Just recently, Apple unveiled its newest iPhones – the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, and on the other hand Aaron Sorkin’s and Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, which received a thumbs up in special screenings, is set to release on October 9. So, we thought it’s the correct time to take a quick look at the company’s history, with, of course, special focus on Jobs.
The beginning
It all started back in 1976, when college drop-outs Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, along with their friend Ronald Wayne established a company named Apple Computer. The association between Jobs and Wozniak, in particular, dates back to 1971, when they first met at Hewlett-Packard – where Wozniak worked – through a mutual friend.
Both of them started a business in 1972 that saw them selling a device called “blue box” which allowed users to illegally make free long-distance calls on AT&T’s network, and that too without getting traced.
“It was the magic that two teenagers could build this box for $100 worth of parts and control 100’s of billions of dollars of infrastructure in the entire telephone network in the whole world,” Jobs said later in a 1995 interview. “Experiences like that taught us the power of ideas. If we wouldn’t have made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple.”
Unsurprisingly, the device became popular, especially among criminals, with Jobs and Woz selling units for a total of $6,000. However, they gave up the venture after police started tightening the noose around them.
In 1974, Woz invited Jobs – who had just come back from a spiritual trip to India – to join the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto. While initially Woz helped Jobs – who was working with Atari at time – with his office project, soon they started working on a PC. What would eventually become Apple I (shown below) was ready by 1976.
The device, which was first introduced at the Homebrew Computer Club, was essentially a DIY kit that didn’t even have a case. It was designed and hand-built by Woz, and needed a keyboard and a monitor to work as a full fledged computer.
The initial struggle
After HP and Atari showed little interest in their product, which was priced at $666.66, citing no market demand, Jobs and Woz, along with Ronald Wayne decided to set-up their own company in the Jobs’ family garage. Apple Computer soon got their first order of 50 units (for $500 each) from the Byte Shop, the only computer store chain around at the time. Despite facing financial crunch, they somehow managed to deliver that order.
Nearly a couple of weeks later, Wayne – who held 10% of the company stock – decided to end his association with the firm as he wasn’t fine with Jobs’ idea of securing huge loans to build the Apple-1 in large quantities. He was given less than $1,000 for the stake that would have been worth around $72bn today.
With Apple-1 turning out to be a successful product, Woz started working on Apple-II in the year 1976 itself. The idea was to create a pre-assembled personal computer for the general public. However, they still did not have enough money to produce it in large quantities.
The beginning of good times
Towards the end of the year 1976, ex-Intel manager named Mike Markkula invested $92,000 in the company. Subsequently, Apple Computer also secured a bank loan of $250,000, and managed to get $600,000 in venture funding – suddenly things were on the track. The company also got its logo designed in 1977.
The Apple-II computer went on sale in June 1977. Carrying a price tag of $1,295, the machine came with a plastic case, standard keyboard, tape-based storage, power supply, and color graphics.
Although it was an excellent product, its high price affected its initial sales. The situation, however, suddenly changed in 1979, when the VisiCalc app was unveiled. It was described as a “magic sheet of paper that can perform calculations and recalculations”.
The app was first released exclusively for the Apple II, giving the much required boost to the computer’s sales – people bought the machine just to run VisiCalc . The Apple-II series proved to be a roaring success for the company, which sold nearly 6 million units in the next 15 years.
In the year 1980, the company followed up Apple II with the release of Apple III, a business-oriented PC. However, the product failed, and was discontinued…
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