Mac Plus, Apple Museum

    The History of Apple Computer Inc. as adapted by me from the book "Apple Confidential" by Owen W. Linzmayer

• The Early Years, small investments, big returns with the Apple I, II, and III.
• Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and how it changed the way the world computes.
• Pirates of Silicon Valley.
• The Most Famous Commercial of All Time, "1984".
• The Evolution of the Powerbook.
• IBM vs Apple becomes IBM, Apple, and Motorola vs Microsoft and Intel.
• The G3 Microprocessor and the Return of a Champion.
• The Sneak Attack on the Consumer Market.
• Raw Power from a different kind of Big Blue.
• The Future of the Greatest Computer there is.

• The Early Years, small investments, big returns with the Apple I, II, and III.

The Apple I had no case, that motherboard in the picture was all you got with the Apple I, but somehow, people liked it.  A Radio Shack agreed to buy 1,000 units.  Unfortunately Apple didn't have enough cash for the chips to make 1,000 computers.  So Steve Jobs took out a loan, sold his VW van and Apple made its leap into profitability.

About 1979, the Apple II was released. Almost everyone in the United States over 15 years old has seen an Apple II.  Apple II's were everywhere.  My first computer was an Apple II.  Thousands of programs were released on the Apple II, in fact the Apple II remained on Apple's product line until the early 90's! The Apple II sold originally for $1299, there were approximately 3 million Apple II's sold, more than any other computer ever made.

The Apple III was a complete and utter flop, there is no other way to say it.  Steve Jobs helped with the project, and he wouldn't leave the programmers alone.  Steve was the ultimate annoyance during the 80's, no engineer wanted his help, because all he did was ruin things.  The Apple III was too expensive with too many unnecessary features.  It was predicted to sell 75,000 units in three weeks, in 6 months it sold 18,000 units.

However with all the failure of the Apple III, the Apple II made up for the loss, amazingly.  Since the IPO of Apple Stock, the stock has split 16 times, so if you had approximately 695 shares of Apple when it went IPO, right now with the stock at around $45, you would have a little over $1 Million.

Ask someone from the early 80's to double click, they will probably call you a moron.  That's because the mouse wasn't used on a personal computer until 1984.  The mouse idea was developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.  The mouse wasn't the only thing developed there.  Remember what DOS is?  Imagine the whole computer running in DOS, no clicking, no icons, no windows, no trash can, sucks eh?  That's what the world was like until Steve Jobs decided to take a tip from a friend and tour Palo Alto for new stuff.  What he found would revolutionize the way the world uses their computers forever.  No more DOS commands or Basic Terminals
DOS--C:\
Basic--]

    No, I'm not talking about the movie on TNT.  I'm talking about the small office building where the Macintosh was developed.  The Macintosh was considered a "pet project" of Steve Jobs, formulated by the board to keep him away from the LISA, Apple's next big computer.  The small office building was set off from the rest of Apple and the engineers placed a pirate flag on the roof.  In this "Pirate Fortress" the Macintosh was developed mostly by Jef Raskin, a brilliant engineer.  Jef Raskin, hated Steve Jobs, the only thing he ever said good about him was this.
                    "Without Steve, the Macintosh wouldn't have been, Steve was like a giant shit-deflecting
                        umbrella that kept the corporate big-wigs off our backs."

    Did you watch the 1984 Superbowl, I wish I could've, I was less than a year old at the time, but I still wish.  At Halftime of the 1984 Superbowl the most famous commercial of all time was aired.  It was "1984".  "1984" introduced us all to the Macintosh.  Since the commercial is so amazing that I couldn't begin to describe how deep and profound all the hidden meanings are, I decided to provide a Quicktime movie of the commercial.  Make sure you have Quicktime 3.0, then click here to view "1984" created by TWBA Chiat/Day/ (A new window will appear).

• The Evolution of the Powerbook.

The Mac Portable, Apple Museum

Sure it looks a little small, but you haven't seen the battery!  With a battery, this computer weighed over 25 pounds!  Apple actually sold a lot of them nonetheless, eventually they realized that it was bad that their portable line was only 5 pounds lighter than their desktops, so Apple created the Powerbook.

Macintosh Powerbook 100, Apple Museum

Big difference huh?  Powerbooks, succeeded amazingly.  Although the Powerbook did have problems, like when the Powerbook 5300c's caught fire because of faulty Sony batteries.  The Powerbook has come a long way in the past 10 years, here is the latest Powerbook.

The Powerbook G3 Yosemite Edition, Apple Museum

The Powerbook isn't done yet.  Imagine a laptop with the colors of the iMac, and a pricetag under $1000?  That is the idea behind the upcoming P1, or consumer portable. It is due to be released in mid-July.  It, as well as the iMac will be sold at Sears.

Concept design for Consumer Portable, courtesy of AppleInsider

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• IBM vs Apple becomes IBM, Apple, and Motorola vs Microsoft and Intel.

• The G3 Microprocessor and the Return of a Champion.

    In 1985 Steve Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT computers.  NeXT never turned a profit, but Steve got very rich by selling stock.  In 1994, Apple bought NeXT and Steve Jobs bought PiXar from George Lucas for 40 million dollars.  Steve agreed to be Apple's interim CEO for $1 a year, just enough to qualify for the company health plan.  When Toy Story came out, Steve Jobs took PiXar public and his net worth soared from 350 million dollars to 1.2 billion.  Since the return of Steve to Apple, it has turned a profit EVERY quarter, all this after almost 3 years without a profitable quarter.  He solved the overstocking problem and made the Apple Store Online the biggest seller of Macintosh Products in the world.  Steve Jobs also sold $45 million of Apple Stock to Bill Gates.  In return Gates promised better versions of MS Office and simultaneous releases of Internet Explorer for Windows and Macintosh.  Gates has really come through on his promise and a new era of understanding is evolving between the two corporations.

Steve Jobs, Photo Courtesy of Apple Computer Inc, photographer-Moshe Brakha

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    Apple was finally beginning to excel again in the professional atmosphere with Steve Jobs back and the G3 processor leading the pack.  But the real money in the industry was home users.  On August 15 1998, Apple Computer re-entered the Consumer Computer Marketplace with the iMac.  An all-in-one bondi-blue translucent plastic home computer designed for use by the masses.  The iMac debuted at $1299 and sold over 600,000 in six weeks, a record.  After several months, Apple revised the iMac offering it in five flavors with a faster processor, the five flavors are Lime, Tangerine, Grape, Strawberry, and Blueberry.  After another couple of months, Apple revised again offering an even faster CPU for iMacs, the current model, Revision D, has a 333 mhz G3, 6 gig hard drive, 32 megs RAM, and USB.
 

Original iMac, Bondi-Blue  233 mhz G3 Processor 32 Megs RAM 2 Gig Hard Drive Photo Courtesy of Apple Computer Inc	All Five Revision C iMac's 266 mhz G3 Blueberry Grape Tangerine  Lime Strawberry.                                                                                        Photo Courtesy of Apple Computer Inc.

 

• Raw Power from a different kind of Big Blue.

Power Macintosh G3 Yosemite with 21" Studio Display Photo Courtesy of Apple Computer Inc.	Yosemite with 15" flat-panel Studio Display  Photo Courtesy of Apple Computer Inc.

• The Future of the Greatest Computer there is.