The magical history of Apple - How it all began

It all started in the garage of an aspiring young man and today the Apple is one of the largest companies in the world.

It is reasonable to wonder how this empire was built. We take a look at Apple's fascinating history.

The history of the Apple reminiscent of the American dream, the right people came together at the right time and founded Apple. It was a new era for America, the most populous generation in American history was just coming of age.

They caused an explosive reaction in every sector. They did not support US foreign policy, they did not want to go to war and they could not stand racism. Revolutionary youth separated themselves from the mainstream culture of America.

In the second half of the 60' the development of microchips would bring another great revolution. The San Francisco was the centre of revolutionary youth and revolutionary technology.

During this period the fourteen-year-old Steve Jobs would meet the nineteen-year-old Steve Wozniak. To 1969 were young people who loved technology and the Beatles, but little did they know that very soon the two of them would make history.

Ο Steve Wozniak has always had a penchant for computers:

I got this book at home, which explained the functions of a computer, it was like a Bible to me. All this stuff. For some reason I fell in love with these descriptions, like one falls in love with a musical instrument. I could solve some problems and find my own ways of solving them.

O Wozniak had one dream in common with all the other technology fanatics, he wanted to own a personal computer. At the time, however, this was impossible.

This changed the 1974 with the release of the Altair 8800a microcomputer that you had to build yourself. Although it had no output interface beyond a few tubes, it caused a stir in the tech world.

So important was the release of the Altair that in America many courses and meetings were organised among fanatics to discuss the amazing possibilities of the first personal computer.

Similar meetings were held by the Homebrew Computer Club at San Francisco. Of course, things were different there than in the other meetings. The youth culture played an important role in the format of the meetings. There was a team atmosphere, everyone exchanged information and gave each other help.

At the same time the Steve Wozniak was building his own computer, using the processors that had just been released by Intel and Motorola. He brought the computer with him every week to meetings and improved it each time. He was too shy, however, to raise his hand during the classes and present his computer.

He assembled it at the end of the meetings and each time it aroused the interest of the audience who asked questions endlessly.

Ο Steve Jobs he was also a member of the Homebrew Computer Club. He noticed the interest in Wozniak's computer and suggested they work together and try to sell it.

In April of 1976 the two young people with the help of some friends set up their workshop in Steve Jobs' garage. They built the Apple One, a motherboard without a keyboard or display. This was Apple's official launch. They managed to sell just 50 Apple Ones. Steve Jobs took these sales as an indication of the interest the public had in a personal computer.

It was clear to me that there were hobbyist fanatics who could build their own computer, using our board, they could add a power supply and a keyboard. For every one of them there were a thousand people who didn't know how to do it but would like to get into programming. So my dream for the Apple II was to sell the first integrated computer.

Steve Jobs' vision of an integrated computer was impossible to realize at that time. It required a lot of circuitry, which was very expensive and complex. There had to be some serious innovation to allow its construction.

Ο Wozniak knew this, but he tried and succeeded on his own to achieve a tremendous innovation in the computer field.

And then I thought, why have one memory for the monitor and one for the computer? Let's make them one. That reduced the size. I looked in manuals and found a chip that did the job for five and reduced even more volume. I went through component after component and when I finally assembled the computer, I said, "You can program the computer to display colorful items on the screen, data, words, or play games, just like I wanted.

O Steve Jobs added his knowledge of design and insisted that the computer be easy to use. This combination made the computer attractive to consumers. Steve Jobs managed to find investors to build the Apple II.

The personal computer now was very different from the hobbyist's box, with tubes and switches, which had been released 2 years earlier.

Apple unveiled the Apple II The 1978 at a computer show and stole the show. No one had ever seen anything like it before.

Then Apple's evolution was rapid.

I was worth more than a million dollars when I was 23, more than ten million when I was 24 and over 100 million when I was 25. But it wasn't that important, because I never did it for the money.

Until the 1980 η IBM saw Apple's success and realized that she had been wrong in her assessment of the personal computer market. They didn't just appeal to hobbyists, they could serve many purposes. In the 1980s Apple faced stiff competition from IBM and other computer manufacturers, and as a result lost significant market share.

In the following decades Apple came close to bankruptcy, but decided to remove everything that was unnecessary and return to its roots. In its second golden age, Apple is a powerful force on the global technology map. The 2015 κατάφερε να συγκεντρώσει το 92% των κερδών της αγοράς των smartphones.

The 2017 η Apple παραμένει ακόμη στην κορυφή. Θα χρειαστεί όμως να κάνει έξυπνες κινήσεις για να ικανοποιήσει τους πιστούς χρήστες των συσκευών της και παράλληλα να φέρει κέρδη στους επενδυτές και τους μετόχους της.

from jericho