How Apple Took Over The World

In 1976, 3 friends set up a company. Steve Wozniac, Ronald Wayne and Steve Jobs founded Apple with the aim to create personal computers. Do you think back then they ever dreamed that company that they were setting up would one day become the worlds most valuable firm worth over $650billion (￡428.5billion)?

Steve Wozniac hand built the first ever apple computer, the Apple 1, a do-it-yourself kit that didn't even include a case. This was built in Steve Jobs parents garage and first introduced at the Homebrew Computer club in Palo Alto, California. It was the first ever micro computer that once hooked up to a keyboard and monitor, didn't require extra circuitry to display text, it was a big step forward at the time.

It was sold as a kit for $666 (apparently Steve Wozniac preferred repeating digits). More than 200 were sold, a few less than the 34,000 iPhones sold every hour last quarter.

When Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh at the company's annual shareholders meeting in 1984, pandemonium apparently ensued. At $2,495, the Macintosh was the first affordable computer to offer a graphical user interface, replacing fusty text-based operating systems with an intuitive layout of folders and icons.

1985 bought a shock move by the Apple board, the got rid of Steve Jobs! He was deemed "too much", with his ideas of changing the world making him a very difficult person to work with. But in 1997, with the company operating at a loss and Microsoft's Windows 95 flying off the shelves, Apple's board decided they needed that they needed radical change. In August of that year, Jobs rejoined as an interim CEO and then soon become the companies full CEO. "He had become a far better leader, less of a go-to-hell aesthete who cared only about making beautiful objects," wrote Fortune's editor-at-large Peter Elkind.

1998 was the real turning point for the company, when they released the iMac.

It was a self-contained unit that required minimal setup and even had a handle that made it easy to pull out of the box and move around. According to Apple, one-third of iMac sales in the machine's first year went to first-time computer buyers. On the shelves next to the big square beige computers that dominated the market back then, the teal iMac, with its small circular mouse and translucent body, stood out.

Apple had released a number of gadgets in the past — eMate, Pippin and Macintosh TV, to name a few — all to indifferent sales. But the iPod was in a category all its own. Launched in 2001, the $399 portable music player, with its innovative interface, impressive storage capacity and lightning-quick download capability, quickly became one of its top-selling products.

Apple's timing, along with its ingenious advertising, couldn't have been more perfect either. The adverts were catchy, including the most current popular music with bold colors sending out a simple message, this will be popular. Since its debut, more than 350 million iPods have been sold around the world.

During his time away from Apple, Steve Jobs picked up a few new tricks — one very important trick in particular: the operating system that would become Mac OS X. Released in March 2001, and advertised as virtually crash-proof, OS X was also easy on the eyes because of its "aqua" look and feel, noted for its soft edges, translucent colors and pinstripes. OS X continued to evolve, going through nine different iterations in ensuing years; its stability, speed and ease of use became a major selling point for new Mac users who switched from Windows-driven PCs.

iTunes software debuted in 2001 as a music storage and organization system for Apple computers. This then lead to 2003 seeing the launch of the iTunes store. Apple's entry into digital music sales changed the field entirely. The iTunes store was significantly more user friendly than its competitors' services, with a vastly greater library; Apple had the added advantage of being able to tie the store and the software to its hugely popular iPod. In its first week, iTunes sold 1 million songs; within a year, it sold more than 50 million.

After the iPod, there was fear that Apple would never be able to top that success. The rumors started to spread that they were looking to get into the smartphone market and critics didn't think they would be able to do it successfully. Speculation continued until January 2007, when the company officially announced the iPhone. When the phone was released on June 29, 2007 there were endless lines outside of Apple stores as well adoring praise from reviewers. The phone-music player-pocket computer sold more than 1.4 million units by Sept of that year.

A year later, the iPhone 3G was released and since then a stream of ever improving models have proven more and more popular. A lesser known fact is that the first iPhone was actually invented in 1983! It was a landline based model with a touch screen, but unfortunately it was never released and the concept was stored in the Apple vaults.

In 2012, there were 340,000 iPhones sold every single day, proving just how successful and popular they were.

When Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPad on January 27, 2010, some observers dismissed it as being nothing more than a giant iPhone. They were right, except for one part: A lot of people just loved the idea a giant iPhone! The iPad jump-started the tablet industry, becoming Apple's fastest-selling new product ever and inspiring nearly every dead-tree magazine publisher to release digital editions built especially for iPad. A bevy of other gadget makers released lookalike tablets; none of them beat the iPad, and several of them flopped in spectacular fashion. By June of 2012 — four months before it released the iPad Mini — Apple had sold 84 million of those giant iPhones.

So here we are today with Apple all over the news after posting a record quarterly profit of $18billion (￡11.8billion), the biggest ever made by a public company. Apple now have a cash pile worth $178billion (￡117billion). Apple employs over 80,000 staff across the world

Apple CEO Tim Cook has doubled the companies profits since taking over in 2011, making Apple the worlds most valuable firm with a market capitalization of $650billion (￡428.5billion).

There has been a very public competition between Apple and Samsung over the years, and although Samsung sell more phones globally, Apple makes more money just from the iPhone itself.

With the eagerly awaiting Apple watch on the way, it would appear that there will be many more successes for the company. What will come after that? What wonderful technology are they working on right now? Only time will tell, for now the world truly does revolve around Apple and as a big fan myself, that's not a bad thing.

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