History of the Macintosh
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were two high school friends to whom we owe the creation of the first Apple computer. His first steps in the computer industry was with Hewlett Packard, in the case of Wozniak and Atari, in the case of Jobs. The first inspiration was Steve Wozniak, who created what later became the Apple I in 1976. Jobs insisted his friend in April 1976 and together they founded Apple Computer Company to market the Apple I. The first team was not too successful, so they had to wait until 1977 for the first great success of the company, the Apple II.
The technical characteristics of the team were extraordinary for its time:
up to 64 Kb of RAM
1Mhz processor
GUI 6 colors and 280x192 or 16 colors and 40x48
(Without hard drive)
optional floppy drive
The Apple II
In 1980, after the release of the Apple II, the young company with the apple logo was thousands of employees. Jobs began work on the Lisa project.The executives were not satisfied with the results and took him out of the project. But Jobs was involved in another project: the Macintosh, a personal computer for $ 500.
Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and in 1981 the company had to face his first crisis. Sales are down, Wozniak suffered a plane crash that put into question the future of his career and, last but not least, IBM introduced the first PC, which, supported by the IBM juggernaut, soon outsold Apple equipment.
Jobs quickly realized that Apple should have to head to a person who was at the height of its commercial competitors.
As a result, Sculley (Pepsi-Cola president) became president of the company in 1983.
The relationship between the two men was something distant.
Launch of the first Macintosh
This event occurred on January 22, 1984. The product was successful until Christmas, when buyers began to doubt, discouraged by the lack of connectivity on the hard drive in 1985 the differences between Sculley and Jobs became more noticeable. After a failed ploy Jobs, the board voted to Sculley. Jobs resigned. The following months were not economically viable.
By then, began to question the ability of Sculley to run a computer company. Began to appear the first conflicts with Microsoft: The launch of Windows 1.0 led to an agreement which stated that Microsoft would not use the same technology as Apple. The Mac came out of the economic crisis with the launch of software tools and Computer Aided Engineering
The launch of the Mac II
In 1987, the Mac II continued the resurgence of Apple. Reached a point where many believed could never slow Windows Mac development (1989). But PC clones appeared in May 1990, the launch of Windows 3.0, which could run in each of these clones, was cause for alarm for Apple, it was still the only manufacturer of Macintosh.
The PowerBook
The idea of granting licenses to manufacturers to increase production of Mac was discarded by the new CEO, Michael Spindler, who had assumed office in June 1993. In 1991, Apple launched the first PowerBooks. The success was overwhelming. Apple then began to investigate the PDAs that later led to the launch of Newton, in August 1993. The handwriting recognition system, imperfect, sparked negative comments from users. In 1994 appeared the first PowerMac. These teams, which used a processor jointly developed by IBM and Motorola, easily rivaled and even surpassed the speed of the latest Pentium.Meanwhile, licenses were granted to several companies to build Mac clones that were running MacOS (including Power Computing and Umax) but that was not enough to offset the delay of Apple to update their business strategies. In addition, the launch of Windows 95 made matters worse. In January 1996, while Apple was going through its worst crisis, the launch of the Performa, a low cost equipment that did not sell well and Spindler was forced to resign. Gil Amelio was replaced.
Restructuring
In late 1996, even in the same situation, Apple announced the purchase of NeXT and the appointment of former CEO, Steve Jobs. The purpose of this merger was to integrate the core of NeXTstep with the development of the next MacOS (Rhapsody project, whose launch was scheduled for 1998). In early 1997, Amelio was forced to resign could not railroaded back to the company. Jobs then took on more important tasks within Apple and began to take decisions to restructure the company. MacWorld Boston in August 1997, Jobs focused his speech on innovation and change, and announced the launch of new advertising campaigns, new Mac, Rhapsody project development and, most importantly, an agreement with Microsoft. This agreement will allow both companies to share patents for 5 years. Microsoft Apple offered $ 150 million in shares and Microsoft paid a fee which was not revealed publicly for settling intellectual property issues that had arisen during the development of Windows.
With respect to the clones, an issue that ended stealing more customers without increasing Apple Mac sales, Jobs decided to reclaim the licenses were granted and stop the production of the manufacturers.
In November 1997, Jobs announced that from the time the sale of the Mac would be made directly through the manufacturer, online and by phone. Also made public the release of the PowerMac and PowerBook G3. In just one week, the Apple Store became the third e-commerce web site more important.
The i Mac
In January 1998, Job announced the first profitable quarter in over a year. In May, presented a new type of Mac with a price performance ratio designed to satisfy the regular users. He explained that the project would be based not only MacOSX in Rhapsody (NeXT technology) but also in MacOS 8. The year 1998 was very profitable for Apple as the iMacs were sold like hotcakes. In 1999, the release of the PowerMac G3 "blue and white" and the announcement of the iBook kept the momentum going. Then came the announcement of G4 PowerMacs generation
In January 2000, the presentation of the iTools line of online services, showed that Apple had a new strategy, frankly oriented Internet. Simultaneously, Steve Jobs announced that he would continue to lead the company.