(Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
On April 1, 1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne met at the registry office of Santa Clara County to sign the agreement with which they created Apple Computer, Inc.
Wozniak would get 45% of the total shares, Jobs another 45%, and the remaining 10% would go into the hands of Wayne. The original agreement can be viewed in PDF format in a copy obtained a posteriori. Two weeks later, Wayne withdrew from the adventure and sold his shares for $ 800 to Wozniak and Jobs equally.
Counterculture
It is difficult to explain where they came from its two main founders without understanding the Californian counterculture of the late 60s and early 70s Valuing rules, styles and behaviors unusual and popular alternatives to the established and confront the status quo were important for hundreds of thousands of young Californians of the time.
Decades after the creation of Apple’s campaign “Think Different”, reveal that the spirit of the counterculture was still there.
Surrounded by a cold war and several “hot wars”, involved in the struggle for civil rights, faced with the “apparatus” -the military-industrial complex and sticking it to the man was the reality of adolescence and youth of Jobs and Wozniak. The most obvious of his “enemy” technological representation computers were large machines that large corporations.
The alternative to these big machines were known as microcomputers. Much cheaper and small, were basically a central processing unit (CPU) on a motherboard and wrapped in a housing that served keyboard.
The folder Wozniak
Wozniak was 26, was five years older than Jobs. A world away at that age. They met when both had left the university in search of something more interesting. Wozniak was dedicated to create a small gadgets called Bluebox connected to a phone that could make calls bypassing checks primitive telephone networks of the time. Jobs and he sold several hundred units.
Soon after, thanks to his interest in microcomputers, Wozniak he designed on paper a version of the BASIC programming language for microprocessors Motorola 6800 and the circuits necessary for it work. Then would edit slightly its code to function in much cheaper processors MOS 6502, operating at the incredible speed of 1 MHz.
Wozniak simply wanted to license its design to others so that it manufactured, but Steve Jobs She persuaded him to turn your design into reality and put on sale. Jobs approached a local store where the owner bought 50 units of what would become the Apple I. After getting an electronics store sold them the necessary parts with a 30-day payment, Jobs, Wozniak and some friends were day and night welding chips on plates. After trying everything worked, he was born the Apple I. A simple motherboard that had a MOS 6502, 4 KB of memory, and basic ports for the time. In total about 200 units, of which has been verified to work about 6 were built.
It seems incredible, but it was a revolution for a time when tickers, microcomputers having a printer instead of screen, were the set. The ability to display data in a television was a great value.
Apple II
With the money earned on sales, Wozniak and Jobs focused on the creation and development selling the Apple II. But they would need much more funding. Following the refusal of banks, Jobs met Mike Markkula, a retired at the age of 32, thanks to have gotten millions of dollars investing in shares of Intel and Fairchild engineer. Markkula put $ 170,000 for the creation of the Apple II and another 80,000 in shares of Apple Computer, Inc with those made with 33% of the company.
The Apple II had the same processors, but added a beige plastic casing, and external storage cassette. The base plates were created in Singapore or Ireland and the rest of the assembly is done in California and then Texas. Just over a year after the Apple I, the Apple II was put on sale on June 10, 1977.
They reach the millions, will Wozniak
The Apple II was a success, and got almost a million dollars in revenue for Apple in its first year. Only during 1980, the Apple II had sales of $ 180 million.
The millions of dollars in sales of computers and accessories made imperative the need to expand capital in a public offering. In December 1980, Apple went public and within minutes the investors bought 4.6 million shares at $ 22 that Apple had put on sale. Two years later, after having sold more than 700,000 computers since its inception, Apple exceeded 1,000 billion in annual sales. The shares reached $ 70 and everything was fine.
Meanwhile, Steve Wozniak in 1981 and several relatives had a plane crash that left major physical injuries and suffered from anterograde amnesia-he could generate new memories- for more than a month. The accident made him leave Apple for the first time, a job that no longer enjoyed because of ongoing conflicts with Jobs. In 1983, Wozniak voluntarily returned to Apple as a private engineer. Two years later, after stressing the misdirection of the company, sold most of his shares and left the company for good.
The successor to the Apple II, the Apple III had several internal technical failures that made a sales failure compared to his older brother.
Macintosh or Lisa
Apple introduced the mouse with the Lisa, which sought to compete directly in the corporate market against IBM. It would not last long on the market, less even than the Apple III, especially because of its high price, $ 10,000 in 1983.
Parallel to Lisa, and while the Apple II and its variations and expansions remained almost the only source of revenue for Apple, from Cupertino embark on the Macintosh project.
the Macintosh was put on sale in 1984 surrounded by a large marketing campaign in the United States. Initial sales were fantastic, and the product is still remembered as a milestone in computing history by being the first with a mouse-controlled full graphical interface.
Gradually sales were loosening, but the Macintosh computer was established as the “established” in many printing industry. Apple sought to establish a full third alternative in the market for the Apple II and the IBM PC.
Over the months, the Macintosh was not getting all third-party software that had promised and the IBM PC began to eat more and more ground. Which led to a thorough review of the management of the company.
Until then, Jobs
Markkula saw his position as CEO of Apple as temporary and Steve Jobs wanted to remain focused on Macintosh division. Which led the founder to hire John Sculley, then CEO of PepsiCo.
Sculley’s success in the battle to win market share from Coca Cola would inspire Steve to help in its war against IBM. Steve convinced John with the now legendary phrase “Do you want to continue to sell sugar water the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?” Sculley left the east coast towards Cupertino.
Ante the success of the IBM PC and other chronic, Sculley called for the creation of a more open system. Steve was firm in his decision to keep Macintosh as something proprietary and closed. Poor long-term sales of Macintosh would give reason to Sculley, who supported Markkula and the rest of the board, Jobs decided to withdraw the Macintosh division. Steve Jobs would soon resign, sell all his shares less one.
The throne unstable
With both Steve out, Sculley kept the two product lines, even though the Apple II’s successors continued to offer far superior to the company that Macintosh revenue. However, from 1990 with the arrival on the market of Windows 3.0, the PC began to be increasingly popular quarter and ended up relegating Apple systems to a secondary place.
After the slump in sales the board chose to dismiss Sculley. He is chosen to replace Michael Spindler was a veteran employee and former president of Apple Europe. During his time at the helm of the company tried to sell Apple to IBM, Phillips and Sun Microsystems, something that obviously failed and was replaced by someone who would last even less in front of the company. Gil Amelio
In 1995 Amelio continued what Sculley did not dare to do: license Mac OS to other companies. The movement of chronic Mac aupó the Mac market share rapidly in the United States, but the idea did not last long.
Desperate why next step give, Apple thought of buying your next operating system. The two candidates were BeOS, Be, NeXT and NextStep. The company that Jobs had founded after he left Apple. The decision would mark the future of technology in global consumption over the coming decades.
Hello again, Steve
Amelio buy NeXT, Steve Jobs returned to Apple and is elected temporary CEO and starts making “mischief”. Cancel licenses Mac OS, which makes Macintosh sales plummet. But Steve had other plans.
A few months later, with Steve acting as permanent CEO, announced an agreement with Microsoft by which Apple would receive 150 million dollars, aparcarían legal disputes, Apple would include Internet Explorer as browser on your operating system, and finally Microsoft is committed to develop and maintain Microsoft Office for Mac
Steve began to form a team to develop what would be the foundation stone of the reconstruction of Apple. iMac . A computer with a CRT monitor and built with a colorful design that contrasted with the dull beige and gray PCs. Does the designer of the iMac? Jony Ive.
Later models would keep the idea iMac all-in-one that years later would begin to be adapted by most players in the PC industry. By then, Apple had combined the best of Mac OS and best of NextStep and created Mac OS X, an operating system that broke with tradition and prepared from the foundation for the Internet age.
iPod
In this “new Apple” Steve wanted to evolve beyond the personal computer. Apple Computer Inc Apple Inc became, and entrusted with Pixo -a company founded by two former employees of Apple’s operating system creating what would be the second stone of the conversion of Apple. The iPod
the entry into the music market Apple was simply the easiest way to enter the market of mass consumer technology method. Macs were not exactly cheap, and although the original iPod was also not evolved year after year in a groundbreaking product. Along with iTunes changed the industry worldwide music distribution.
Today Pixo OS continues to run into tens and tens of millions of iPod classic and iPod nano worldwide.
Macworld 2007
“An iPod, a phone, Internet access device … so you go pillaging? They are not three separate devices … single … and call it … iPhone. “
This masterful presentation in January 2007 marked the peak of Steve Jobs at Apple as a showman. A devoted audience face to face was the rumored for years, “Apple phone” that many believed something more real than the mythical animal.
The iPhone would become a bestseller during the next 9 years, which remains the best-selling smartphone market year after year. Your operating system, then iPhone OS, and iOS today, is installed in more than 1,000 million devices.
The popularity of the iPhone-and the rest of smartphone-served to slowly bury the iPod, which he survived with dignity for a long time thanks to the continuous drop in the price of the Mini models and Nano year after year.
Now big
Three years later, Apple showed the world the iPad. The product that Apple had begun work on its multi-touch technology and then decided to delay, and implement it first on a phone. Born the iPad.
With nearly 10 “screen compared to the 3.5 iPhone era, the iPad would become the device that would break all sales records to date, selling three million units in its first quarter sales.
like the iPhone served as turning point in the market of smartphones, the iPad did in the tablets. Previously, Windows tablets were not very successful then ran smartphones manufacturers to adapt their designs to take advantage of the new market created by the iPad. Today tablets have been seen as a mass product by continuous price decreases, and serve to bring entertainment and computing to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
It’s time to end
One day after the presentation of the iPhone 4S, the fifth model smartphone Apple, Steve Jobs died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. His replacement, Tim Cook, a veteran of Apple that had previously served as chief operating officer.
There was much discussion, with the support of the board and Steve Jobs, Tim Cook put in front of Apple to make it the company it is today.
During the 5 years that Cook takes the head of Apple, the Cupertino company has introduced many changes and developments in products but only one range of new products, the Apple Watch. Initially expected by the industry to fail because of its high price, the Apple Watch has obtained the position of world leader in the emerging market for smartwatches and is estimated to have sold between 10 and 12 million units during the first three quarters of life .
the future
for the fiftieth anniversary of Apple, we may be talking about a car company or focused on distributed computing, or on the Internet of things, or all of these at once.
or maybe Apple is no more than a distant memory in our memory as today’s BlackBerry or Nokia, who knows.
Original article here.
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