graphics processor that has 256-bit memory bandwidth.
Retail
store expansion
Initially, the Apple Stores were
only opened in the United States, but in late 2003, Apple opened its first
Apple Store abroad, in Tokyo's Ginza district. Ginza was followed by a store in
Osaka, Japan in August 2004. In 2005, Apple opened stores in Nagoya, the
Shibuya district of Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Sendai. Another store was opened in
Sapporo in 2006. Apple's first European store opened in London in November
2004, and is currently the largest store. A store in the Bullring shopping
centre in Birmingham opened in April 2005, and the Bluewater shopping centre in
Dartford, Kent opened in July 2005. Apple opened its first store in Canada in
the middle of 2005 at the Yorkdale Shopping Centre in North York, Toronto.
Later on in 2005 Apple opened the Meadowhall Store in Sheffield and the
Trafford Centre Store in Manchester (UK). Recent additions in the London area
include the Brent Cross Apple Store (January 2006) and the Apple Store in Westfield
in Shepherd's Bush (September 2008).
Also, in an effort to court a
broader market, Apple opened several "mini" stores in October 2004 in
an attempt to capture markets where demand does not necessarily dictate a full
scale store. The first of these stores was opened at Stanford Shopping Center
in Palo Alto, California. These stores follow in the footsteps of the
successful Apple products: iPod mini and Mac mini. These stores are only one
half the square footage of the smallest "normal" store and thus can
be placed in several smaller markets.
Apple
and "i" Web services
In 2000, Apple introduced its iTools
service, a set of free web-based tools that included an email account, internet
greeting cards called iCards, a service called iReview that gave internet users
a place to read and write reviews of Web sites, and a tool called KidSafe which
promised to prevent children from browsing inappropriate portions of the web.
The latter two services were eventually canceled because of lack of success,
while iCards and email became integrated into Apple's .Mac subscription based
service introduced in 2002 and discontinued in mid-2008 to make way for the
release of the new MobileMe service, coinciding with the iPhone 3G release.
MobileMe, which carried the same US$99.00 annual subscription price as its .Mac
predecessor, featured the addition of "push" services to instantly
and automatically send emails, contacts and calendar updates directly to users'
iPhone devices. Some controversy surrounded the release of MobileMe services to
users resulting in expected downtime and a significantly longer release window.
As a result of this, Apple extended the subscriptions of existing MobileMe
subscribers by an additional 30 days free-of-charge. At the WWDC event in June
2011, Apple announced its most up to date cloud service, iCloud, replacing
MobileMe. This service kept most of the core services that MobileMe offered,
however dropping iDisk, Gallery, and iWeb. Additionally, it added a number of
other features to the group, including Find my Mac, iTunes Match, Photo Stream,
Documents & Data Backup, and iCloud backup for iOS devices. The service
requires users to be running iOS 5 and OS X 10.7 Lion.
iTunes
Store
The iTunes Music Store was launched
in April 2003, with 2 million downloads in the first 16 days. Music was
purchased through the iTunes application, which was initially Macintosh-only;
in October 2003, support for Windows was added. Initially, the music store was
only available in the United States due to licensing restrictions.
In June 2004 Apple opened their
iTunes Music Store in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. A European Union
version opened October 2004 (actually, a Eurozone version; not initially
available in the Republic of Ireland due to the intransigence of the Irish
Recorded Music Association (IRMA) but eventually opened Thursday January 6,
2005.) A version for Canada opened in December 2004. On May 10, 2005, the
iTunes Music Store was expanded to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland.
On December 16, 2004, Apple sold its
200 millionth song on the iTunes Music Store to Ryan Alekman from Belchertown,
Massachusetts. The download was The Complete U2, by U2. Just under three
months later Apple sold its 300 millionth song on March 2, 2005. On July 17,
2005, the iTunes Music Store sold its 500 millionth song. At that point, songs
were selling at an accelerating annualized rate of more than 500 million.
On October 25, 2005, the iTunes
Store went live in Australia, with songs selling for A$1.69 each, albums at
(generally) A$16.99 and music videos and Pixar short films at A$3.39. Briefly,
people in New Zealand were able to buy music off the Australian store. However,
that loophole was quickly closed.
On February 23, 2006, the iTunes
Music Store sold its 1 billionth song.
The iTunes Music Store changed its
name to iTunes Store on September 12, 2006 when it began offering video content
(TV shows and movies) for sale. Since iTunes' inception it has sold over 2
billion songs, 1.2 billion of which were sold in 2006. Since downloadable TV
and movie content was added 50 million TV episodes and 1.3 million movies have
been downloaded.
In early 2010, Apple celebrated the
10 billionth song downloaded from the iTunes Music Store.
Intel
transition
In a keynote address on June 6,
2005, Steve Jobs officially announced that Apple would begin producing
Intel-based Macintosh computers beginning in 2006. Jobs confirmed rumors that
the company had secretly been producing versions of its current operating
system Mac OS X for both PowerPC and Intel processors over the past 5 years,
and that the transition to Intel processor systems would last until the end of
2007. Rumors of cross-platform compatibility had been spurred by the fact that
Mac OS X is based on OpenStep, an operating system that was available for many
platforms. In fact, Apple's own Darwin, the open source underpinnings of Mac OS
X, was also available for Intel's x86 architecture.
On January 10, 2006, the first Intel-based
machines, the iMac and MacBook Pro, were introduced. They were based on the
Intel Core Duo platform. This introduction came with the news that Apple would
complete the transition to Intel processors on all hardware by the end of 2006,
a year ahead of the originally quoted schedule.
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.
