Apple Computer

Apple Computer, Inc. (, ) is an American computer technology corporation with global annual sales in 2005 of US$13.9 billion and 14,800 employees in several countries. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Apple develops, sells, and supports a series of personal computers, portable media players, computer software, and computer hardware accessories. The company's most well-known products include the Apple Macintosh line of personal computers, the Mac OS X operating system, the iPod portable music player, and the iTunes media player. Apple operates retail stores in the United States, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The stores carry most of Apple's products as well as many third-party products and offer on-site support and repair for Apple hardware and software.

For a variety of reasons, ranging from its philosophy of comprehensive aesthetic design to its countercultural, even indie roots as a company that differentiates itself from the rest of the industry by "thinking different," Apple has cultivated a customer base unusually devoted to the company and its brand. This so-called Cult of Mac is as cherished by longtime Apple customers as it is inexplicable to outsiders.

History

Apple has been a major player in the evolution of personal computing since its founding in 1976. The Apple II microcomputer, introduced in 1977, was a hit with home users. In 1983, Apple introduced the Lisa, the first commercial personal computer to employ a graphical user interface, which was influenced in part by the Xerox Alto. In 1984, the Macintosh (commonly called the "Mac") was introduced, furthering the concepts of a user-friendly graphical user interface, and also introducing the mouse for the first time in a personal computer. Apple's success with the Macintosh became a major influence in the development of graphical interfaces elsewhere, with major computer operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, all appearing on the market within two years of the introduction of the Macintosh. In 1991, Apple introduced the PowerBook line of portable computers, establishing the modern ergonomic form and design that has since become ubiquitous in the portable market. The 1990s also saw Apple's market share fall as competition from Microsoft Windows and the comparatively inexpensive IBM PC compatible computers that would eventually dominate the market. In the 2000s, Apple expanded their focus on software to include professional and prosumer video, music, and photo production solutions, with a view to promoting their computers as a "digital hub". It also introduced iPod, a portable digital music player which has since become the most popular player on the market.

1975 to 1980: The early years

Apple was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne Apple History (and later incorporated January 3, 1977Apple Computer Investor Relations FAQ without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak) to sell the Apple I personal computer kit at US$666.66. They were hand-built in Jobs' parents' garage, and the Apple I was first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club.Homebrew and How the Apple Came to Be The Apple I was delivered in June, and was paid for on delivery. Eventually 200 Apple I computers were built. The Apple I was a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips), not a complete personal computer as it is known today.

Jobs approached a local computer store, The Byte Shop, who ordered fifty units and paid $500 for each unit after much persuasion from Jobs. Jobs then ordered components from Cramer Electronics, a national electronic parts distributor. Using a variety of methods, including borrowing space from friends and family and selling various items including a Volkswagen Type 2 bus, Jobs managed to secure the parts needed while Wozniak and another friend, Ronald Wayne, assembled the Apple I.

The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. Despite a price higher than competitors, it quickly pulled away from its two main rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, to become the market leader (and the symbol of the personal computing phenomenon) in the late 70s due to its color graphics, high build quality, open architecture, and its floppy disk drive and interface, the Disk II.

Another key to success for Apple was software. The Apple II was chosen by programmers Daniel Bricklin and Bob Frankston to be the desktop platform for the first "killer app" of the business world—the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II, and the corporate market attracted many more software and hardware developers to the machine, as well as giving home users an additional reason to buy one—compatibility with the office. (See the timeline for dates of Apple II family model releases—the 1977 Apple II and its younger siblings the II+, IIe, IIc, and IIGS.)

More than two million Apple IIs were shipped at a price of US$970 for the 4KB model.

By the end of the 1970s, Jobs and his partners had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The Apple II was succeeded by the Apple III in May 1980 as the company struggled to compete against IBM and Microsoft in the lucrative business and corporate computing market. The designers of the Apple III were forced to comply with Jobs' request to omit the cooling fan, and this ultimately resulted in thousands of recalled units due to overheating. An updated version was introduced in 1983, but it was also a failure due to bad press and wary buyers. Nevertheless, the principles of the company persevered with further innovations and marketing.

In the early 1980s, IBM and Microsoft continued to gain market share at Apple's expense in the personal computer industry. Using a fundamentally different business model, IBM marketed an open hardware standard created with the IBM PC, which was bundled with Microsoft's MS-DOS (MicroSoft-Disk Operating System).

Based on the marketing and technical savvy of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the business expertise of Mike Markkula, Apple dominated the personal computer industry from 1977 to 1983.

1981 to 1989: Lisa and Macintosh

The protagonist of Apple's well known 1984 ad, set in a dystopian future modeled after the Orwellian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Jobs and several other Apple employees including Jef Raskin visited Xerox PARC in December 1979 to see the Alto computer. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for selling them US$1 million in pre-IPO Apple stock (approximately US$18 million net).

Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a GUI, and decided to take over design of Apple's first project, the Apple Lisa, to produce such a machine.The Lisa was named after Jobs' daughter. He was eventually pushed from the group due to infighting, and instead took over Jef Raskin's low-cost computer project. Branding the new effort as the product that would "save Apple", an intense turf war broke out between the Lisa's "corporate shirts" and Jobs's Macintosh "pirates", both teams claiming they would ship first and be more successful. In 1983 the Lisa team won the race, and Apple introduced the first personal computer to be sold to the public with a GUI. However, the Lisa was a commercial failure as a result of its high price tag (US$9995) and limited software titles.

In 1984, drawing upon its experience with the Lisa, Apple next launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by a single national broadcast of the now famous US$1.5 million television commercial, "1984", based on George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The commercial was directed by Ridley Scott and aired during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. Jobs' intention with the ad was to equate Big Brother with the IBM PC, and a nameless female action hero portrayed by Anya Major with the Macintosh. While it initially sold well, follow-up sales were not particularly strong. The machine's fortunes changed with the introduction of the LaserWriter, the first laser printer to be offered at a reasonable price point, and PageMaker, an early desktop publishing (DTP) package. The Mac was particularly powerful in this market due to its advanced graphics capabilities, a side-effect of the GUI, and it can be said that the combination of these three products are responsible for the creation of the DTP market. As DTP became widespread, Apple's sales reached a series of new highs.

In anticipation of the Macintosh launch, Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft, was given several Macintosh prototypes in 1983 to develop software. While the company was indeed ready with its BASIC and the MultiPlan spreadsheet at the Macintosh's launch, in 1985 Microsoft launched Windows, its own GUI for IBM PCs using many of the elements of the Macintosh OS. By 1990, Windows 3.1 was a usable alternative to the Macintosh.

An internal power struggle developed between Jobs and new CEO John Sculley in 1985. Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley, and Jobs was removed from his managerial duties. Jobs later resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc., a computer company that built machines with futuristic designs and ran the UNIX-derived NeXTStep operating system. Although powerful, NeXT computers never caught on with buyers, due in part to their high purchase price.

1989 to 1991: The Golden Age

The Macintosh Portable was Apple's first "portable" Macintosh computer, released in 1989.

Having learned several painful lessons after introducing the bulky Macintosh Portable in 1989, Apple turned to industrial designers and adopted a product strategy based in three portable devices. One portable was built by Sony, which had a strong reputation for designing small, durable and functional electronics devices. Sony took the specs of the Mac Portable, put in a smaller two-hour battery, a much smaller (physically) twenty megabyte hard drive and a smaller nine-inch passive matrix screen.

Called the PowerBook 100, this landmark product was introduced in 1991 and established the modern form and ergonomic layout of the laptop computer. This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer, both of desktop and now portable machines. The same year, Apple introduced a massive upgrade to the Mac OS, in the form of System 7. Although resource-hungry (for the era), System 7 dramatically improved the Macintosh experience, adding color to the interface, simplifying common operations, and introducing a number of powerful new networking capabilities. System 7 would be the basis for the Mac OS until 2001.

The success of the PowerBook and several other Apple products during this period led to increasing revenue. The computer press listened to Apple press releases with rapt attention, and speculation was rife about what projects from Apple's famed Advanced Technology Group would next come to market. Apple merely had to mention a technology, Taligent for instance, for people to christen it the "new standard". For some time, it appeared that Apple could do no wrong, introducing new products that were the best on the market, and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 to 1991 the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.

The continuing development of Microsoft Windows eventually resulted in an interface that many people thought was close enough or even superior to the Macintosh in terms of ease of use and overall look and feel. Combined with low-cost hardware and an improving software suite, an increasing number of potential customers turned to the "Wintel" standard instead.

Apple, relying on high profit margins to maintain their massive R&D budget, never developed a clear response. Instead they decided that Windows was too close, and sued Microsoft for theft of intellectual property. The lawsuit dragged on for years before finally being thrown out of court. Worse, the lawsuit distracted management while a deep rot developed within the engineering ranks, which became increasingly unmanageable. At first there was little outward sign of the problem, but a series of major product flops and missed deadlines destroyed Apple's reputation of invincibility.

A QuickTake 200 digital camera, released in 1997. The QuickTake line of cameras was not successful for Apple.

At about the same time, Apple branched out into consumer electronics. One example of this product diversification was the Apple QuickTake digital camera, one of the first digital cameras ever brought to the consumer market. A more famous example was the Newton, coined a PDA by Sculley, that was introduced in 1993. Though it failed commercially, it defined and launched the new category of computing and was a forerunner and inspiration of devices such as Palm Pilot and PocketPC.

During the 1990s, Apple greatly expanded its computer lineup. It offered a multitude of models ("Quadra 840av", "Performa 6116"), but many felt Apple failed to adequately differentiate one model from another and the cost of supporting so many products adversely impacted profitability. Apple lost market share to Microsoft Windows, particularly Windows 95.

1994 to 1997: Attempts at reinvention

Apple Computer, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA.

By the mid 90s, Apple realized that it had to reinvent the Macintosh in order to stay competitive in the market. The needs of both computer users and computer programs were becoming, for a variety of technical reasons, harder for the existing hardware and operating system to address.

In 1994 Apple surprised its loyalists by allying with its long-time competitor IBM and CPU maker Motorola in the so-called AIM alliance. This was a bid to create a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform or PReP) which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple's software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind, thus countering Microsoft, which had become Apple's chief competitor.

As the first step toward launching the PReP platform, Apple started the Power Macintosh line in 1994, using IBM's PowerPC processor. This processor utilized a RISC architecture, which differed substantially from the Motorola 68k series that had been used by all previous Macs. Apple's OS was rewritten so that most software for the older Macs could run on the PowerPC series (in emulation).

Throughout the mid to late 1990s, Apple tried to improve its operating system's multitasking and memory management. After first attempting to modify its existing code, Apple realized that it would be better to start with an entirely new operating system and then modify it to fit the Macintosh interface. Apple did some preliminary work with IBM towards this goal with the Taligent project, but that project never produced a replacement operating system. A new internal effort, Copland, ran afoul of Apple's now uncontrollable engineering and became a massive failure. A new attempt was made with the Gershwin operating system.

They then investigated using Be's BeOS, NeXT's NeXTSTEP OS, and also Microsoft's Windows NT. NeXTSTEP was chosen, and this supplied the platform for the modern Mac OS X. On February 7, 1997, Apple completed its purchase of NeXT and its NeXTSTEP operating system, thus bringing Steve Jobs back into Apple. On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted as CEO of Apple by the board of directors after overseeing a 12-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses, despite an outstanding decade of innovation. Jobs stepped in as the interim CEO and began a critical restructuring of the company's product line.

1998 to 2005: New beginnings

Steve Jobs introducing the original iMac computer in 1998.

On August 15 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one Macintosh reminiscent of the original Macintosh 128K: the iMac. The iMac design team was led by Jonathan Ive, who later designed the iPod. While technically unimpressive, it featured an innovative new translucent plastic exterior, originally in white and Bondi Blue, but later many other colors. The iMac proved phenomenally successful, selling close to 800,000 units in its first five months and significantly boosting the company's revenue and profitability. Thanks in part to the iMac, fiscal 1998 was Apple's first profitable year since 1993. The iMac is now considered an industrial design icon of the late 90s.

At the National Association of Broadcasters convention, Apple purchased the Final Cut software from Macromedia, beginning their entry into the digital video editing market. iMovie was released in 1999 for consumers, and Final Cut Pro was released for professionals in the same year. Final Cut Pro has gone on to be a significant video editing program. Similarly, in 2000 Apple bought Astarte's DVDirector software, which morphed into iDVD (for consumers) and DVD Studio Pro (for professionals) at the Macworld Conference and Expo of 2001.

In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X, the operating system based on NeXT's OPENSTEP and BSD Unix. Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, Mac OS X aims to marry the stability, reliability and security of the Unix operating system with the ease of use afforded by a completely overhauled user interface. To aid users in moving their applications from Mac OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of OS 9 applications through Mac OS X's Classic environment. Apple's Carbon API also allowed developers to adapt their OS 9 software to use Mac OS X's features often with a simple recompile.

Company headquarters on Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California.

In May 2001, after much speculation, Apple announced the opening of the Apple retail stores, to be located in major U.S. consumer locations. These stores were designed for two purposes: to stem the tide of Apple's declining share of the computer market and to counter a poor record of marketing Apple products by third-party retail outlets.

On October 23, 2001 Apple introduced its first iPod portable digital audio player and released it on November 10 of that year, a product that has proven phenomenally successful. Over 42 million units have been sold even though it was not originally perceived to be a successful product.BBC News story on Apple's first quarter 2006 earnings report Apple's iTunes Music Store was introduced soon after, offering online music downloads for US 99Â¢ a song and integration with the iPod. The service quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over one billion downloads by February 2006.Steve Jobs' January 2006 MacWorld keynote address

In 2002 Apple purchased Nothing Real and their advanced digital compositing application Shake, raising Apple's professional commitment even higher. In the same year they also acquired Emagic, and with it, obtained their professional-quality music productivity application Logic, which led to the development of their consumer-level GarageBand application. With iPhoto's release in 2002, this completed Apple's collection of consumer and professional level creativity software, with the consumer-level applications being collected together into the iLife suite.

Apple progressively abandoned flashy colors in favor of white polycarbonate for consumer lines such as the iMac and iBook, as well as the educational eMac, and metal enclosures for the professional lines. This began with the 2001 release of the titanium PowerBook and was followed by the 2003 Power Mac G5, 2004 Apple Cinema Displays and 2006 MacBook Pros. Divergent to this consumer/professional identity, the low-cost Mac mini has an aluminium case while featuring the distinctive white polycarbonate top.

Since 2005: The Intel partnership

Targeted at a professional audience, the MacBook Pro is Apple's first laptop with an Intel microprocessor. The less expensive MacBook caters to the consumer market.

In a keynote address on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs officially announced that Apple would begin producing Intel-based Macintosh computers beginning in 2006.Apple press release Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006 Jobs confirmed rumors that the company had secretly been producing versions of its current operating system Mac OS X for both PowerPC and Intel processors for the previous five years, and that the transition to Intel processor systems would last until the end of 2007.News.com Apple-Intel transition articleAppleinsider Apple-Intel transition articleNew York Times Apple-Intel transition article

On January 10, 2006, Apple released its first Intel chip computers, a new notebook computer known as the MacBook Pro (a 15.4 inch laptop which is purportedly up to 4 times faster than the PowerBook models it replaced) and a new (though cosmetically identical) iMac with again purportedly two to three times faster performance. Both used Intel's Core Duo chip technology. Later in February, Apple introduced the new Intel-based Mac mini, running up to four times faster and also featuring Front Row, available with a Core Duo or Core Solo (single core) processor. All Macintosh product lines are expected to transition to Intel processors by the end of 2006. The Apple online store sold out of 17 inch iMac G5 computers in February 2006, Apple ended the life of its 15 inch PowerBook G4 on February 22 2006, and the G4 Mac mini was removed from the Apple online store on February 28, 2006 and replaced with the Intel Core Mac mini. On March 10, 2006 Apple retired the iMac G5, and on August 7 2006, the PowerMac was replaced with the Mac Pro, completing the transition of all Macintosh products. The XServe will also be transitioned in October.

Apple's current operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", runs natively on the new Intel machines, as do the Darwin open source underpinnings. Many applications, such as iLife '06, also run natively on Intel chips. Other applications, such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, which have not been updated to run on the Intel architecture, run in emulation mode, using a technology known as Rosetta. Because Rosetta is a translation software that allows PowerPC programs to run on Intel processors, these PowerPC programs run slower than native applications. Programs compiled only for the PowerPC must be recompiled to run at full speed on the new Intel machines. The Intel-based machines also do not support Classic, which allows Mac OS X to run applications written for OS 9 and earlier, so applications that require this environment will not run on these machines. Apple currently has no plans to bring Classic support to the Intel platform.

The Intel chip also allows the new machines to run the Windows operating system. On March 16, 2006 a bootloader CD imagehttp://www.engadget.com/2006/03/16/windows-xp-on-mac-solution-posted/ and a how-to for getting XP on your MacBook Pro, iMac, or mini was released to the Internet as an entry into a US$13,000 contest. Many hackers attempted over three months to win the prize by becoming the first to run Windows natively on a new Intel Mac. The Intel-based Macintoshes are now the only computers officially capable of running both Mac OS and Windows (and Linux) without emulation (a pre-release version of Mac OS X for Intel was patched to run on non-Apple PCs through the OSx86 community, however such procedure is illegal by the Apple EULA). Further, on 5 April 2006, Apple announced a new piece of software called Boot Camp that helps users install Windows XP on their Intel Mac alongside Mac OS X. Boot Camp (name not finalized) will also be included, as standard, in Apple's next OS release (10.5, "Leopard").

The Apple/Intel partnership coined several catch phrases among Apple fanatics and parts of media. Some of the most widespread ones include "Mactel" and "Macintel", a response to the phrase "Wintel" which is an informal moniker that describes all Intel-powered systems running the Microsoft Windows operating system. However, these monikers have not been used publicly by Apple itself.

In a broader view, Apple's announcement that it would partner with longtime rival Intel was a reaffirmation of the company's unique aesthetic philosophy in relation to the end-user experience. "The soul of a Mac is its operating system," as Jobs proclaimed during the keynote, and indeed the Intel switch demonstrated how little it matters what brand of chip lies beneath the polish. Apple's gradual discovery of itself as a platform, experience-centric company was complete.http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1824695,00.asp

Current products

Hardware

The iPod, shown here, is one of Apple's most successful products. The latest iPod is available in 30 or 60 GB models and is capable of playing video.

The Mac mini is Apple's lowest-cost desktop computer.

Apple introduced the Macintosh family in 1984 and today makes consumer, professional, and educational computers. The Mac mini is the company's consumer sub-desktop computer, introduced in January 2005 and designed to motivate Windows users to switch to the Macintosh platform. The iMac is a consumer desktop computer that was first introduced by Apple in 1998, and its popularity helped save the company. Now in its third design iteration, the iMac is similar in concept to the original Macintosh in that the monitor and computer are housed in a single unit. The Power Mac G5, Apple's desktop computer for the professional and creative market, is a member of the Power Macintosh series first introduced in 1994. Apple's server range includes the Xserve, a single-processor, dual-processor, and cluster-node server range, and the Xserve RAID for server storage options. The Power Mac brand was replaced in 2006 with the Mac Pro, featuring a 64-bit dual-core Xeon "Woodcrest" processor, capable of reaching speeds of 3Ghz. The Mac Pro is capable of supporting up to 2 terabytes of internal hard disk space and has 8 DIMM slots for up to 16GB of RAM. On it's promotional website, Apple says that the "Mac Pro not only completes the Mac transition to Intel processors but delivers advanced performance, workstation graphics, and up to 4.9 million possible configurations."

Apple introduced the iBook consumer portable computer as a companion to the iMac; it is Apple's lowest-cost portable computer. The iBook brand was replaced on May 16, 2006 with the MacBook featuring the Intel Core Duo processor, 13 inch widescreen, and available black color on the high-end model. The MacBook Pro is the professional portable computer alternative to the MacBook. The MacBook Pro is intended for the professional and creative market and replaced the PowerBook range. The collection of portables powered by the PowerPC processor are no more. The PowerBook range was first introduced in 1991 and helped Apple grow during the 1990s.

In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod digital music player and currently sells the iPod (with video), available in 30 and 60 GB models; the iPod nano, available in 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB models; and the iPod shuffle, available in 512 MB and 1 GB models. Apple also re-released the U2 Special Edition iPod in a 30 GB capacity on June 6, 2006 with a distinctive all black enclosure, a red clickwheel, and engraved band members autographs on the back.

Apple sells a variety of computer accessories for Macintosh computers including the iSight video conferencing camera, the AirPort wireless networking products; Apple Cinema HD Display and Apple Displays computer displays; Mighty Mouse and Apple Wireless Mouse computer mice; the Apple Wireless Keyboard computer keyboard and the Apple USB Modem.

Software

Mac OS X "Tiger" is the newest version of one of Apple's major software products.

Apple develops its own operating system to run on the Macintosh, Mac OS X. Apple also independently develops computer software titles for its Mac OS X operating system. Much of the software Apple develops is bundled with its computers. An example of this is the consumer-oriented iLife software package which bundles iDVD, iMovie HD, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, and iWeb. For presentation and page layout, iWork is available. Both iTunes and a feature-limited version of the QuickTime media player are available as free downloads for both Mac OS X and Windows.

Apple also offers a range of professional software titles. Their range of server software includes the operating system Mac OS X Server; Apple Remote Desktop, a remote systems management application; WebObjects, Java Web application server; and Xsan, a Storage Area Network file system. For the professional creative market, there is Aperture for professional RAW-format photo processing; Final Cut Studio, a video software package, as well as Final Cut Express HD, a cut-down version, for SD and HD video editors; Logic Pro, a comprehensive music toolkit, and Logic Express, its prosumer cousin; and Shake, an advanced effects composition program.

Apple also offers online services with .Mac which bundles .Mac HomePage, .Mac Mail, .Mac Groups social network service, .Mac iDisk, .Mac Backup, .Mac Sync, and Learning Center online tutorials.

Corporate affairs

Critics of Apple commonly point to their vertically-integrated business model, where all the hardware and software comes from one company; for many years, Apple's hardware was closed and proprietary, and Apple generally refused to adopt prevailing industry standards for hardware, instead creating and implementing their own. This trend was largely reversed in the late 1990s beginning starting with Apple's adoption of the PCI bus in the 7500/8500/9500 Power Macs.

Logos

The original Apple logo featuring Isaac Newton under the fabled apple tree.

The rainbow Apple logo, used from late 1976 to early 1998.

The current Apple logo. On products, a simple gray version of the Apple is used, without embellishing it as has been done to computerized images.

See also: U+F8FF or ï£¿, seen as the Apple logo in some fonts.

Apple's first logo, designed by Jobs and Wayne, depicts Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. Almost immediately, though, this was replaced by Rob Janoff's "rainbow Apple," the now-familiar rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. This was one of several designs Janoff presented to Jobs in 1976.Wired News: Apple Doin' the Logo-Motion

In her book Zeroes and Ones, author Sadie Plant speculates that the rainbow logo was an homage to Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, who suffered years of persecution for his homosexuality before committing suicide with a cyanide-laced apple. This account, while appealing for its entertainment value as an urban legend, is factually improbable; the Apple logo was designed two years before Gilbert Baker's rainbow pride flag, and did not in any case follow the same color pattern.

In 1998, Apple began enforcing the use of a strictly monochrome logoâ€"supposedly at the insistence of a newly-reinaugurated Jobsâ€"nearly identical in shape to its previous rainbow incarnation. No specific color is prescribed; for example, it is grey on the Power Mac G5, Mac Mini, and iMac, blue (by default) in Mac OS X, chrome on the 'About this Mac' panel and the boot screen in Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4, red on many software packages, and white on the iBook, PowerBook G4, MacBook, and MacBook Pro. The logo's shape is one of the most recognized brand symbols in the world, and is featured quite prominently on all Apple products and retail stores, and notably included as stickers in nearly all Macintosh and iPod packages through the years.

Headquarters

Apple Computer's world corporate headquarters are located in the heart of Silicon Valley, at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California. This Apple campus has six buildings which total 850,000 sq. ft. and was built in 1993 by Sobrato Development Cos.http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2005/10/03/story4.html

In 2006, Apple announced its intention to build a second campus on 50 acres assembled from various contiguous plots. The new campus, also in Cupertino, will be about one mile east of the current campus.http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/14422699.htm

Apple CEOs, 1977âˆ'present

*1977â€"1981: Michael "Scotty" Scott
*1981â€"1983: A. C. "Mike" Markkula
*1983â€"1993: John Sculley
*1993â€"1996: Michael Spindler
*1996â€"1997: Gil Amelio
*1997â€"present: Steve Jobs

Current Apple Board of Directors

*Fred D. Anderson, managing director of Elevation Partners
*Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit, Inc.
*Millard Drexler, chairman and CEO of J.Crew
*Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States
*Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple, director of The Walt Disney Company
*Arthur D. Levinson, chairman and CEO of Genentech
*Jerry York, chairman, president and CEO of Harwinton Capital

Current Apple executives

*Steve Jobs, chief executive officer
*Timothy D. Cook, chief operating officer
*Tony Fadell, senior vice president of iPod division
*Philip W. Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing
*Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president of software engineering
*Ron Johnson, senior vice president of retail
*Sina Tamaddon, senior vice president of applications
*Peter Oppenheimer, senior vice president and CFO
*Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of industrial design

Corporate culture

Apple has a long tradition of emphasizing the user experience, rather than the technology involved in delivering that experience. From this perspective, Apple's philosophy of design is aligned with that of, e.g., Nintendo ("We consider ourselves, above all else, a gaming company. We believe other companies see themselves primarily as technology companies"). This attitude is reflected in the casual manner the company switches the Mac from architecture to architecture every decade or so, presenting this to users and developers alike as an affair that changes not at all the essential character of the Mac, while industry observers and trade magazines work themselves into a lather over what they perceive as an enormous change in direction.

Apple was one of several highly successful companies founded in the 1970s that bucked the traditional notions of what a corporate culture should look like in terms of organizational hiearchy (flat versus tall), casual versus formal attire, et cetera. Other highly successful firms with similar cultural aspects from the same time period include Southwest Airlines and Microsoft, and the relative success of these firms (whether a result of their cultural differences or not) resulted widespread adoption of informal corporate culture within the technology industry. Originally, the company stood in opposition to staid competitors like IBM more or less by default, thanks to the influence of its founders; Steve Jobs often walked around the office barefoot even after Apple was a Fortune 500 company. By the time of the "1984" TV ad, this trait had become a key way the company differentiated itself from its competitors.

As the company has grown and been led by a series of chief executives, each with his own idea of what Apple should be, some of its original character has arguably been lost, but Apple still has a reputation for fostering individuality that reliably draws talented people into its employ. Furthering these lines, Apple Fellows were created. An Apple Fellow is a person who has been designated as such by Apple Computer in recognition of their extraordinary technical or leadership contributions to personal computing. Each Apple Fellow acts as a leader and a visionary, guiding the company in their particular area of expertise. The Apple Fellowship has been awarded so far to very few individuals including Bill Atkinson, Rod Holt, Alan Kay, Guy Kawasaki, Don Norman, Rich Page, and Steve Wozniak.

User culture

According to surveys by J. D. Power, Apple has the highest brand and repurchase loyalty of any computer manufacturer. While this brand loyalty is considered unusual for any product, Apple appears not to have gone out of its way to create it. At one time, Apple evangelists were actively engaged by the company, but this was after the phenomenon was already firmly established. Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki has called the brand fanaticism "something that was stumbled upon."The father of evangelism marketing by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba

Macintosh users meet at the Apple Expo and MacWorld Expo trade shows where Apple introduces new products each year to the industry and public and Macintosh developers in turn gather at Worldwide Developers Conference. Many users show their loyalty and devotion by wearing Apple t-shirts.

Apple Store openings can draw crowds of thousands, with some waiting in line as much as a day before the opening or flying in from other countries for the event.http://www.wired.com/news/culture/mac/0,61513-0.html The New York City Fifth Avenue "Cube" store had a line as long as half a mile; a few Mac fans took the opportunity of the setting to propose marriage.http://ifostore.cachefly.net/fifth_avenue/index.html The Ginza opening in Tokyo was estimated in the thousands with a line exceeding eight city blocks.http://www.japanconsuming.com/news/040828.html

John Sculley told the Guardian newspaper in 1997: "People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company. It was the marketing company of the decade."Wired News: Apple: It's All About the Brand

Market research indicates that Apple draws its customer base from an unusually artistic, creative, and well-educated population, which may explain the platform's visibility within certain youthful, avant-garde subcultures. Furthermore, conventional wisdom holds that the platform appeals especially to the politically liberal-minded; even Steve Jobs speculates that "maybe a little less" than half of Apple's customers are Republicans, "maybe more Dell than ours." Accurate or not, this perception can only be reinforced by the company's pattern of political donations, by Al Gore's membership on its board, and surely not least by Jobs' own personal history.

Criticism

Apple has been criticized for its vertically integrated business model, which runs against the "received wisdom" of some economists, particularly those who study the computer industry. Others criticize the company by suggesting it has been personality-driven, especially during the two eras of Jobs' tenure. Some even regard the company as a cult or at least having cult-like features. Jobs' charisma, infamously referred to as his reality distortion field, has drawn criticism.

From a technical standpoint, Apple was also criticized for having a closed and proprietary architecture with the original Macintosh and refusing to adopt open standards; for many years a "Not Invented Here" (NIH) culture seemed to prevail. The iTunes Music Store continues this trend, utilizing a proprietary digital rights management system called FairPlay that requires burning and re-ripping a CD to play purchased songs on any digital audio player other than the iPod. Doing so, however, would be a violation of the DMCA in the United States (and other countries with similar legislation) because it circumvents copy protection.

That trend was largely reversed with Mac OS X, and the company now has an official policy of adopting relevant open industry standards. Mac OS X is based on a free software/open source kernel and core operating system called Darwin. Apple also uses an open source framework called WebKit in its Safari web browser.

Apple has used industry-standard hardware technologies for many years. Many Apple technologies have also become industry standards where no former standard existed, for example Bonjour/Rendezvous zero-configuration networking, and FireWire. Some non-Apple technologies only gained wide industry acceptance after Apple adopted them, including 3.5 inch floppy disks, SCSI, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), Wi-Fi and, of course, graphical user interfaces. Apple has recently adopted an Intel-based architecture. Apple's industry-standard software implementations include iCal, as well as a host of other networking protocols.

Open source software advocates are often critical of Apple's attempt to appeal to their particular movements. Such advocates claim that such a marketing scheme is not taken seriously enough by Apple because Mac OS X has many proprietary technologies in essential areas. Other open source advocates make a counter-argument that Apple has done much more for open source software than many other major commercial software developers by releasing large portions of source code to the public through the Apple Public Source License (APSL). Some third-party developers are also critical of the competing factions within Apple itself, noting an apparent rivalry between the developers of Cocoa, which came from NeXT, and those of Carbon, which came from Apple. This rivalry is seen as counterproductive and unnecessary by many developers.

Apple's retail initiative has had a mixed reception despite its success promoting the Apple brand. Retailers have suggested that Apple-owned retail stores receive preference when receiving Apple hardware, obtaining limited stock product earlier and at lower prices. This accusation is denied by Apple.

Notable litigation

Apple's earliest court action dates to 1978 when Apple Records, The Beatles-founded record label, filed suit against Apple Computer for trademark infringement. The suit settled in 1981 with an amount of US$80,000 being paid to Apple Corps. As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business. The case arose in 1989 again when Apple Corps sued over the Apple IIGS, which included a professional synthesizer chip, claiming violation of the 1981 settlement agreement. In 1991 another settlement of around US$26.5 million was reached.news.com: Apple vs. Apple: Perfect harmony? In September 2003 Apple Computer was sued by Apple Corps again, this time for introducing the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, which Apple Corps believed was a violation of the previous agreement by Apple Computer not to distribute music.legalzoom.com: Apple v Apple: What is at the core of The Beatles' Apple Records vs. Apple Ipodâ€¦ The trial began on March 27, 2006 in the UK and ended on May 8, 2006 with victory for Apple Computer. The judge ruled the company's iTunes Music Store did not infringe on the trademark of Apple Corps.http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/judgmentsfiles/j4226/apple_v_apple_hc03c02428_0506.htm At the present time The Beatles' songs are not available for download from any legal music download sites, including the iTunes Music Store.

In 1982 Apple filed a lawsuit against Franklin Computer Corp., alleging that Franklin's ACE 100 personal computer used illegal copies of Apple's operating system and ROM. Apple v. Franklin established the fundamental basis of copyright of computer software. When developing the Macintosh, Apple decided to embed a "smoking gun" in its firmware to make it easier to detect copying, and the original Macintosh shipped with an encrypted "Stolen from Apple" icon in ROM.

In 1988 Apple sued Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on the grounds that they infringed Apple's copyrights on a GUI, particularly design elements such as the "Trash." The Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. trial lasted for four years. The ruling was decided against Apple, on the grounds that Apple had actually (unintentionally) licensed the intellectual property to Microsoft as part of the agreement that gave Microsoft early access to the information necessary to develop Macintosh software, and the concept of a GUI was no longer the domain of Apple alone.

In the most recent previously unrelated lawsuit, Apple entered into a class action settlement,http://www.appleipodsettlement.com upheld on December 20, 2005 following an appeal, regarding the battery life of iPod music players sold prior to May 2004. Eligible members of the class are entitled to extended warranties, store credit, cash compensation, or battery replacement.

Creative also recently filed a patent dispute alleging that Apple infringed on one of Creative's patents for their Zen player with the iPod and iPod nano.http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1743

References and footnotes

*History
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External links

*Apple Computer
**Apple Computer â€" 'Official Website'
*General
**Google Finance â€" 'Apple Computer Company Profile'
**Apple History
**Apple Ads

Apple Computer: Encyclopedia BETA

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