HISTORICAL TIMELINE AND ESSAY

Historical Timeline and Essay

Historical Timeline and Essay

The History of Apple Computer Company

When thinking about purchasing a computer, most people consider Microsoft to be the only choice. Apple's Macintosh computers have been around for twenty years and are the competition of which few people are aware. Despite trouble with Microsoft in the mid 90's, Apple and their Macintosh remain a powerful competitor to Microsoft's Windows based systems. In their thirty years of existence, Apple has overcome many hurdles and is still one of the top-selling computer companies.

In 1975, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, began work on the Apple I. Little did he know that it was the precursor to one of the most successful computer series. After a year of hard work, in March of 1976, he submitted his Apple I to his employer at the time, Hewlett Packard (Sanford). Unfortunately for him, Hewlett Packard rejected this $800 computer, but Wozniak was not about to quit (Sanford). On April 1, 1976, the Apple Computer Company was founded. Despite the Apple I's early introduction, the Apple Computer Company did not take off until the release of the Apple II (Sanford). Although the Apple II was wildly successful, its fame ended quickly (Computer). IBM released their PC (personal computer) in 1981 (Computer). It quickly began to dominate the computer industry (Computer). Later in 1981, due to competition, Apple ran into serious financial trouble (Sanford). Apple had to lay off 40 employees, and Wozniak was injured in a plane crash (Sanford).

Apple then decided to team up with a foundling company called Microsoft to make software for their latest computer, the Macintosh. Powered by the 68000 series processors, the first Macintoshs would later revolutionize the way people used computers upon its release (Parker 16). The IBM PCs at that time had to literally be told what to do by the user. The user operated them by entering a series of commands in a text based operating system called DOS (disk operating system). This was a tedious and often confusing task. The Macintosh, however, used a graphical-user-interface (GUI) first thought of by Xerox but later refined by Apple (Sanford). GUI is simply what most computer users and individuals know today, i.e., icons, folders, and windows. This is what Microsoft copied from Apple in their Windows series. The Windows series almost completely mimics the operating system of the Macintosh. Just before the Macintosh was released, Microsoft threatened to remove all of their software titles from the Mac unless Apple licensed parts of its GUI to Microsoft (Sanford). Later, Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates got his best Macintosh programmer and told him to make a program to make a computer work and run "just like a Mac" (Every). Later in 1985, when Microsoft released Windows 1.0, Apple tried to sue, but Apple was too vague on copyright laws, and because they had licensed parts of the GUI to Microsoft, lost this and future court battles (Every).

In their time of despair because of court losses, Apple instated John ...