Macintosh SE
Corporate
performance
See also: List of mergers and
acquisitions by Apple
Under leadership of John Sculley,
Apple issued its first corporate stock dividend on May 11, 1987. A month later
on June 16, Apple stock split for the first time in a 2:1 split. Apple kept a
quarterly dividend with about 0.3% yield until November 21, 1995. Between March
1988 and January 1989, Apple undertook five acquisitions, including software
companies Network Innovations, Styleware, Nashoba Systems, and Coral Software,
as well as satellite communications company Orion Network Systems.
Apple continued to sell both lines
of its computers, the Apple II and the Macintosh. A few months after
introducing the Mac, Apple released a compact version of the Apple II called
the Apple IIc. And in 1986 Apple introduced the Apple IIgs, an Apple II
positioned as something of a hybrid product with a mouse-driven, Mac-like
operating environment. Even with the release of the first Macintosh, Apple II
computers remained the main source of income for Apple for years.
Mac
family
See also: Timeline of Macintosh
models
At the same time, the Mac was
becoming a product family of its own. The original model evolved into the Mac
Plus in 1986 and spawned the Mac SE and the Mac II in 1987 and the Mac Classic
and Mac LC in 1990. Meanwhile, Apple attempted its first portable Macs: the
failed Macintosh Portable in 1989 and then the more popular PowerBook in 1991,
a landmark product that established the modern form and ergonomic layout of the
laptop. Popular products and increasing revenues made this a good time for
Apple. MacAddict magazine has called 1989 to 1991 the "first golden
age" of the Macintosh.
On February 19, 1987, Apple
registered the "Apple.com" domain name, making it one of the first
hundred companies to register a .com address on the nascent Internet.
Early-mid-1990s
In the late 1980s, Apple's fiercest
technological rivals were the Amiga and Atari ST platforms. But computers based
on the IBM PC were far more popular than all three, and by the 1990s, they
finally had a comparable GUI thanks to Windows 3.0, and were out-competing
Apple.
Apple's response to the PC threat
was a profusion of new Macintosh lines including Quadra, Centris, and Performa.
Unfortunately, these new lines were marketed poorly by what was now
"arguably one of the worst-managed companies in the industry". For
one, there were too many models, differentiated by very minor graduations in
their tech specs. The excess of arbitrary model numbers confused many consumers
and hurt Apple's reputation for simplicity. Apple's retail resellers like Sears
and CompUSA often failed to sell or even competently display these Macs.
Compounding matters was the fact that, although the machines were cheaper than
a comparable PC (when taken into account all the components built-in which had
to be added to the 'bare bones PC'), the poor marketing gave the impression
that the machines were more expensive. Inventory grew as Apple consistently
underestimated demand for popular models and overestimated demand for others.
In 1991, Apple partnered with
long-time competitor IBM and Motorola to form the AIM alliance. The ultimate
goal was to create a revolutionary new computing platform, known as PReP, which
would use IBM and Motorola hardware and Apple software. As the first step
toward the PReP platform, Apple started the Power Macintosh line in 1994, using
PowerPC processors from Motorola and IBM. These processors used a RISC
architecture, which differed substantially from the Motorola 680X0 series that
were used by all previous Macs. Parts of Apple's operating system software were
rewritten so that most software written for older Macs could run in emulation
on the PowerPC series. Apple also refused IBM's offer to purchase the company,
but later unsuccessfully sought another offer from IBM, and at one point was
"hours away" from an acquisition by Sun Microsystems.
In addition to computers, Apple has
also produced consumer devices. In 1993, Apple released the Newton, an early personal
digital assistant (PDA). It defined and launched the PDA category and was a
forerunner and inspiration of devices such as Palm Pilot and Pocket PC.
In 1994 Apple launched eWorld, an
online service providing email, news and a bulletin board system to replace AppleLink.
It was shut down in 1996.
During 1995, a decision was made to
(officially) start licensing the Mac OS and Macintosh ROMs to 3rd party
manufacturers who started producing Macintosh “clones”. This was done in order
to achieve deeper market penetration and extra revenue for the company. This
decision lead to Apple having over a 10% market share until 1997 when Steve
Jobs was re-hired as interim CEO to replace Gil Amelio. Jobs promptly found a
loophole in the licensing contracts Apple had with the clone manufacturers and
terminated the Macintosh OS licensing program ending the Macintosh clone era.
The result of this action was that Macintosh computer market share quickly fell
from 10% to around 3%.
In 1996, the struggling NeXT company
beat out Be Inc.'s BeOS in its bid to sell its operating system to Apple. Apple
purchased Steve Jobs' company, NeXT on December 10, 1996, and its NeXTstep
operating system. This would not only bring Steve Jobs back to Apple's
management, but NeXT technology would become the foundation of the Mac OS X
operating system.
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.
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