history, products and curiosities
Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 4:52 am
Apple is one of the most popular and powerful companies in the world. Not only that, it has revolutionized how we communicate and much more. Starting with the creation of computers, Apple has emerged at the forefront of the most important companies in history with the creation of the iPod, iPhone and iPad. All of this success came from the mind of its co-founder, Steve Jobs.
On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs passed away at the age of 56. He had just stepped down as CEO of Apple, the company he co-founded, for the second time. Jobs was an entrepreneur through and through, and the story of his rise is the story of Apple as a company, with some very interesting twists and turns.
In this blog, we'll look at Steve Jobs' career and the company he founded, as well as some of the lessons Apple offers to budding entrepreneurs.
Apple History
The beginning
Steve Jobs started his business with another Steve, Steve Wozniak, building the blue boxes that phreakers used to make free calls across the country.
The two were members of the HomeBrew Computer Club, where they belarus phone number data quickly fell in love with kit computers and left the blue boxes behind. The next product the two sold was the Apple I, which was a kit for building a PC. To do anything with it, the customer had to add their own monitor and keyboard.
With Wozniak doing most of the construction and Jobs handling the sales, the two made enough money in the hobby market to invest in the Apple II. It was the Apple II that made the company. Jobs and Wozniak created enough interest in their new product to attract venture capital.
This meant they were in the big leagues and their company, Apple, was officially incorporated in 1976. Steve Jobs was one month away from turning 22 and would be a millionaire before his next birthday.
The roller coaster begins
By 1979, Apple was earning more than $5 million in net income on the strength of the Apple II alone. The Apple II was not state-of-the-art, but it allowed computer enthusiasts to create and sell their own programs. Among these user-generated programs was VisiCalc, a kind of proto-Excel that represented the first software with business applications .
While Apple did not profit directly from these programs, they did see more interest as the uses of the Apple II expanded. This model of allowing users to create their own programs and sell them would reappear in the app market of the future, but with a much tighter business strategy around it.
By the time Apple went public in 1980, the company’s dynamics were more or less set. Steve Jobs was the brash visionary with an intense and often combative management style, and Steve Wozniak was the quiet genius who made the vision work.
Apple's board of directors was not too happy about such an imbalance of power in the company, however. Jobs and the board agreed to add John Sculley to the executive team in 1983. In 1985, the board fired Jobs in favor of Sculley.
The sabbatical years
Steve Jobs was rich and unemployed. Although he wasn't working at Apple, he was far from idle. During this time , from 1985 to 1996, Jobs was involved in two major business ventures; the first of which was an investment.
In 1986 , Jobs bought a controlling stake in a company called Pixar from George Lucas. The company was struggling, but its eventual success in digital animation led to an initial public offering (IPO) that earned Jobs about $1 billion.
The second was a return to his earlier obsession with computers, founding NeXT to build cutting-edge computers. These were expensive machines with an operating system that represented the best attempt yet to package the power of UNIX into a graphical user interface. When Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, he did so using a NeXT machine.
Of these two deals, NeXT proved to be the more important, as it was discovered that Apple was looking to replace its operating system. Apple purchased NeXT in 1996 for its operating system, bringing Steve Jobs back to the first company he founded.
On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs passed away at the age of 56. He had just stepped down as CEO of Apple, the company he co-founded, for the second time. Jobs was an entrepreneur through and through, and the story of his rise is the story of Apple as a company, with some very interesting twists and turns.
In this blog, we'll look at Steve Jobs' career and the company he founded, as well as some of the lessons Apple offers to budding entrepreneurs.
Apple History
The beginning
Steve Jobs started his business with another Steve, Steve Wozniak, building the blue boxes that phreakers used to make free calls across the country.
The two were members of the HomeBrew Computer Club, where they belarus phone number data quickly fell in love with kit computers and left the blue boxes behind. The next product the two sold was the Apple I, which was a kit for building a PC. To do anything with it, the customer had to add their own monitor and keyboard.
With Wozniak doing most of the construction and Jobs handling the sales, the two made enough money in the hobby market to invest in the Apple II. It was the Apple II that made the company. Jobs and Wozniak created enough interest in their new product to attract venture capital.
This meant they were in the big leagues and their company, Apple, was officially incorporated in 1976. Steve Jobs was one month away from turning 22 and would be a millionaire before his next birthday.
The roller coaster begins
By 1979, Apple was earning more than $5 million in net income on the strength of the Apple II alone. The Apple II was not state-of-the-art, but it allowed computer enthusiasts to create and sell their own programs. Among these user-generated programs was VisiCalc, a kind of proto-Excel that represented the first software with business applications .
While Apple did not profit directly from these programs, they did see more interest as the uses of the Apple II expanded. This model of allowing users to create their own programs and sell them would reappear in the app market of the future, but with a much tighter business strategy around it.
By the time Apple went public in 1980, the company’s dynamics were more or less set. Steve Jobs was the brash visionary with an intense and often combative management style, and Steve Wozniak was the quiet genius who made the vision work.
Apple's board of directors was not too happy about such an imbalance of power in the company, however. Jobs and the board agreed to add John Sculley to the executive team in 1983. In 1985, the board fired Jobs in favor of Sculley.
The sabbatical years
Steve Jobs was rich and unemployed. Although he wasn't working at Apple, he was far from idle. During this time , from 1985 to 1996, Jobs was involved in two major business ventures; the first of which was an investment.
In 1986 , Jobs bought a controlling stake in a company called Pixar from George Lucas. The company was struggling, but its eventual success in digital animation led to an initial public offering (IPO) that earned Jobs about $1 billion.
The second was a return to his earlier obsession with computers, founding NeXT to build cutting-edge computers. These were expensive machines with an operating system that represented the best attempt yet to package the power of UNIX into a graphical user interface. When Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, he did so using a NeXT machine.
Of these two deals, NeXT proved to be the more important, as it was discovered that Apple was looking to replace its operating system. Apple purchased NeXT in 1996 for its operating system, bringing Steve Jobs back to the first company he founded.