Apple or Apple Computer Inc. was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who were college dropouts (makes you wonder what value does that certificate and education even brings) in April 1, 1976. Their aim was to make a PC that was small enough to use and carry comfortably. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started building a computer named Apple-I in their garage which was the very first model of personal computer under Apple brand and was sold without a monitor, Keyboard or casing. In the year 1977 they decided to add the three things that were missing when they sold the Apple-1. In Apple-II They introduced first-ever color graphics which revolutionized computer industry. When Apple went public, in 1980 their total valuation jumped from 8 million dollars to 117 million dollars.

In 1983 Steve Wozniak left Apple due to Conflict of interest in day to day running of Apple. Then Steve Jobs hired John Sculley of PepsiCo to be the president which was one unfortunate move on Jobs part well. After much controversial conflicts with John Sculley regarding their vision for the future of Apple, Jobs was ousted in 1985 by board of directors. After that Steve founded his very own company the ‘NeXT Software’ and after some time he added Pixar in his assets by buying it from George Lucas. Pixar later became one of the industry leading Company in producing animated movies like Toy story, Monsters, Finding Nemo and so on. Apple rode on Steve Jobs preplanned layouts and kept on raking profits until 1990. Near 1985 Sculley had turned down an appeal from Bill Gates from licensing his software, which came to haunt them after 1990 as Bill Gate’s software the Windows became their biggest ever competitor in PC market. In 1993 Sculley was forced to step down as the CEO of Apple as he was opposed to licensing Macintosh software and was discussing with Goldman Sachs about splitting Apple into two Companies. After Sculley had left, Apple had only 2 billion dollars in cash and 200 million dollars debt. Over the course of 1993 to 1997 Apple began to fall rapidly from its grace and was in desperate need of a helping hand, then the board of directors reached out to Steve Jobs, bought his new-found company and he joined the Apple as CEO or interim CEO as he liked to call the position. Interim CEO means he worked like a CEO but he was not a CEO. After that the golden age of Apple began and started to soar and from that day it has yet to fall like it did then. After that through Job’s efforts Apple Joined hands with Microsoft to create new versions of Microsoft for the Macintosh. After that Apple introduced online Apple store. Steve Jobs was highly impressed with Jonathan Ive for his talent in designing and in 1998 they both paired up to introduce the iMac, an all-in-one computer. Due to its unique design and features, Apple was able to sell approximately 80,000 units in just 5 months. Unlike Apples previous style of confusing people with too many products and their versions, Jobs had a different idea, he focused on a few products and chose to make them better. So, he reduced the range of computers to four among which two were for business and two were for consumers, and this style still has not changed yet.

After regaining their footing market, Apple began to delve into innovation. Apple introduced iPod, a portable digital music player, in 2001 and it sold approx. 100 million units within six years. After that Apple introduced iTunes music store in 2003 and the service included downloading online music for $0.99 per song and managed to become world’s largest music retailer by 2005.

In 2006 Apple made their first laptop the MacBook Pro which was based on intel architecture. In 2006 Apple’s shares touched $80 per share from $6 in 2003. In 2007, Apple announced iPhone at Macworld Expo and changed its company name from Apple Computer Inc to Apple Inc. After all these years of innovation and taking inspiration from other and refining it Apple is where it is today. Apple still does and will continue to surprise the world with its refinement and innovation (Thanks Steve Jobs).

Photo by Aditya Joshi on unsplash