Apple was founded in 1976 bySteve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. The company had a rocky start, but soon found their place in the PC world. Jobs was forced out of Apple, but came back after creating the NeXT OS. It was incorporated into today’s Mac OS software. Jobs also introduced iTunes, theiPod, theiPhoneandiPad. Steve Jobs is considered one of the most prolific speakers today.
1996 – Steve Jobs started Apple. When he left Apple, he started NeXT. When Apple started to fall, Steve Jobs came back. Of course, having 2 computer companies is not a good idea – So why not buy it out?That is what Apple did. In a $400 Million deal, they got a new OS and Steve Jobs. Of course, Jobs did not become CEO of Apple again – he reported to current CEO Dr. Gilbert F. Amelio.
1995 – At the turn of the Internet age, researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation, led by Paul Flaherty, Louis Monier and Michael Burrows, created a web crawler and indexer algorithm. The web program was launched on December 15th and called “AltaVista”. The name was chosen because of the surrounds of their company in Palo Alto, CA.
The original name was altavista.digital.com and used a multi-threaded crawler (Scooter). The back-end was running on advanced hardware, therefore it could gather information faster than any other web crawling software out there.
AltaVista was one of the top search engines out there until Google overtook them all. Ultimately, in 2003 AltaVista was purchased by Yahoo! who continued to run it until 2013 when it was shut down.
1984 Apple Superbowl Commercial
1983 – There is some debate whether this happened on Dec. 15h or 31st. If you were a citizen of Twin Falls, Idaho and up at 1 AM watching<a href="http://www.KMVT.com/”> KMVT channel 11, then you got a treat. You saw an ad that changed the Superbowl. You saw an ad that changed a computer company.That’s right. You were the first to see the famous 1984 Superbowl Advertisement for Apple Macintosh. The Chiat/Day advertising company pre-ran ads to make sure they would be acceptable for a big release. Therefore, 1 AM on Thursday, December 15th – chances of people catching the ad are slim.
Of course, the ad went on to be one of the most influential ads of the 20th century and turned Superbowl commercials into a hot commodity. Interesting note: Apple didn’t put a commercial in the 2012 Superbowl.
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1980 – Apple Computer goes up for their Initial Public Offering and makes a statement in the market. Using the symbol “<a class="zem_slink" title="NASDAQ: AAPL” href=”http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL” rel=”googlefinance”>AAPL“, Apple shares started at $22 – but sell out within minutes. By the end of the day, shares rose to $29. The market value became 1.8 Billion, which, in turn, made employees and investors pretty rich – Steve Jobs reports $217 Million, being the largest shareholder. It beat out Ford Motor when it went IPOV (IPO Viral).
1991 – What was first a Multimedia add-on for System 6, Quicktime has spent 21 years being Apples’ proprietary player. The original version contained graphics, animation and Video codecs – What was refered to as “Road Pizza”. Since then Quicktime had developed on both Mac and Windows sides (starting in 1992). The current version is called Quicktime X but there are signs the technology is either moving a new direction or possibly retired.
1983 – Windows 1.o was announced at the Helmsley Palace Hotel in New York City. It was one of the most elaborate product introductions to date. Gates says Windows 1.0 will officially release in 1984, yet it didn’t release until June, 1985.
Atari
1986 – Back in that day, Comdex was the big computer show. There were two versions: one that was held in Chicago in the spring and the other in Las Vegas mid-November. At this time, Atari was the big dog on the block. Jack Tramiel was putting all efforts in this years Comdex after seeing a small dip in the shares.So they set up a 65 booth display with different 3rd party developers that would show off what the Atari could do. The big innovation that year – the SX212 1200 baud modem for $99.95. They also showed off the Atari 2600jr and the Atari 7800, and because of that impressive show, Atari boasted a $25 million profit that year.
Of course, the company went well for a few more years, merged with JTS, which was then bought by Hasbro in 1998. The company still is survived in a way to this day, but not in the glory that it was back then.
2011 – Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson was released on Kindle and iBookstore, with a full release at Midnight. The book was planned to be released a lot later. However due to Job’s health, they pushed it up as much as possible.
2001– Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod. Little did we know what that really meant for not only Apple, but also the change in technology. You were able to get either a 5 GB or 6 GB model. The original iPod connected via firewire and was touted to hold 1000 songs – most people’s entire music library.iPod actually was a reference from 2001: a Space Odyssey. The trademark was already taken by another company, but the product – an Internet Kiosk – was discontinued by 2001, so Apple finally received the Trademark in 2005.
From the Keynote to the iPod event, Steve Jobs said:
The choice we made was music. Now why music? Well, we love music. And it’s always good to do something you love. More important, music is a part of everyone’s life. EVERYONE. Music has been around forever, it will always be around – this is not a speculative market. And because it’s a part of everyone’s life, it’s a very large target market; all around the world. It knows no boundries.
Interestingly enough, in this whole new digital music revolution, there is no market leader. There are small companies like creative and sonic blue, and then there’s large companies like Sony that haven’t had a hit yet. They have found no recipe yet for digital music. We think not only can we find the recipe, but we think the Apple brand is going to be fantastic because people trust the Apple brand to get their great digital electronics from.
1988– Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. Steve Jobs shows off the NeXT Computer featuring the Motorola 68030 microprocessor at 25 MHz. The computer introduces several new features including optical storage disk, voice recognition, and object-oriented languages. The system came with the NeXT STep operating system and cost $6,500.
NeXT computer sold around 50,000 units. The NeXTSTEP Operating System was highly influential. It was the basis of Mac OS X. Apple acquired NeXT on Decemeber 20th, 1996 for $429 million in cash. Steve Jobs became interim CEO of Apple and the rest was history.
Steve Jobs almost didn’t come back after he was fired from Apple. He ended up not only founding NeXT, but also helped with Pixar. It does beg the question: Would we have an iPhone, iPad if Jobs wouldn’t have come back? Same question if he wasn’t brought back as CEO of Apple? Would it have been the NeXTPhone and NeXTPad?
1991– The second lawsuit of Apple vs. Apple was settled: Apple computers vs. Apple records (the Beatles label). The suit was about producing music. Of course there was a fine line between the lawsuit – after all Apple Computers is in the computer business and Apple Records was in the music making business.
Nonetheless, the record label felt that Apple computer was starting to infringe on their turf, so they decided to make the attack. This issue went on a few times, later in the form of iTunes and the iPod.
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