History of Apple

  • Steve, Meet Steve.

    Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak met through a mutual friend, and began their partnership making boxes enabling long-distance phone calls for free.
  • Founding

    Founding
    Not an April fools! Apple launched out of a garage on April 1st, 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak with help from investor Ronald Wayne.
  • Apple II

    Apple II
    Just over a year after launching, the Apple II was Apple's first big release. While the Apple I was a computer kit including a motherboard, the Apple II was a full-blown personal. It was the first ready-assembled personal computer, ready for mass-market use. Fun Fact: An Apple 1 recently sold at auction for $671,400
  • Mouse

    Mouse
    Computers were always text-based, until the "mouse" came along, creating a pointing device on a "desktop" full of "icons". Apple acquired the mouse from Xerox to use on its new computer the "Apple Lisa".
  • The Macintosh

    The Macintosh
    Arguably the biggest step forward for Apple computers, Apple released the first generation of the computer we know today, the Macintosh (or "Mac"). Steve Jobs was convinced that GUI's were the way of the future, and he was right. This was the first PC that required no programming language at all.
  • Goodbye, Steve.

    Apple's board of directors see Jobs as a risk because of how much money he loses through his perfectionist ways. Steve tries to get employees to side with him and oust CEO John Scully but the board sides with Scully and removes Jobs from Apple.
  • The Newton

    The Newton
    Apple's PDA, and eventual predecessor to the iPod, then iPhone. Apple even invented their own programming language on top of C++ called "NewtonScript" just for the Newton. Fun Fact: Isaac Newton was said to have discovered gravity by an apple falling on his head, thus the name "Newton" for Apple's PDAs.
  • Microsoft Deal

    Yes, Apple and microsoft work together. In 1997, Apple entered into a partnership with Microsoft so thet it could release Microsoft office for their operating system.
  • Hello Again, Steve!

    After buying out his new startup NeXT, Steve was brought back as interim CEO or "iCEO" exactly 12 years after his departure. NeXT's "NeXTStep" operating system was praised as being "many years ahead of it's time".
  • OS X

    OS X (or OS ten), was released after NeXT was acquired and it was built based on NeXt's system NeXTstep.
  • iPod

    iPod
    A palm-sized hard-drive based music player, the iPod is released. Dubbed as "a thousand songs in your pocket", the iPod sought to be a solution to the "unbelievably awful" software that was in existing products. These new players were controlled with a simple "click-wheel" instead of layers of menus and menus like previous products.
  • iTunes Store

    The iTunes store was launched shortly after the iTunes, creating a seemless way for users to download music online and bring it to their device. Apple hoped to lower the amount of songs being downloaded illegally by giving users a software that allowed for easy download of music.
  • iPhone

    iPhone
    Apple announces its biggest product to date, the iPhone. The phone introduces support for "multi-touch", or the ability to use multiple fingers to manipulate the dispay. Before iPhone, the smartphones on the market had physical keyboards and directional buttons. Using a virtual keyboard allowed for a bigger screen and the ability to use number pads, game controls, or anything else without being limited to a few physical keys.
  • App Store

    App Store
    In 2008, the app store was opened to developers everywhere. Ever since then, coders have been using the app store to make a living. The app store was revolutionary for developers, quickly becoming the most popular system for new software development.
  • iPad

    iPad
    The iPad was released to be a competitor to computers with access to the App Store, and a screen nearing the size of a small computer while still fitting in one hand. The app store and it's developers now have even more oppertunity to make great software.