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Apple history
Apple company history timeline
Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne as a business partnership.
In July 1976, the Apple 1 went on sale and was sold for $666.66.
In 1976 MOS Tech finally released its 6502 chip and Wosniak did not hesitate to write a version of Basic for it.
Their first model was simply a working circuit board, but at Jobs’s insistence the 1977 version was a stand-alone machine in a custom-molded plastic case, in contrast to the forbidding steel boxes of other early machines.
The Apple 1 was sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM and basic textual-video chips. It then lacked a built-in keyboard, monitor, case or any other Human Interface Devices (which was later added in 1977).
By the end of 1978, Apple was one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States, with its products carried by over 100 dealers.
By 1978 Wozniak had invented the Apple Disk II, at the time the fastest and cheapest disk drive offered by any computer manufacturer.
By the end of the year sales were up 400 percent from 1978, at over 35,000 computers.
Most notably, in 1979 two Bostonians—Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston—introduced the first personal computer spreadsheet, VisiCalc, creating what would later be known as a “killer app” (application): a software program so useful that it propels hardware sales.
Apple Fortran, introduced in March 1980, led to the further development of software, particularly technical and educational applications.
Apple’s profits and size grew at a historic rate: by 1980 the company netted over $100 million and had more than 1,000 employees.
By the year 1980, the competition was growing difficult with IBM and Microsoft in the market.
About a year later, in January 1981 to be exact, Apple held its first meeting for shareholders as a public company.
Apples customer service at the time would tell clients to “raise the computer 6 inches in the air and then let go”, in hopes of the components falling back into place. It was finally released in March 1981.
A second offering of 2.6 million shares quickly sold out in May 1981.
IBM had waited for the personal computer market to grow before introducing its own line of personal computers, the IBM PC, in 1981.
Wozniak and Raskin had envisioned the Macintosh as low-cost-computer with a text-based interface like the Apple II, but a plane crash in 1981 forced Wozniak to step back from the project.
By January 1982, 650,000 Apple computers had been sold worldwide.
1982 Apple becomes the first personal computer company to reach $1 billion in annual sales.
The Lisa division would be plagued by infighting, and in 1982 Jobs was pushed off the project.
Wozniak left Apple in 1983 due to a diminishing interest in the day-to-day running of Apple Computers.
Lisa was released in 1983 to much fanfare, but disastrous sales — it was too expensive and didn't have enough software support.
The Lisa launched in 1983 and became the first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI, but was a commercial failure due to its high price and limited software titles.
By the beginning of May 1984, 70,000 units were shipped as a result of the “1984” commercial.
PageMaker, an early desktop publishing application taking advantage of the PostScript language, was also released by Aldus Corporation in July 1985.
However, what saved the Mac in those early years was Apple’s 1985 introduction of an affordable laser printer along with Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker, the Mac’s first killer app.
After the departures of Jobs and Wozniak, Sculley worked to improve the Macintosh in 1985 by quadrupling the RAM and introducing the LaserWriter, the first reasonably priced PostScript laser printer.
Another innovation was a software database called HyperCard, which Apple included free with every Macintosh starting in 1987.
Apple was reorganized in August 1988 into four operating divisions: Apple USA, Apple Europe, Apple Pacific, and Apple Products.
By 1988, over one million Macintosh computers had been sold, with 70 percent of sales to corporations.
In May 1989 Apple announced plans for its new operating system, System 7, which would be available to users the next year and allow Macintoshes to run tasks on more than one program simultaneously.
The Christmas season of 1989 was the first in the company's history to have declining sales, which led to a 20% drop in Apple's stock price.
During this period, the relationship between Sculley and Gassée deteriorated, leading Sculley to effectively demote Gassée in January 1990 by appointing Michael Spindler as the chief operating officer.
In July 1990, Robert Puette, former head of Hewlett-Packard's personal computer business, became head of the Apple USA division.
The company pivoted strategy and in October 1990 introduced three lower-cost models, the Macintosh Classic, the Macintosh LC, and the Macintosh IIsi, all of which saw significant sales due to pent-up demand.
In 1990 the court found in favor of Apple in the Xerox case.
In 1990, desktop Macs accounted for 11 percent of the PCs sold through United States computer dealers.
In a rather surprising development, Apple and IBM announced an alliance in 1991.
The bill for such forward-looking surgery was great, however, and in 1991 profits were off 35 percent.
1991 PowerBook line of notebook computers is released.
In 1991, Apple introduced the hugely successful PowerBook with a design that set the current shape for almost all modern laptops.
Sculley was replaced by Michael Spindler in 1993.
Scully was forced out of his leadership position by Apple's board of directors in 1993.
After the launch of the LC, Apple began encouraging developers to create applications for Macintosh rather than Apple II, and authorized salespersons to direct consumers towards Macintosh and away from Apple II. The Apple IIe was discontinued in 1993.
The first PowerPC run by Macintosh was released in 1994 but Apple’s misfortune continued.
With Spindler at the helm Apple, IBM, and Motorola formed the AIM alliance in 1994 with the goal of creating a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform; PReP), which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple software.
By 1995, Apple had $1 billion worth of unfilled orders, and investors took note of the embarrassing miscue.
After Spindler's much publicized mistake of 1995, Apple's directors were ready to hand the leadership reins to someone new.
However, by 1996 Apple executives were worried that the clones were cannibalizing sales of their own high-end computers, where profit margins were highest.
In 1996, Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio as CEO. Hired for his reputation as a corporate rehabilitator, Amelio made deep changes, including extensive layoffs and cost-cutting.
Only weeks away from bankruptcy, Apple's board decided NeXTSTEP was a better choice for its next operating system and purchased NeXT in late 1996 for $429 million, bringing back Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
The NeXT acquisition was finalized on February 9, 1997, and the board brought Jobs back to Apple as an advisor.
Fortune magazine offered its analysis, referring to Apple in its March 3, 1997 issue as "Silicon Valley's paragon of dysfunctional management."
Jobs convinced the board to make him the interim CEO in July 1997.
On July 9, 1997, Jobs staged a boardroom coup that resulted in Amelio's resignation after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses.
Jobs also ended the Mac clone deals and in September 1997, purchased the largest clone maker, Power Computing.
November 1997 marked the launch of the Apple Store which was an application sever conceived and designed when Apple bought out NeXT.
On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced the Apple Store website, which was tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing that had been successfully used by PC manufacturer Dell.
During the 1997 Macworld Expo, Jobs announced Apple was joining hands with Microsoft to create new versions of Microsoft for the Macintosh.
LC CCall Number: HD9696.C64 A8633 1997 Catalog Record: 97014371 Publisher's Description Publisher-supplied Biographical Information Sample Text
On May 6, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the original Macintosh: the iMac.
In 1998, Apple purchased Macromedia’s Key Grip Software Project, thus expanding its video editing market.
Apple acquired of Macromedia's Key Grip digital video editing software project which was renamed Final Cut Pro when it was launched on the retail market in April 1999.
A little more than a year later on July 21, 1999, Apple introduced the iBook, a laptop for consumers.
The development of Key Grip also led to Apple's release of the consumer video-editing product iMovie in October 1999.
In 1999, sales grew a modest 3.2 percent, but the newfound health of the company was evident in a 94 percent gain in net income, as Apple's profits swelled to $601 million.
Next, Apple successfully acquired the German company Astarte in April 2000, which had developed the DVD authoring software DVDirector, which Apple would sell as the professional-oriented DVD Studio Pro software product, and used the same technology to create iDVD for the consumer market.
Jobs became an interim CEO, or iCEO as he called himself (Jobs was not officially the CEO until 2000). Jobs decided to make some changes around Apple.
In 2000, Apple purchased the SoundJam MP audio player software from Casady & Greene.
May 2001 marked the beginning of a new era for Apple.
In May 2001 the company opened its first two Apple Store retail locations in Virginia and California, offering an improved presentation of the company's products.
On October 23, 2001, Apple debuted the iPod portable digital audio player.
The product, which was first sold on November 10, 2001, was phenomenally successful with over 100 million units sold within six years.
In 2001 Apple introduced iTunes, a computer program for playing music and for converting music to the compact MP3 digital format commonly used in computers and other digital devices.
The system 7 was behind giving colour to the Macintosh OS and was used until 2001 when OS X was released.
Brookfield, CT: Twenty-First Century Books, 2001.
2001 would be a pivotal year for the Apple with the company making three announcements that would change the course of the company.
A 10 GB model was introduced in mid-2002, followed by the iPod Mini, iPod Shuffle, and iPod Nano, together representing a massive new source of revenue for the company.
In 2002, Apple purchased Nothing Real for their advanced digital compositing application Shake, as well as Emagic for the music productivity application Logic.
"Everybody Wants a Piece of the iPod," America's Intelligence Wire, October 27, 2003.
2003 was the year that the iTunes store was launched with over 2 million downloads in the first 2 weeks.
In 2003 Apple began selling downloadable copies of major record company songs in MP3 format over the Internet.
In 2003, Apple's iTunes Store was introduced.
The first European Apple retail store opened in London in November 2004.
It wasn’t long before the iMac G4 was completely disconnected and the replaced with the iMac G5 in the early summer of 2004.
That in 2005 Apple was looking at a clear revenue of $290 million or $3.24 billion in sales.
To begin with, Apple’s retail stores were only situated in the U.S but late 2005 saw the opening of an Apple retail store in Tokyo, Japan.
Since 2005 Apple has seen a significant increase in not only its stock price but its profits.
On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006, Apple made the transition to Intel chips for the entire Mac product line—over one year sooner than announced.
When Apple surpassed Dell's market cap in January 2006, Jobs sent an email to Apple employees saying Dell's CEO Michael Dell should eat his words.
In 2006 an Apple Store in Sapporo opened its doors to the public.
By 2006 more than one billion songs and videos had been sold through Apple’s Web site.
30 Years of Apple: Assessing Apple's Impact (Macworld, 2006) http://www.macworld.com/article/1050153/30impact.html
Apple also introduced Boot Camp in 2006 to help users install Windows XP or Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X.
The iPhone was announced at the Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007.
In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the iTunes Store without digital rights management (DRM) , thereby allowing tracks to be played on third-party players, if record labels would agree to drop the technology.
By then, the company had established itself as an industry leader and in 2007 even dropped the word computer from its corporate name.
The iPhones first version became available in 2007 but only in a few markets.
In 2007 Apple introduced the touch-screen iPhone, a cellular telephone with capabilities for playing MP3s and videos and for accessing the Internet.
7 Farivar, Cyrus. "30 Years of Apple: Assessing Apple's Impact" Retrieved February 27, 2008, from Macworld.
The iTunes Store quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over five billion downloads by June 19, 2008.
In July 2008, Apple launched the App Store to sell third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
By October 2008, Apple was the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone.
Other record labels eventually followed suit and Apple published a press release in January 2009 to announce that all songs on the iTunes Store are available without their FairPlay DRM.
On January 14, 2009, Jobs announced in an internal memo that he would be taking a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple until the end of June 2009 and would spend the time focusing on his health.
Later that year on April 3, 2010, the iPad was launched in the US. It sold more than 300,000 units on its first day, and 500,000 by the end of the first week.
In June 2010, Apple released the iPhone 4, which introduced video calling using FaceTime, multitasking, and a new uninsulated stainless steel design that acted as the phone's antenna.
2010 saw the opening of the Covert Garden Apple Store which is the largest in the world today.
The iPad was announced just 3 years later in 2010.
On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he would take another medical leave of absence for an indefinite period to allow him to focus on his health.
June 2011 saw the release of the iCloud which came to replace the Mobile me service.
On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned his position as CEO of Apple.
On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs died, marking the end of an era for Apple.
Apple in 2011 introduced iCloud, a cloud computing service in which a user’s applications, photographs, documents, calendars, and recently purchased music would be stored in iCloud and automatically updated in the user’s other devices.
The first major product announcement by Apple following Jobs's passing occurred on January 19, 2012, when Apple's Phil Schiller introduced iBook's Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York City.
On August 24, 2012, a US jury ruled that Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion (£665m) in damages in an intellectual property lawsuit.
On November 10, 2012, Apple confirmed a global settlement that dismissed all existing lawsuits between Apple and HTC up to that date, in favor of a ten-year license agreement for current and future patents between the two companies.
During a press event on September 9, 2014, Apple introduced a smartwatch, the Apple Watch.
In January 2016, it was announced that one billion Apple devices were in active use worldwide.
On June 6, 2016, Fortune released Fortune 500, their list of companies ranked on revenue generation.
In June 2017, Apple announced the HomePod, its smart speaker aimed to compete against Sonos, Google Home, and Amazon Echo.
Also in June 2017, Apple appointed Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg to head the newly formed worldwide video unit.
In November 2017, Apple announced it was branching out into original scripted programming: a drama series starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, and a reboot of the anthology series Amazing Stories with Steven Spielberg.
In June 2018, Apple signed the Writers Guild of America's minimum basic agreement and Oprah Winfrey to a multi-year content partnership.
By then, the company had established itself as an industry leader and in 2007 even dropped the word computer from its corporate name. Its value was estimated at $1 trillion in August 2018, with a revenue surpassing that of $150 billion per annum.
The purchase was approved by the European Union in September 2018.
Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for the option to buy 100,000 shares (5.6 million split-adjusted shares as of March 30, 2019) of Apple at the pre-IPO price of $10 a share.
During its annual WWDC keynote speech on June 22, 2020, Apple announced it would move away from Intel processors, and the Mac would transition to processors developed in-house.
On August 19, 2020, Apple's share price briefly topped $467.77, making Apple the first US company with a market capitalization of $2 trillion.
The Macintosh would eventually ship for US$2,495 (equivalent to $6,215 in 2020), a price panned by critics in light of its slow performance.
In the years ahead, the company's well-established ability to develop singular products for the digital marketplace promised to deliver impressive growth and excite the interests of consumers worldwide. It went on sale soon after debut for US$666.66 (equivalent to $3,032 in 2020). Wozniak later said he was unaware of the coincidental mark of the beast in the number 666, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits".
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Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Apple, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Apple. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Apple. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by Apple. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Apple and its employees or that of Zippia.
Apple may also be known as or be related to Apple, Apple Computer Company (1976–1977) Apple Computer, Inc. (1977–2007), Apple Inc, Apple Inc., apple retail and apple retail store.