Pre-foundation
Steve
Jobs and Steve Wozniak had withdrawn from Reed College and UC Berkeley,
respectively by 1975. Wozniak designed a video terminal that he could use to
log on to the minicomputers at Call Computer. Alex Kamradt commissioned the
design and sold a small number of them through his firm. Aside from their
interest in up-to-date technology, the impetus for "the two Steves"
seems to have had another source. In his essay From Satori to Silicon Valley
(published 1986), cultural historian Theodore Roszak made the point that the
Apple Computer emerged from within the West Coast counterculture and the need
to produce print-outs, letter labels, and databases. Roszak offers a bit of
background on the development of the two Steves’s prototype models.
In 1976, Wozniak started attending
meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club. New microcomputers such as the Altair
8800 and the IMSAI inspired him to build a microprocessor into his video
terminal and have a complete computer.
At the time the only microcomputer CPUs
generally available were the $179 Intel 8080 ($787.00 in present-day terms),
and the $170 Motorola 6800 ($748.00 in present-day terms). Wozniak preferred
the 6800, but both were out of his price range. So he watched, and learned, and
designed computers on paper, waiting for the day he could afford a CPU.
When MOS Technology released its $20
($83.00 in present-day terms) 6502 chip in 1976, Wozniak wrote a version of BASIC
for it, then began to design a computer for it to run on. The 6502 was designed
by the same people who designed the 6800, as many in Silicon Valley left
employers to form their own companies. Wozniak's earlier 6800 paper-computer
needed only minor changes to run on the new chip.
Wozniak completed the machine and
took it to Homebrew Computer Club meetings to show it off. At the meeting,
Wozniak met his old friend Jobs, who was interested in the commercial potential
of the small hobby machines.
The Apple I was sold as an assembled
circuit board and lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case.
The owner of this unit added a keyboard and a wooden case.
The very first Apple Computer logo,
drawn by Ronald Wayne, depicts Isaac Newton under an apple tree.
Created by Rob Janoff in 1977, the
Apple logo with the rainbow scheme was used from April of that year until
August 26, 1999. Steve Jobs has asserted the apple logo was inspired by the
story of his childhood.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had
been friends for some time, having met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill
Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. They began their
partnership when Wozniak, a talented, self-educated electronics engineer, began
constructing boxes which enabled one to make long-distance phone calls at no
cost, and sold several hundred models. Later, Jobs managed to interest Wozniak
in assembling a computer machine and selling it.
Jobs approached a local computer
store, The Byte Shop, who said they would be interested in the machine,
but only if it came fully assembled. The owner, Paul Terrell, went further,
saying he would order 50 of the machines and pay US $500 ($2.08 thousand
in present-day terms) each on delivery. Jobs then took the purchase order that
he had been given from the Byte Shop to Cramer Electronics, a national
electronic parts distributor, and ordered the components he needed to assemble
the Apple I Computer. The local credit manager asked Jobs how he was going to
pay for the parts and he replied, "I have this purchase order from the
Byte Shop chain of computer stores for 50 of my computers and the payment terms
are COD. If you give me the parts on a net 30-day terms I can build and deliver
the computers in that time frame, collect my money from Terrell at the Byte
Shop and pay you."
The credit manager called Paul
Terrell who was attending an IEEE computer conference at Asilomar in Pacific
Grove and verified the validity of the purchase order. Amazed at the tenacity
of Jobs, Terrell assured the credit manager if the computers showed up in his
stores Jobs would be paid and would have more than enough money to pay for the
parts order. The two Steves and their small crew spent day and night building
and testing the computers and delivered to Terrell on time to pay his suppliers
and have a tidy profit left over for their celebration and next order. Steve
Jobs had found a way to finance his soon-to-be multimillion-dollar company
without giving away one share of stock or ownership.
The machine had only a few notable
features. One was the use of a TV as the display system, whereas many machines
had no display at all. This was not like the displays of later machines,
however; text was displayed at 60 characters per second. However, this was
still faster than the teleprinters used on contemporary machines of that era.
The Apple I also included bootstrap code on ROM, which made it easier to start
up. Finally, at the insistence of Paul Terrell, Wozniak also designed a
cassette interface for loading and saving programs, at the then-rapid pace of
1200 bit/s. Although the machine was fairly simple, it was nevertheless a
masterpiece of design, using far fewer parts than anything in its class, and
quickly earning Wozniak a reputation as a master designer.
Joined by another friend, Ronald
Wayne, the three started to build the machines. Using a variety of methods,
including borrowing space from friends and family, selling various prized items
(like calculators and a VW bus) and scrounging, Jobs managed to secure the
parts needed while Wozniak and Wayne assembled them. But the owner of the Byte
Shop was expecting complete computers, not just printed circuit boards. The
boards still being a product for the customers Terrell still paid them.
Eventually 200 of the Apple I's were built.
Apple
II
Main article: Apple II series
Wozniak had already moved on from
the Apple I. Many of the design features of the I were due to the limited
amount of money they had to construct the prototype, but with the income from
the sales he was able to start construction of a greatly improved machine, the Apple
II; it was presented to the public at the first West Coast Computer Faire on
April 16 and 17, 1977. On the first day of exhibition, Jobs introduced Apple II
to a Japanese chemist named Toshio Mizushima who became the first authorized
Apple dealer in Japan.
The main difference internally was a
completely redesigned TV interface, which held the display in memory. Now not
only useful for simple text display, the Apple II included graphics, and,
eventually, color. Jobs meanwhile pressed for a much improved case and
keyboard, with the idea that the machine should be complete and ready to run
out of the box. This was almost the case for the Apple I machines sold to The
Byte Shop, but one still needed to plug various parts together and type in the
code to run BASIC.
Building such a machine was going to
be financially burdensome. Jobs started looking for cash, but Wayne was
somewhat gun-shy due to a failed venture four years earlier, and eventually
dropped out of the company. Banks were reluctant to lend Jobs money; the idea
of a computer for ordinary people seemed absurd at the time. Jobs eventually
met Mike Markkula who co-signed a bank loan for US$250,000, and the three
formed Apple Computer on April 1, 1976.The name Apple was chosen because the
company to beat in the technology industry at the time was Atari, and Apple
Computer came before Atari alphabetically and thus also in the phone book.
Another reason was that Jobs had happy memories of working on an Oregon apple
farm one summer.
With both cash and a new case design
in hand thanks to designer Jerry Manock, the Apple II was released in 1977 and
was one of the three "1977 Trinity" computers generally credited with
creating the home computer market (the other two being the Commodore PET and
the Tandy Corporation TRS-80). Millions were sold well into the 1980s. A number
of different models of the Apple II series were built, including the Apple IIe
and Apple IIGS, which continued in public use for nearly two decades
thereafter.
Apple
III
Apple III
While the Apple II was already
established as a successful business-ready platform because of Visicalc, Apple
was not content. The Apple III was designed to take on the business
environment. The Apple III was released on May 19, 1980.
The Apple III was a relatively
conservative design for computers of the era. However, Steve Jobs did not want
the computer to have a fan; rather, he wanted the heat generated by the
electronics to be dissipated through the chassis of the machine, forgoing the
cooling fan.
Unfortunately, the physical design
of the case was not sufficient to cool the components inside it. By removing
the fan from the design, the Apple III was prone to overheating. This caused
the integrated circuit chips to disconnect from the motherboard. Customers who
contacted Apple customer service were told to "raise the computers six
inches in the air, and then let go", which would cause the ICs to fall
back into place.
Thousands of Apple III computers
were recalled and, although a new model was introduced in 1983 to rectify the
problems, the damage was already done.
Apple
IPO
In the July 1980 issue of Kilobaud
Microcomputing, publisher Wayne Green stated that "the best consumer
ads I've seen have been those by Apple. They are attention-getting, and they
must be prompting sale." In August, the Financial Times reported
that
Apple Computer, the fast growing
Californian manufacturer of small computers for the consumer, business and
educational markets, is planning to go public later this year. [It] is the
largest private manufacturer in the U.S. of small computers. Founded about five
years ago as a small workshop business, it has become the second largest
manufacturer of small computers, after the Radio Shack division of the Tandy
company.
On December 12, 1980, Apple launched
the Initial Public Offering of its stock to the investing public. When Apple
went public, it generated more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in
1956 and instantly created more millionaires (about 300) than any company in
history. Several venture capitalists cashed out, reaping billions in long-term
capital gains.
In January 1981, Apple held its
first shareholders meeting as a public company in the Flint Center, a large
auditorium at nearby De Anza College (which is often used for symphony
concerts) to handle the larger numbers of shareholders post-IPO. The business
of the meeting had been planned so that the voting could be staged in 15
minutes or less. In most cases, voting proxies are collected by mail and
counted days or months before a meeting. In this case, after the IPO, many
shares were in new hands.
Steve Jobs started his prepared
speech, but after being interrupted by voting several times, he dropped his
prepared speech and delivered a long, emotionally charged talk about betrayal,
lack of respect, and related topics.
The
IBM PC
By August 1981 Apple was among the
three largest microcomputer companies, perhaps having replaced Radio Shack as
the leader. IBM entered the personal computer market that month with the IBM PC,
but Apple had many advantages. While IBM began with one microcomputer, little
available hardware or software, and a couple of hundred dealers, Apple had five
times as many dealers in the US and an established international distribution
network. The Apple II had an installed base of more than 250,000 customers, and
hundreds of independent developers offered software and peripherals; at least
ten databases and ten word processors were available, while the PC had no
databases and one word processor. After examining a PC and finding it
unimpressive, Apple confidently purchased a full-page advertisement in The
Wall Street Journal with the headline "Welcome, IBM. Seriously".
Microsoft head Bill Gates was at Apple headquarters the day of IBM's
announcement and later said "They didn't seem to care. It took them a full
year to realize what had happened".
By 1983 the PC surpassed the Apple
II as the best-selling personal computer. By 1984 IBM had $4 billion in annual
PC revenue, more than twice that of Apple and as much as the sales of it and
the next three companies combined, and a Fortune survey found that 56%
of American companies with personal computers used IBM PCs, compared to Apple's
16%.
Xerox
PARC and the Lisa
Lisa
Apple Computer’s business division
was focused on the Apple III, another iteration of the text-based computer.
Simultaneously the Lisa group worked on a new machine that would feature a
completely different interface and introduce the words mouse, icon,
and desktop into the lexicon of the computing public. In return for the
right to buy US$1,000,000 of pre-IPO stock, Xerox granted Apple Computer three
days access to the PARC facilities. After visiting PARC, they came away with
new ideas that would complete the foundation for Apple Computer's first GUI
computer, the Apple Lisa.
The first iteration of Apple's WIMP
interface was a floppy disk where files could be spatially moved around. After
months of usability testing, Apple designed the Lisa interface of windows and
icons.
The Lisa was introduced in 1983 at a
cost of US $9,995 ($23.7 thousand in present-day terms). Because of the
high price, Lisa failed to penetrate the business market.
Macintosh
and the "1984" commercial
Main article: Macintosh
The Macintosh 128k was announced to
the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with
various magazines in December. Its debut, however, was announced by a single
national broadcast of the now famous US$1.5 million television commercial,
"1984". It was directed by Ridley Scott, aired during the third
quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, and is now considered a
"watershed event" and a "masterpiece." 1984 used an
unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her
white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer on
it) as a means of saving humanity from "conformity" (Big Brother).
These images were an allusion to George Orwell's noted novel, Nineteen
Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised "Big
Brother."
For a special post-election edition
of Newsweek in November 1984, Apple spent more than US$2.5 million to
buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue. Apple also ran a “Test Drive
a Macintosh” promotion, in which potential buyers with a credit card could take
home a Macintosh for 24 hours and return it to a dealer afterwards. While
200,000 people participated, dealers disliked the promotion, the supply of
computers was insufficient for demand, and many were returned in such a bad
shape that they could no longer be sold. This marketing campaign caused CEO John
Sculley to raise the price from US$1,995 to US$2,495 ($5.68 thousand in
present-day terms).
Two days after the 1984 ad aired,
the Macintosh went on sale. It came bundled with two applications designed to
show off its interface: MacWrite and MacPaint. Although the Mac garnered an
immediate, enthusiastic following, it was too radical for some, who labeled it
a mere "toy". Because the machine was entirely designed around the
GUI, existing text-mode and command-driven applications had to be redesigned
and the programming code rewritten; this was a challenging undertaking that
many software developers shied away from, and resulted in an initial lack of
software for the new system. In April 1984 Microsoft's MultiPlan migrated over
from MS-DOS, followed by Microsoft Word in January 1985. In 1985, Lotus
Software introduced Lotus Jazz after the success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC,
although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced Macintosh Office the same year
with the lemmings ad, infamous for insulting potential customers. It was not
successful.
Macintosh also spawned the concept
of Mac evangelism which was pioneered by Apple employee, and later Apple Fellow,
Guy Kawasaki.
Despite initial marketing
difficulties, the Macintosh brand was eventually a success for Apple. This was
due to its introduction of desktop publishing (and later computer animation)
through Apple's partnership with Adobe Systems which introduced the laser
printer and Adobe PageMaker. Indeed, the Macintosh would become known as the de
facto platform for many industries including cinema, music, advertising,
publishing and the arts.
1985:
Jobs leaves Apple
Sculley and Jobs' visions for the
company greatly differed. The former favored open architecture computers like
the Apple II, sold to education, small business, and home markets less
vulnerable to IBM. Jobs wanted the company to focus on the closed architecture
Macintosh as a business alternative to the IBM PC. President and CEO Sculley
had little control over Chairman of the Board Jobs' Macintosh division; it and
the Apple II division operated like separate companies, duplicating services.
Although its products provided 85% of Apple's sales in early 1985, the
company's January 1985 annual meeting did not mention the Apple II division or
employees. Many left, including Wozniak, who stated that the company had
"been going in the wrong direction for the last five years" and sold
most of his stock.
The Macintosh's failure to defeat the PC
strengthened Sculley's position in the company. In June 1985, the board of
directors sided with Sculley and Jobs was stripped of all duties. Jobs, while
taking the position of Chairman of the firm, had no influence over Apple's
direction and subsequently resigned. Sculley reorganized the company, unifying
sales and marketing in one division and product operations and development in
another. In a show of defiance at being set aside by Apple Computer, Jobs sold
all but one of his 6.5 million shares in the company for $70 million. Jobs then
acquired the visual effects house, Pixar for $5M ($10.8 million in
present-day terms). He also went on to found NeXT Inc., a computer company that
built machines with futuristic designs and ran the UNIX-derived NeXTstep
operating system. NeXTSTEP would eventually be developed into Mac OS X. While
not a commercial success, due in part to its high price, the NeXT computer
would introduce important concepts to the history of the personal computer
(including serving as the initial platform for Tim Berners-Lee as he was
developing the World Wide Web).Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.
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