On April first, 1976, three entreprenurial young guys started Apple Computer, Inc, with the intent to make and distribute personal computers. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne started with a dream of creating computers smaller and readily available to the general population. They put together their computers in Jobs' parent's garage and rolled out the Apple I personal computer kit in 1976, the same year they started Apple. Eventually, two hundred of these computer kits would be sold.
Steve Jobs approached a local computer shop, The Byte Shop, which ordered fifty units and paid five hundred dollars for each unit after much persuasion from Jobs, whose persuasive techniques have since become known as "the reality-distortion field". Jobs then ordered components from Cramer Electronics, a national electronics parts distributor. Using a variety of methods, including borrowing space from friends and family and selling various items (including a Volkswagen Bus), Jobs managed to secure the components required while Wozniak and Wayne built the Apple I kits.
In 1977, the Apple II was introduced and almost immediately became much more popular than its major competition, the TRS-80 (which used cassette tapes for storage, and was known derisively as the TRasH-80) and the Commodore 64, despite the fact that the price of the Apple was higher. One of the major advantages of the Apple was the development of the floppy disk drive and software.
The Apple II was chosen by programmers to be the desktop platform for the first "killer app" of the business world. This was a spreadsheet program called VisCalc. This developed a huge market for the Apple. The business market brought in many more software and hardware developers to the machine, plus it attracted home users who chose the Apple to be compatible with their workplace computers.
Over the years, Apple Computer would release many more designs, with each one just slightly better than the previous one. In 1984, Steve Jobs was on hand to introduce the Apple Macintosh as the "Computer for the rest of us". In 1989, Apple introduced the Macintosh Portable. However, this computer was actually quite bulky and cumbersome and was met with mixed reviews. At this point, Apple hired industrial designers to develop a better, more portable personal computer.
In 1991, the Apple PowerBook was introduced. The PowerBook would provide the general layout and form-factor for the portable computers we know today. This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer of both desktop and laptop machines. The success of this portable led to increased revenues and growing popularity of Apple in the computer market, and was followed up by the addition of the Apple iMac to their line of personal computers, in 1998. They also branched out into the music arena with the development of the iPod personal music player, which went on to grab an 80% market share.
Reflecting this branching into other markets, on January 9, 2007, they changed their name from Apple Computer, Inc to simply Apple, Inc. While this company has had their ups and downs over the years, Apple has continued to be a solid presence in the desktop computer and laptop market. Their products have continued to expand to meet the needs of both the business and individual user.
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