Coincidently, tomorrow, the day each year when toilet bowls are covered with Saran Wrap, and everything true may be actually be false, is the 30th birthday of Apple Computer.

That Apple even made it to thirty (a ripe old age for a technology company, after all) is somewhat amazing. It’s been counted out and left for dead 49 times just since April 1995, according to the “Apple Death Knell Counter” at www.macobserver.com. There were days when Apple wasn’t mentioned in the same sentence without the word “beleaguered” tossed in there somewhere. Sometimes the evidence was made to fit the premise - there were more “maybe-s”, “probably-s”, and “possibly-s” in each report of Apple’s “imminent” demise than in a Nova special on global warming. But, I digress.

The tech business is very much a roller coaster, with many ups and downs, twists and turns, and, yes, some time spent upside down wondering if both you and your lunch will make it to the end of the ride. But, as ol’ Fred Nietzsche said, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”. Of course, ol’ Fred spent the last ten years of his life insane.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Here’s my premise: we owe much of what a computer is today to the folks at Apple. I’m gonna tell you why. And, I’m gonna back it up with historical “facts” that support my premise. Here we go.

April 1st, 1976. Two members of Palo Alto, California’s “Homebrew’ Computer Club, Steve Wozniak, 26, and Steve Jobs, 21, formed Apple Computer Company in Jobs’ garage. They began building the “Apple I”, which was the first low cost microcomputer with a keyboard and video terminal (most computers used front-panel switches and teletypes). They sold the Apple I for $666.66, which was about twice the cost of parts and a carried a 33% dealer markup. There you go – proof that Apples have always been more expensive.

Incidentally, some people have interpreted Apple’s “bitten apple” logo and the number of “6’s” in the price of the Apple I to indicate some sort of unholy alliance. In fact, the two Steves decided on the name “Apple” because Jobs had recently worked at an organic apple orchard, and thought of the apple as “the perfect fruit”. The first Apple logo was actually a stylized drawing of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under the apple tree waiting for that monumental clunk on his noggin. The $666.66 price was based on a $500 wholesale price and the 33% retail markup.

Mid-1977 saw the arrival of the Apple II, with a color monitor. This prompted the change of the company logo to the six-color bitten apple. In 1978 Apple introduced the first real floppy drive for consumer computers. Production of the Apple II series of personal computers spanned almost fifteen years, ending in 1993.

In 1981, Steve Wozniak left the company after a near-fatal airplane crash and became a full-time teacher. In 1983, a former president of Pepsi, John Sculley, replaced Steve Jobs as President and CEO, although Jobs stayed around to introduce the Macintosh in 1984.

The Mac, a collection of some innovations that were around but not commonly used – the mouse, the graphical user interface, and more compact 3.5” floppy disks - coupled with the laser printer, brought desktop publishing to the masses.

In 1985, following an unsuccessful coup to regain control of Apple, Jobs resigned, founded NeXT Computers, and bought Pixar Animation from filmmaker George Lucas (of “Star Wars” fame) for $10 million.

Without Jobs, Apple began to flounder. Next time: the Dog Days of DOS and the rise of “the Dark Side”.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski