In 1976, 3 entreprenurial young guys created Apple Computer, Inc., with the intention of creating & distributing personal computers. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, & Ronald Wayne began with a dream of creating computers smaller & readily available to the general population. They built their computers in Jobs' parent's garage & debuted the Apple I personal computer kit in 1976, the same year they founded Apple. Eventually, 200 of these computers would be sold.



Steve Jobs approached a local electronics shop, The Byte Shop, which ordered fifty units & paid five hundred dollars for each unit after much persuasion from Jobs, whose persuasive techniques have since become known as "the reality-distortion field". Jobs then ordered components from Cramer Electronics, a national electronics parts distributor. Using a variety of techniques, including borrowing space from friends & family & selling various items (including a Volkswagen Bus), Jobs managed to acquire the parts required while Wozniak & Wayne put together the Apple I kits.

In 1977, the Apple II was introduced & almost immediately became much more popular than its major competition, the TRS-80 (which used cassette tapes for storage, & was known derisively as the TRasH-80) & the Commodore 64, despite the fact that Apple II's price was higher. One of the big benefits of the Apple was the development of the floppy disk drive & software.

The Apple II was selected by programmers to be the desktop platform for the first "killer application" of the business world. This was a spreadsheet program named VisCalc. This created a substantial market for the Apple. The business market attracted many more software & hardware developers to the machine, and it also attracted home users in an effort to be compatible with their workplace computers.

Over the years, Apple Computer would release many more designs, with each one just a little better than the previous one. In 1984, Steve Jobs was on hand to introduce the Apple Macintosh as the "Computer for the rest of us". In 1989, Apple introduced the Macintosh Portable. However, this computer was actually quite bulky & cumbersome & was met with mixed reviews. At this point, Apple hired industrial designers to develop a better, more portable personal computer.

In 1991, the Apple PowerBook was introduced. The PowerBook would provide the basic structure & form for the laptop computers we know today. This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer of both desktop & laptop machines. The success of this laptop led to increased revenues & growing popularity of Apple in the computer market, and was followed up by the addition of the Apple iMac to their line of personal computers, in 1998. They also branched out into the music arena with the development of the iPod personal music player, which went on to grab an eighty percent market share.

Reflecting this branching into other markets, on January 9, 2007, they changed their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to simply Apple, Inc. While they have had their ups & downs over the years, Apple has continued to be a solid presence in the desktop computer & portable market. Their products have continued to develop to meet the needs of both the business and individual user.