TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: History of Apple Computer

History of Apple Computer

Patrick Townson (
Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:34:30 -0600

Apple Computer is thirty years old this weekend. It was officially
founded on April 1, 1976. This report, taken in large part from
Wikipedia tells about much of the past thirty years. It will be
filed in the history section of our archives.


Before Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple, he was an electronics
friend Steve Jobs design video games for Atari. Wozniak had been
buying computer time on a variety of minicomputers hosted by Call
terminals available at that time were primarily paper-based; thermal
printers like the Texas Instruments Silent 700 were state of the
minicomputers at Call Computer. Alex Kamradt commissioned the design
and sold a small number of them through his firm.

"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
development of the two Steves' prototype models. Recently (June 12,
2005 Commencement Address, Stanford University) Jobs said, "When I was
young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth
it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions."
(in the June 14, 2005 edition of the online "Stanford Report" ).

In 1975, 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 teletype and
have a complete computer.

At the time the only microcomputer CPUs generally available were the
afford a CPU.

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
Jobs, who was interested in the commercial potential of the small
hobby machines.

The Apple I

Wozniak in assembling a machine and selling it.

Electronics, a national electronic parts distributor, and ordered the
components he needed to assemble the Apple I Computer. The local
computer stores for 50 of my computers and the payment terms are
computers in that time frame deliver and collect my money from Terrell
Paul Terrell who was attending an IEEE computer conference at Asilomar
in Pacific Grove and verified the validity of the Purchase Order.
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
multimillion-dollar company without giving away one share of stock or

as the display system, whereas many machines had no display at
displayed text at a terribly slow 60 characters per second, however
this was faster then teletypes used on contemporary machines. The
designed a cassette interface for loading and saving programs, at the
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.

machines. Using a variety of methods, including borrowing space from
friends and family, selling various prized items (like calculators and
were built.

The Apple II

introduced Apple II to a Japanese textile technician named Mizushima
Satoshi who became the first authorized Apple dealer in Japan.[1]

The main difference internally was a completely redesigned TV
type in the code to run BASIC.

failed venture four years earlier, and eventually dropped out of the
computer for ordinary people seemed absurd at the time. Jobs
and the three formed Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. Why Apple? Jobs
had worked at an apple orchard for a while, and he considered it to be
the perfect fruit.

released in 1977 and became the computer generally credited with
creating the home computer market (though this is open to
debate). Millions were sold well into the 1980s. When Apple went
Motor Company in 1956, and instantly created more millionaires than
any company in history.

many schools as late as 2005.

The Apple III

By the 1980s, Apple faced emerging competition in the personal
of the emerging desktop computing market in large companies.

Apple III

Several smaller businesses were using the Apple II, but the company
corporate desktop computing market. Thus, the designers of the Apple
III were forced to comply with Jobs' lofty and sometimes impractical
goals (a continuing theme throughout Apple's history). Among these was
the omission of a cooling fan -- it is reported Jobs found them
these machines were dead on arrival or succumbed to
overheating. Thousands were recalled and replaced with no questions
introduced an updated version in 1983, the initial bad press
discouraged buyers and left the III largely a failure.

Xerox PARC and The Lisa

Meanwhile, various groups within Apple were working on a completely
new kind of personal computer, with advanced technologies such as a
graphical user interface, computer mouse, object-oriented programming
and networking capabilities. These people, including Jef Raskin and
Bill Atkinson, agitated for Steve Jobs to put the company's focus
behind such computers.

competing Apple Lisa (named after Steve Jobs' first daughter) and
Apple Macintosh teams. Over the objections of some PARC researchers,
granted Apple engineers 3 days of access to the PARC facilities in
capture the business market. The Lisa was discontinued with the
unceremonious burial of the remaining inventory at a landfill in
Logan, Utah in 1986.

The release of the Macintosh and the 1984 commercial

The Lisa project was removed from Jobs' control midway through
development to prevent another Apple III incident and Jobs soon turned
his attention to the Macintosh Project. The Macintosh was originally
envisioned by Jef Raskin as a truly personal computer with everything
Apple where different projects like Lisa and Macintosh were discrete
departments which were somewhat self-contained in all aspects; a
serious flaw which created hostilities and unrest within the company.

advertisement based on George Orwell's novel 1984 and directed by
Ridley Scott. Steve Jobs' intention with the ad was to equate Big
Brother with the IBM PC and a nameless female action hero, portrayed
by Anya Major, with the Apple Macintosh. The commercial ended with the
following: "On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce
Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'" - the
implication being that the Mac's new, "user friendly" GUI (with icons
designed by graphic designer Susan Kare) would liberate computing and
information from the IBM PC.

Macintosh also spawned the concept of Mac evangelism which was pioneered by
Apple employee, and later Apple Fellow, Guy Kawasaki.

Despite initial marketing difficulties, such as lack of software, the
monochrome-only display and the closed architecture, 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
music, publishing and the arts.

after Microsoft dominated the marketplace with its broad licensing
marketshare and the Macintosh clones achieved limited success before
being axed after Steve Jobs returned to Apple Computer in 1997.

Beginning of Windows

chairman of Microsoft was given several Macintosh prototypes in 1983
for software development for the new computer. In 1985, Microsoft
Apple Computer and Microsoft, ending with an out of court
settlement. In this settlement it was stated that Microsoft would be
that point the IBM PC system had been reverse engineered and many
companies were also making IBM PC Compatibles, cheaper copies of the
PC. Although the first version of Windows was technologically inferior

1985: Jobs leaves Apple

After an internal power struggle between Steve Jobs and the new CEO
John Sculley in 1985, Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley
and Jobs was asked to resign. Jobs bought the visual effects house,
Pixar. 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. 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 inital platform for Tim Berners-Lee as he was developing the World
Wide Web).

1985-1997: Sculley, Spindler, Amelio

Apple IIgs

Macintosh SE

The Apple II family of the 1980s

Apple now had two separate, incompatible platforms: the Apple II, an
affordable, expandable home computer, and the Apple Macintosh, the
closed platform for professionals. (John Gruber, among others, has
speculated that this platform incompatibility was the main reason the
Macintosh did not share the initial commercial success which was
experienced by the Apple II in the late 1970s. [2]. However, by the
mid - 1980s, the Apple II was now competing with the IBM PC and its
clones, and a new energy was focused upon marketing the Macintosh.

Thus, Apple continued to sell both lines promoting them to different
market segments: the Macintosh to colleges, college students, and
knowledge workers, and the Apple II to home users and public
schools. A few months after introducing the Mac, Apple released a
Apple introduced the Apple IIgs, an Apple II positioned as something
of a hybrid product with a mouse-driven, Mac-like operating
environment. Apple II computers remained an important part of Apple's
business until they were discontinued in the early 1990s.

The Mac family

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.

The early-mid 1990s

In the late 1980s, Apple's fiercest technological rivals were the

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. 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. And the cost of the machines remained higher than a comparable

In 1994, Apple surprised its loyalists by allying with its long-time
competitor IBM in the AIM alliance. This was a high-profile bid to
create a revolutionary new computing platform, known as PReP, which
would use IBM and Motorola hardware and Apple software. PReP's
(projected) outstanding performance and software would leave the PC
far behind, and would upset Microsoft, which Apple had identified as
its real enemy.

As the first step toward the PReP platform, Apple started the Power
Macintosh line in 1994, using IBM's PowerPC processor. These
processors utilized 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.

commercially, it defined and launched the category and was a
forerunner and inspiration of devices such as Palm Pilot and its

1997: The return of Jobs

In 1996, the struggling company beat out Microsoft and Be, Inc.'s BeOS
in its bid to sell its operating system. Apple purchased Steve Jobs'
company, NeXTon December 20, 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.

On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted as CEO of Apple by the board of
directors after overseeing a 12 year record low stock price and
crippling financial losses. Jobs stepped in as the interim CEO to
began a critical restructuring of the company's product line. He would
eventually become CEO and is serving in that position to the present

1998- 2001: Apple's Renaissance

The original iMac

Company headquarters on Infinite Loop in Cupertino

The iMac, iBook, and PowerMac G4

After discontinuing Apple's licensing of its operating system to
third-party computer manufacturers, one of Jobs's first moves as new
acting CEO was to develop the iMac, which bought Apple time to
restructure. The original iMac integrated a CRT display and CPU into a
streamlined, translucent plastic body. The line became a sales smash,
moving about one million units a year. It also helped re-introduce
Apple to the media and public, and announced the company's new
emphasis on the design and aesthetics of its products.

More recent products include the iBook, the Power Mac G4, and the
AirPort product series, which helped popularize the use of Wireless
LAN technology to connect computers to networks.

In 1999, Apple introduced the Power Mac G4, which utilized the
Motorola-made PowerPC 7400 containing a 128-bit instruction unit known
as AltiVec as its flagship processor line. Also that year, Apple
unveiled the iBook, its first consumer-oriented laptop that was also
the first Macintosh to support the use of Wireless LAN via the
optional AirPort card that was based on the 802.11b standard.

Mac OS X

NeXT's NeXTstep. Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, OS X
married the stability, reliability and security of Unix with the ease
of a completely overhauled user interface. To aid users in
transitioning their applications from OS 9, the new operating system
did allow the use of Mac OS 9 applications through OS X's Classic
Environment. Apple's Carbon API also allowed developers to adapt their
OS 9 software to use Mac OS X's features.

Apple chain stores

line of Apple retail stores, to be located throughout the major
third-party retail outlets.

The iPod

In late 2001, Apple introduced its first iPod portable digital audio player.

2002 to present

In early 2002, Apple unveiled a redesigned iMac, using the G4
processor. The new design had a hemispherical base and a flat panel
discontinued in the summer of 2004.

In 2002, Apple also released the Xserve 1U rack mounted server.
Originally featuring two G4 chips, the Xserve was unusual for Apple in
two ways. It represented an earnest effort to enter the enterprise
computer market and it was also relatively cheaper than similar
used in traditional rack-mounted servers. Apple later released the

In mid-2003, Apple launched the Power Mac G5, based on IBM's G5
processor. Apple claims this the first 64-bit computer sold to the
general public, but in fact that title actually goes to the AMD
Opteron line (Opteron processors were however marketed more directly
to the enterprise for use in rackmount servers and in
workstations). Both 64-bit CPU's were pre-dated by the 64-bit DEC
Alpha architecture, although the Alpha was aimed more at servers and
workstations and not at the "general public." The Power Mac G5 was
also used by Virginia Tech to build its prototype System X
supercomputing cluster, which at the time garnered the prestigious
recognition of 3rd fastest supercomputer in the world. It cost only
ranking supercomputers. Apple's Xserves were soon updated to use the
G5 as well. They replaced the Power Mac G5 machines as the main
building block of Virginia Tech's System X, which was ranked in
November 2004 as the world's 7th fastest supercomputer. [3]

A new iMac based on the G5 processor was unveiled August 31, 2004 and
base altogether, placing the CPU and the rest of the computing
world's thinnest desktop computer, measuring in at around two inches
(around 5.1 centimeters).

Apple computers such as the PowerBook, the iBook, and the iMac are
frequently featured as props in films and television
series. Occasionally the heroes use Apple computers while the villains
campaign for the PowerBook tying in with the film Mission: Impossible
and in the film Independence Day a Macintosh laptop is used to infect
the alien mothership and save the human race.

Through the 1990s, personal computers based on Microsoft's Windows
operating system began to gain a much larger percentage of new
decade. The company was struggling financially under then-CEO Gil
Amelio when on August 6, 1997 Microsoft bought a $150 million
Apple . Perhaps more significantly, Microsoft simultaneously announced
its continued support for Mac versions of its office suite, Microsoft
earlier trend within Microsoft that resulted in poor Mac versions of
their software and has resulted in several award-winning
releases. However, Apple's market share continued to decline, reaching
3% by 2004.

August of 2004. More shops for Japan are supposedly in the
works. Apple's first European store opened in London in November 2004,
and is currently the largest store. A store in the Bullring shopping
centre in Birmingham opened in early 2005, and the Bluewater shopping
centre in Kent opened in July 2005. Apple opened its first store in
Canada in the middle of 2005 at the Yorkdale Shopping Centre in North
York, a suburb of Toronto. Apple will open two more stores in the UK
by the end of 2005; one in Meadowhall, Sheffield and the other in the
Trafford Centre, Manchester.

demand does not necessarily dictate a full scale store. The first of
these stores was opened at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto,
California. These stores follow in the footsteps of the successful
placed in several smaller markets.

On April 29, 2005, Apple released Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" to the
general public.

Presently Apple's wildly successful PowerBook and iBook products rely
on Apple's previous generation G4 architecture which were produced by
Freescale Semiconductor, a spin off from Motorola. Engineers at IBM
have had some success in making their PowerPC G5 processor consume
less power and run cooler but not yet enough to run in iBook or
PowerBook formats. As of the week of October 24, 2005. Apple released
the PowerMac G5 Dual that features a Dual-Core processor. This
processor contains two cores in one rather than have two separate
processors. Apple has also developed the PowerMac G5 Quad that uses
two of the Dual-Core processors for enhanced workstation power and
performance. The new PowerMac G5 Dual's cores run individually at
2.0ghz or 2.3ghz. The PowerMac G5 Quad's cores run individually at
2.5ghz and all variations have a graphics processor the has 256 bit
power or can be expanded to 512 bit for ultimate performance. [4]

In a keynote address on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs officially announced
that Apple will begin producing Intel-based Macintosh computers
beginning in 2006. Jobs confirmed rumors that the company had secretly
been producing versions of its current operating system Mac OS X for
both PowerPC and Intel processors over the past 5 years, and that the
transition to Intel processor systems will last until the end of
2007. Rumors of cross-platform compatibility had been spurred by the
fact that Mac OS X is based on OPENSTEP, an operating system that was
available for many platforms. In fact, Apple's own Darwin, the open
source underpinnings of OS X, was also available for Intel's x86
architecture. [5] [6] [7]

On January 10, 2006, the first Intel-based machines, the iMac and
MacBook Pro, were introduced. They were based on the Intel Core Duo
platform. This introduction came with the news that Apple will
complete the transition to Intel processors on all hardware by the end
of 2006, a year ahead of the originally quoted schedule.

As well as the transition to Intel microprocessors, the release of
Apple's next version of Mac OS X, Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard", is
expected at the end of 2006. Leopard will run natively on both Intel
and present day PowerPC processors. During his keynote address at the
Worldwide Developers Conference 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs also
projected that the Mac OS X architecture will be the basis of Apple's
operating systems for the next two decades.

Apple and "i" Web services

In 2000, Apple introduced its iTools service, a collection of free
web-based tools that included an email account, internet greeting
cards called iCards, a service called iReview that gave internet users
a place to read and write reviews of Web sites, and a tool called
KidSafe which promised to prevent children from browsing inappropriate
portions of the web. The latter two services were eventually cancelled
because of lack of success, while iCards and email became integrated
into Apple's .Mac subscription based service introduced in 2002. The
.Mac service currently costs $99.95 annually in the United States (the
iCards service, however, remains free for all).

iPod and iTunes Music Store
iPod mini

A fourth-generation iPod

player. Its signature features included; an LCD, easy to use
interface, and a large capacity drive (initially 5 GB) which was
enough to hold approximately 1,000 songs. It was quite large when
compared to the 20-30 songs of Flash-based players of the time. Apple
more compact design, Windows compatibility (previous iPods only
interacted with Macintosh computers), AAC compatibility, storage sizes
systems. On October 26, 2004, Apple released a color version of their
award winning iPod which can not only play music but also show
photos. In early 2005, Apple unveiled its smallest iPod yet: the iPod
shuffle, which is about the size of a pack of gum. Speaking to
software developers on June 6, 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the
company's share of the entire portable music device market stood at

Apple has revolutionized the computer and music industry by signing
the five major record companies to join its new music download
(or $9.99 per album). Users have more flexibility than on previous
purchased songs (although a particular playlist containing purchased
music may only be burned seven times), share and play the songs on up
to five computers, and, of course, download songs onto an iPod.

contrasts with other commercial subscription music services where
subscription). If these services begin to gain traction in the
Store in some way to stay competitive.

The iTunes Music Store was launched in 2003 with 2 million downloads
allowing Windows users the ability to access the store as
States due to licensing restrictions, but there were plans to release
the store to many other countries in the future.

In January 2004 Apple released a more compact version of their iPod
colours made it popular with consumers on debut with many stores
having "sold out" their initial inventories of the devices.

In June 2004 Apple opened their iTunes Music Store in the United
Republic of Ireland due to the intransigence of the Irish Recorded
Music Association (IRMA) but eventually opened Thursday January 6,
2005.) A version for Canada opened in December 2004. On May 10, 2005,

On December 16, 2004, Apple sold its 200 millionth song on the iTunes
Music Store to Ryan Alekman from Belchertown, Massachusetts. The
Apple sold its 300 millionth song on March 2, 2005. On July 17, 2005,
the iTunes Music Store sold its 500 millionth song. At that point,
songs were selling at an annualized rate of more than 500 million --
and that rate was growing.

On January 11, 2005, an even smaller version of the iPod was
announced, this one based on flash memory instead of using a
miniaturized hard drive. The iPod shuffle, like its predecessors,
proved so popular that it sold out almost immediately, causing delays
based mp3 players.

The iPod is giving an enormous lift to Apple's financial results. In
the quarter that ended March 26, 2005, Apple earned $290 million, or
34 cents a share, on sales of $3.24 billion. The year before in the
same quarter, Apple earned just $46 million, or 6 cents a share, on
revenue of $1.91 billion.

In July 2005, the iPod was given a color screen, merging the iPod and
iPod Photo.

On September 7, 2005, Apple replaced the iPod mini line with the new
iPod nano. While some consumers were put off by the high pricetag
($199 for 2 gigabytes), and others put off by the easily scratchable
surface, the Nano had sold 1 million units in the first 17 days.

A month later, on October 12, 2005 Apple introduced the new
fifth-generation iPod with video playback capabilities. The device is
also 40% thinner than a fourth-generation iPod and has a larger

Annual Revenue: $13.93 billion USD (68% FY 2005) | Employees: 14,800
(2005) | Stock Symbol: NASDAQ: AAPL | Website:


Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So, happy 30th birthday to Apple!
Although my _first_ computer was an OSI (Ohio Scientific, Inc) C-1-P
which I purchased from a neighbor of mine in 1977 -- it had all of 4-K
memory, mind you, no disc drive -- you loaded the DOS and any other
programs from a tape player. I got into Apple shortly after that.

Shortly after getting the OSI C-1-P I got a Zenith model Z-1 terminal
in a kit from the Heathkit Company, along with a Hayes 300 baud
modem. And all my earliest online communication stuff was done with
the Zenith Z-1 terminal. My first one had a green screen; later on I
traded it for one with an amber screen. I also 'traded up' the modem
to one that ran at 1200 baud.

The Apple ][+ I bought was actually a Bell and Howell 'Black Apple'
which was an overstock the Bell and Howell people no longer needed,
and I got it for a couple hundred dollars. There were a few things
which made the ][+ superior to just the 'original ][' but I do not
remember what they were. There were also a few things about the
Bell and Howell 'Black Apple' which made it different than the
regular cream-colored Apple, but I do not remember that either.

About the time I purchased the Bell & Howell Black Apple, I had
also accepted a volunteer position as 'sysop' or system operator
for the Chicago Public Library BBS (Bulletin Board System). They
had the first BBS anywhere run by a public library for its patrons
and it used the software developed by Bill Blue called "People's
Message System" which was developed for Apple. There were various
BBS's written for Apple, including one called ABBS. Of course, the
concept of BBS had been started by Randy Seuess and Ward Christianson
a year before that (which I religiously called each day using my
Zenith Z-1 terminal and 300 baud modem).

I decided to operate the ABBS program on _my_ Apple while having the
library BBS operating on the _library_ machine. (Different concepts;
the library BBS was intended for book and movie reviews; my machine
was called 'Lakeshore Modem Magazine', it was more into news of the
day and discussion, etc. I had a friend who ran a multi-party chat
line on his Apple; if you recall, there were 8 slots in the back of
the box; you had to have one for the DOS bootstrap thing; and
(assuming you wanted a live clock inside) one for the clock, the other
five or six slots in his instance were all modems, so he had a big
party line, the original Compuserve or AOL-style 'chat room' thing,
except he had one of the modems 'tied across' to me which allowed one
of his callers to dial his number, but connect to the 'port' which
got them onto me. His phone numbers were all in a 'hunt group' for
ease in allowing his callers to get on his system.

I kept my BBS running for about five years, through the end of 1985.
By 1983 or so, I was personally more interested in Usenet and
had pretty much quit doing any personal BBS'ing.

Which reminds me! Would any of you regular readers be interested in
taking over _full time (without any help from me)_ the job of
maintaining the site? The skeleton is
there, and a few items; but it needs a lot of work and someone to
give it lots of love ... I will be glad to walk you through what I
have done thus far, but I really need to get some of this off my back.

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