7. The Apple Story

 

The Apple Story

1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak begin testing the first Apple computers in the basement of Jobs’ childhood home in Los Altos, California.

1980: Apple becomes a publicly traded company.

1983: Apple launches the Lisa, though it sells poorly and is plagued by slowness and compatibility issues.

1985: Steve Jobs resigns.

1994: Apple releases its first powerPC-based desktops and notebooks.

1997: Steve Jobs returns to Apple.

1998: Apple releases the iMac. This is followed by iTunes and the iPod (2001), the MacBook Pro (2006), and the iPhone (2007).

2011: Apple becomes the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, though this triumph is marred by Jobs' death in October.

2014: Apple launches both the Apple Watch and Apple Pay.

2020: Apple is worth $2 trillion.

2021: Apple partners with Product Red (RED) to combat HIV/AIDS and safeguard vulnerable communities from COVID-19.

Before it became one of the wealthiest companies in the world, Apple Inc. was a tiny start-up in Los Altos, California. Co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both college dropouts, wanted to develop the world's first user-friendly personal computer. Their work ended up revolutionizing the computer industry and changing the face of consumer technology. Along with tech giants like Microsoft and IBM, Apple helped make computers part of everyday life, ushering in the Digital Revolution and the Information Age.

Why was Steve Jobs fired from Apple and what did he do next?

To raise the money they needed to get the Apple II off the ground, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak brought in investors who wound up controlling a majority of Apple's board seats. Steve Jobs was brilliant, but in the early 1980s Apple's board felt not unreasonably, he was too young and temperamental to run Apple.

So in 1983, Jobs recruited Pepsi executive John Sculley to run Apple, famously asking him " Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?"

 

To raise the money they needed to get the Apple II off the ground, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak brought in investors who wound up controlling a majority of Apple's board seats. Steve Jobs was brilliant, but in the early 1980s Apple's board felt not unreasonably, he was too young and temperamental to run Apple.

But they clashed frequently, and by 1985 Sculley had had enough. He convinced the board to sideline Jobs.

So Jobs left to found a new computer company called NeXT. It created a cube-shaped computer that was a technical marvel, but the device's $6500 price tag made it a tough sell. In 1993, NeXT stopped making computers and focused on selling the company's innovative software, but the company struggled to gain traction. 

Apple was struggling too. The software that powered Appl's Macintosh computers were beginning to show its age. Macs no longer had a big technical advantage over cheaper PCs running Microsoft Windows. And the sequence of executives who ran Apple in the post-Jobs era seemed increasingly baffled about what to do to regain Apple's competitive edge.

In desperation, Apple CEO Gil Amelio acquired NeXT for $400 million in 1997. A few months later, the board fired Amelio and gave Jobs control of the company (through he wouldn't formally accept the title of CEO until 2000). On paper, Apple had acquired NeXT, but practically speaking NeXT took over Apple. Several NeXT veterans became senior Apple executives, and the operating system NeST developed became the technical foundation for modern Macs as well as the Iphone and Ipad.

How did Steve Jobs turn Apple around?

When Steve Jobs took the reins at Apple in 1997, the company was in tough shape. It had a bewildering array of products, no clear strategy, and was losing tens of millions of dollars every quarter. 

Jobs acted decisively. He cancelled 70 percent of Apple's products and laid off more than 3000 people, turning a $1 billion loss in 1997 into a $300 million profit in 1998. Then he started work building products that became Silicon Valley legends:

• In 1998, Jobs unveiled the iMac. It sported a colorful, curvy look and was one of the most affordable computers Apple had ever made.
• In 2001, Apple released the iPod music player. Customers loved its elegant click-wheel interface. More importantly, the iPod worked seamlessly with iTunes, Apple's jukebox software for the Mac, making it easy to get music from CDs (and, later, from the iTunes music store) onto their iPods. By the end of the decade, Apple had sold more than 200 million iPods.
• Jobs announced the iPhone in 2007. It sported a revolutionary touchscreen interface that transformed mobile phones in much the same way the Macintosh had transformed personal computers 23 years earlier. Apple has sold 500 million iPhones.
• Apple expanded on the iPhone's success in 2010 with the iPad, a tablet computer based on the same software. Apple has sold 200 million iPads.

All of these products were crafted by Apple's top designer, Jony Ive. Jobs found a soul mate in Ive, and would visit Ive's studios on a daily basis to discuss the designs of forthcoming products. Jobs was a perfectionist, frequently rejecting work that wasn't up to his standards.

Jobs was a genius at marketing. He marked his return to Apple with a "Think Different" ad campaign that associated Apple with unconventional thinkers such as Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi. He introduced new products at keynote addresses that became major media events in their own right. And he developed a chain of Apple Stores that ensured that Apple's products would be presented in a favorable light.

Jobs was also one of the savviest negotiators in Silicon Valley. He pulled off a major coup in 2003 by convincing the "big five" record labels to allow Apple to sell their music in the iTunes Music Store, helping to cement the popularity of the iPod.

Why is Apple so good at making gadgets?

No company is better than Apple at building devices that are powerful, beautiful, and easy to use. Over the last four decades, Apple has produced some of the most beloved products in the technology industry, including the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

How does Apple do it? A big factor is the distinctive approach to designing products pioneered by Steve Jobs. "Steve felt that you had to begin design from the vantage point of the experience of the user," said former Apple CEO John Sculley, who worked closely with Jobs until Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985.

"The designers are the most respected people in the organization," Sculley said in a 2010 interview. "Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him."

Steve Jobs believed that this kind of vertical integration was essential to creating a great user experience. When hardware and software are designed by different companies, it's more difficult to make them work together seamlessly. Creating the whole product allows Apple designers to control every aspect of the user experience and ensure that everything lives up to Apple's exacting standards.