Steven Bowen
He gave entirely new way of listening to music and making calls and using computers. Apple helped us coming up with an entirely new way of thinking setting up the next age of living standards.
Apple was the joint effort of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Both of the people were different personalities as teenagers, both were geniuses in their expertise in their own ways. Their teenage was spent in San Jose, California which is better known as Silicon Valley today. Both were outcast personalities in their teenage before setting up the coolest company of the world. Before becoming a famous name, they were mere dropouts from the college and met at Hewlett-Packard, where Jobs was employed as a summer employee and Wozniak as a calculator manufacturer. Wozniak was a great engineer on his own with his superb skills of making various illegal devices and selling them successfully. He then created an unusual device in 70’s that helped people to make free long distance calls which was a valuable thing in that era. He actually did that by hacking the network of long distance calls of AT&T.
After some time, Jobs and Wozniak agreed to work in the direction for creating their own computers. While Wozniak enjoyed creating machines of their own kind Jobs was the strategist to work over the marketability of personal computers. In order to start their company the both sold their valuable assets; Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus and Wozniak sold the HP Programmable Calculator. With $1250 in hand, they staged their business in the basement section of Job’s house. In the tiny basement, they created their first personal computer and on April 1st,1976, they released the first Apple Computer under the name Apple Computers Co.
Apple the Great Company: First Phase
The first Personal Computer from Apple was made using a television as the display system. The display system in that age was an entirely a unique technique as most of the computers at that time were available with no display. This machine was equipped with much text faster than other machines with an easy start up RAM with bootstrap code. This system was designed with a hood that could open and fold the machine according to usability. A local computer shop offered to purchase their first 50 computers on $50 payment for each. Both delivered the order on time by spending their every penny and sleepless nights to the supplier and after that, their computers were in the market.
For the improvement and advancement of their company, Steve Jobs requested Ronald Wayne, 41 to join Apple, who was the colleague of Steve from Atari. Jobs offered the 10% of shares to Wayne who agreed with the offer with working in the nights for Apple and staying along with his job at Atari. The Partnership could not last for long and Wayne sold his part shares at $800 that constitutes US $35.3 billion today.
Late Seventies and Eighties: Phase of Rapid Development
After releasing Apple I, the next plan in the streamline is the something bigger and better. With money in hand from the previous sales, the idea was to come up with an improved and advanced version, the Apple II. Exactly after one year in April 1977, they presented their second computer in West Coast Computer Fair. A Japanese Chemist, who eagerly bought the first Apple II Prototype later on, became the authorized dealer for Apple in Japan.
Apple II was the popular computer of its time produced with a greatly redesigned TV interface that can handle the graphics and colors perfectly. This computer was the absolute ready to use personal computer that runs without plugging the parts and code insertion to run various programs.
At this time, Apple Computer Co. needed large amount of money to grow substantially and soon they got the money from the investor Mike Markkula who was referred to Jobs through Don Valentine and in turn referred to Regis Mckenna. However, Valentine was not very much convinced with the appearance of Steve Jobs and found him imperfect and rebel from the human race. Finally, Valentine recommended Markula and Jobs explained the prospective profits to his investor in rising field of computer. After nodding to all the grounds of Jobs Markula invested $92,000 in Apple Computer Co. personally and a bank loan o $250,000. Markkula was hugely convinced with the success format of Apple due to which both founders respected him a lot and seek various important advices as an elder personally. To both Wozniak and Jobs, Markkula served his suggestions and views as a mentor by telling all the pros and cons of business and management. Markkula brought the first CEO of Apple as Michael Scott. He was the person who suggested to invent floppy disk drive and discovered checkbook-balancing program as well.
Macintosh was the most famous famed product from Apple, it was the first computer to successfully make use of graphic mouse interface. This series was actuall idea of Jef Raskin, an employee from Apple who stressed over creating low cost and user-friendly computers for common man. Macintosh was one of the favorite apples of Raskin that finally became the name of this famous Computer series. At that time Jobs was working over his own computer invention Lisa but Macintosh took over Lisa with a very bright future a head.
In initial years of 1980’s Steve Jobs was young and unproven expert with endless marketing flaws in the strategies that affected the sales of Apple largely. Jobs lacked in experience and discipline to run a company and finally invited Sculley to join him for Apple. It is believed that Scully was the optimum choice for Apple Computer Co. for bringing in the success, stability, and organizational know-how in the company. It was Sculley, who strategized largely for raising the Macintosh price from $1,995 to $2,495 through his skills of advertising and management.
There was always a noticeable gap between Apple–Sculley and Jobs due to their regular clashes. Sculley was believed to be very traditional in managing business but Jobs was a non-linear personality. At that time, Jobs left Apple.
Apple in Absence of Jobs
In 1990’s, there was a leading computer force launched by IBM with their effective operating system dominating the industry. In this phase, Apple tried to head the battle with his PC’s like Quadra, Centris and Performa. Nevertheless, all these computers failed to grab over the market due to poor marketing and poor advancements. At this time, Apple introduced a PDA system (personal digital assistance) known as Newton which failed drastically. This device based the grounds for the inspiration for future Hand-held gadgets.
With so many failures, Apple Computer Co. was considered as a worst management company in the business. The value of the stock shares was very low and the company was left with no visionary power to lead and organize the company for better. At that time, Steve Jobs acquired Pixar, an animation organization and soon after that, he founded a new company named neXT. The computers from this venture did not succeed due to higher prices but it placed the grounds for Mac OS X. this concept also encouraged Tim Berners-Lee for creating the concept of World Wide Web.
Rebirth of Apple
In 1998, with Steve Jobs comeback, Apple regenerated its position in a zealous working spirit. In the financial years of 1998 to 2000, the growth was discovered on a slower note. Jobs finally moved into the CEO’s chair and initiated developing task of iMac. The motive this time was to develop an integrated CRT display and CPU design in clean design manners. The computer came out as a dramatic success setting the company on high by selling one million units in a year. The time noticed resurgence all Apple products in the industry when company started to focus over the designing principals and aesthetics of the products.
Later in the developments, Apple introduced the various groundbreaking products like iBook, Mac G4. Apple also invented new operating systems Mac OS X based on grounds of next.
Apple Today
The actual splendid room of Apple’s success can only be tracked today with its most revolutionary gadget iPod. IPod came on the floors on 23rd October 2001, that has the capacity to store and play 1000 songs in a small device. It was pure gamble from Apple’s side that also paid off them very well and the success of IPod led to the invention of iPod Mini, Nano, Classic, Shuffle, and IPod touch. iPhone and iPad were the major developments that became the biggest success all over the globe.
Stating the truth Apple actually transfigured the music world in a different way with iPod. This created a great way of listening music through downloading service. The iTunes store is a great is a platform to download songs at $0.99 download and $9.99 per album. iTunes was launched in 2003 and within two weeks it recovered 2,000,000 downloads. After this grand success, Apple released a iTunes windows version to elaborate the market.
Later, iTunes went up to the next level and provided free and paid videos download application for iPod, iPhone and iPad. In present days, we can observe a sense of clarity and simplicity in Apple products. By availing great style added with simplicity, Apple became a he success with huge fan following within a decade. On May 26, 2010, in twenty years for the first time Apple overtook Microsoft in the industry with increased value of their stocks in the market.
On 25 August, 2011 Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of apple and succeeded by Tim Cook. On October 5, 2011 Steve Jobs Expired On August 25, 2011, news went out that Steve Jobs had resigned as CEO of Apple, and would be succeeded by Tim Cook. On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs left all of us and passed away with his prevailing complications of pancreatic cancer.
Apple and Its Future
According to the various recent plans of Apple Inc. iPhone4S, Mac iOS 5 and iCloud are coming up next. The iPhone 4S is on the floors with various exciting features that let you stand upfront for handling your day-to-day tasks. There is a new feature Siri installed in iPhone 4S that can recognize your voice, understand your words, and even reply to you. There are various similar plans from Apple products.
A few months before his death, Steve Jobs revealed about their plans for their new headquarters in Cupertino. This new headquarter is a perfect futuristic building that can provide sitting space for 12,000 employees. The building is designed while considering environment friendly issues by utilizing renewable sources of energy. The building will be surrounded by copious trees all around the area to provide healthy atmosphere. This building will be completed in 2013 and the company is planning to move to their new headquarters in 2015.
Conclusion
Every discussion would be insufficient for detailing about the developments and growth of Apple as a computer and gadget developing company. With the above detailed discussion about the world biggest technological name, we have attempted to deal with the map of gradual growth in an illustrative manner. With the demise of Mr. Steve Jobs Apple has lost a major driving force unexpectedly and the loss is difficult to recover with the efforts of any other person and team. We wish to receive great gadgets for the advancement of humanity from Apple.
