THE DEVELOPMENT OF APPLE COMPUTER
It all started by a man named Steve Jobs from Palo Alto, California born in 24 th February 1955.
During the 70s, he was walking on the street with his neighbor friend, Bill Fernandez who has
the same interest in electronics. He then introduced jobs to his neighbor, Steve Wozniac, a
computer and electronic geek who was also known as his nickname ‘Woz’’.
In 1969, Wozniac and Fernandez started building a small computer board named “The Cream
Soda Computer” which made Jobs very amused. Both Wozniac and Job went to the same
school, although they did not know each other. In 1972, Jobs dropped out of college after 6
months and spent his next 18 months on creative classes, including a course on calligraphy. On
the same year, Wozniak designed his very own version of the classic video game called Pong
which later he gave it to Jobs. Jobs took the game to a video game company called Atari, which
thought that Steve Jobs had built it and later gave him a vacancy to work as a technician. By
that time, Wozniak designed a low-budget electronic phone jacking which creates the required
tones to handle the telephone network, allowing free long-distance calls and they called it the
blue box. Jobs decided that they could make money by retailing it. Jobs think that electronics
could be fun and profitable by the close sales of the illegitimate phone jacking. In 1975, Job and
Wozniak attend every meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. It’s a club for every technical
hobbyist who gathered to exchange parts, circuits, and information relating to DIY construction
of computing devices. The following year, “Apple Computer Company” was formed.
In 1972, Wozniak alone invented the Apple 1 computer and showed it to Jobs. Steve Jobs
suggested that they sell it. Ronald Wayne from the Atari Company who works alongside Jobs
came and joins them and later formed Apple Computer in the garage of Job’s parent in order to
sell it. “It debuted in April 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, but few took it
seriously.” (http://apple-history.com/ai). In 1977, the second installment which is Apple 2 has
been released. “It became one of the most popular computers ever. Although it is a vast
improvement over theApple I, it contains the same processor and runs at the same speed.”
(http://oldcomputers.net/appleii.html). New features include a colour display, eight internal
expansion slots, and a case with a keyboard. The funny thing is the Apple I and other early
computers didn't essentially have a case or even a keyboard. On some systems you had to use
your own keyboard, and on others you toggled switches to enter programs and issue
commands.In 1978, Apple company started building a computer which is exactly for businesses
and unlike Wozniak’s Apple II, the Apple III was designed by committee, features continuously
being added by the many engineers and marketers involved. After the release of Apple 3 in
September 1980, it failed not only commercially but literally. There was too many components
causing electrical shorts, it was reported that it had 100% failure rate.
(http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/design/apple3.html)
(Smarte,381).
Kunkel,
Paul,AppleDesign: The work of the Apple Industrial Design Group, with photographs by Rick
English, New York: Graphis, 1997.
In the 1980s, Steve Jobs visited to Xerox Parc Company just like the Apple Company. During his
visit, he was among the first to see the mouse which has the potential in commercially. The
other thing that he saw during his visit is the Small Talk, an object oriented programming
language and lastly a Graphical User Interface in a computer. The Graphical User Interface
(G.U.I) allows users to interact with the computer hardware in a user friendly way which
Inspires Jobs a great deal and led him to create another installment which is called Lisa. He said
“I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what
we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn't know that at the
time but still though they had the germ of the idea was there and they'd done it very well and
within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this
someday”. ( http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html)
Lisa which is the next instalment was based on the GUI included and improved for their
installment by Steve jobs. It was all good but the downfall of the computer is the market price
which was very expensive and it was a catastrophe. The commercial failure of the Lisa created a
concern at Apple comparable to that before the release of the IBM computer. In fact, there
were rumours that IBM was to state less expensive improvement to its popular computer in
1983, so Apple's position seemed risky (Sculley, 147-9).Sculley, John,Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple...
Journey of adventure, ideas, and the future, New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Then the next
Apple development was the Macintosh. The Macintosh has the beauty design from outer to
inside which has the sentiment of revolutionary atmosphere. Steve Jobs refreshed the
Macintosh team to learn from their mistakes made by the Lisa. Like the Lisa, the Macintosh has
its disk drive and display in a single unit with a keyboard and mouse, a motherboard, , including
the power cord, a self-contained design needing only three cables, including the power cord,
and contributing to a far easier assembly for the user than the increasingly established
Computers before.
Steve Jobs name appears on its desig along with its producers, Terry Oyama with Jerry Manock.
Oyama later said, "Even though Steve didn't draw any of the lines, his ideas and inspiration
made the design what it is. To be honest, we didn't know what it meant for a computer to be
'friendly' until Steve told us" (Kunkel, 26). Kunkel, Paul,AppleDesign: The work of the Apple
Industrial Design Group, with photographs by Rick English, New York: Graphis, 1997. John
Sculley , an entrepreneur and the president of PepsiCo during that time have help Jobs to
balance and making it profitable and more competitive on the market sales unlike Lisa. He
became the CEO of Apple on the 8th April 1983 for nearly ten years. (Sculley, 147-9) Sculley,
John,Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple... Journey of adventure, ideas, and the future, New York: Harper &
Row, 1987. When Sculley learned that Jobs believed that Sculley was bad and the wrong person
to lead Apple, He has the authority to reassign him to an uncertain position. Jobs resigned from
Apple five months later and the president of Apple France, Jean-Louis Gassée, was brought in
by John Sculley to be vice president of Apple's product development, and a position which
replaces Steve Jobs’ roles. (Sculley, 280).
Steve Jobs was devastated with his mind being backstabbed by his own company he created.
But his vision and hopes are still with him and being out of his own company, he still has 7$
million on hand and started the NeXT Computer. A year later he was out of capital with no
computer in the making, he required undertaking investment and eventually he got interested
by the billionaire Ross Perot who invested greatly in the company. Steve Jobs is now available
to make a computer with his capital funded. His NeXT Computer, developed an interpersonal
computer, NeXTSTEP with several parts including; the Objective-C and the object oriented small
talk which have helped Tim Berner’s lee to create the first world-wide website. NeXTSTEP was
developed by the NeXT Computer with several parts including; the Objective-C and the object
oriented small talk. With his success with his new company, he then bought The Graphic Group
which later renamed into Pixar in1986. In 1990, Steve Jobs’ idol, Robert Noyce passed away on
the 3rd of June. Robert Noyce was the co-inventor of the transistor and won the Nobel Prize, at
the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. He had given Jobs a lot of advice about the future’s
vision. He also founded the company called Intel. His magic transistor he invented was widely
used in the present day and during his days; the transistor is an open door to the modern
science.
Apple on the other hand, is in crisis which led by Jean-Louis Gassée. He had not followed the
same vision for a product project like Steve Jobs and instead he has open-handed his own
engineers control so long as the profits and performance stayed high. Later in 1996 then, Apple
announced that they would NeXT for 427$ million and the deal finalized in February 1997. With
that deal, they brought Steve Jobs back to the company he co-founded. With the purchase of
NeXT, the company’s technology was widely used like the NeXTSTEP, which was later evolved
into Mac OS X. Under Jobs’ guidance, the company has increased their profits by introducing
the iMac and other products like iPod which later opens the iTunes Store in the internet.