Apple Inc History
Apple Inc, is an American multinational corporation, which designs and manufactures consumer electronics and software products and best-known for its hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone.
To various computer users, the company has defined the PC industry, driven technology innovation, and changed the perception of personal computing. Since, 1976 the company reinvented itself several times over, as it developed and enhanced the Macintosh, affecting the world of computing every time it did. Macintosh or Mac, is a product line of personal computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple after its introduction in 1984.
Now, let’s take a historical trip and learn how the Mac evolution led to the Apple’s revolution.
The Apple I
Sold as an assembled circuit board, it lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case. It was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips) less than what is today considered a complete personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66.
The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 and it differed from its major rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because it came with color graphics and an open architecture. While early models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface, the Disk II.
Apple Lisa
With a price tag of $10,000, it was released in 1981 and remembered as one of Apple’s most disappointing products. It was a more advanced system than the Macintosh of that time in many respects, such as its inclusion of protected memory, cooperative multitasking, a generally more sophisticated hard disk based operating system, a built-in screensaver, an advanced calculator with a paper tape and RPN, support for up to 2 MB of RAM, expansion slots, and a larger higher resolution display.
Mac 128K
Apple launched the Macintosh in a famed 1984 Super Bowl commercial, with a beige case which contains a 9-inch monitor and comes with a keyboard and mouse. It had a selling price of $2,495. It features an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 microprocessor, a 128 KB DRAM, a 64 KB ROM chip that boosts the effective memory to 192 KB.
Mac II
Retailing for US$3,898 base price (for the CPU unit only), the Macintosh II was the first “modular” Macintosh model, so called because it came in a horizontal desktop case like many PCs of the time. It introduced space for an internal hard disk (originally 20 MB or 40 MB) and an optional second floppy disk drive.
Mac Portable
It was Apple’s first attempt at making a battery-powered portable Macintosh PC that held the power of a desktop Macintosh. It was released in September 1989 and received with excitement from most critics but with very poor sales to consumers. With a price tag of $6500, it featured a B&W active-matrix LCD screen, ergonomic keyboard, trackball and lead-acid battery with 10 hours life. It used expensive SRAM in an effort to maximize battery life and to provide an “instant on” low power sleep mode.
The 20th Anniversary Mac
To celebrate its 20 years, on January 7, 1997 Apple unveiled the limited edition Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) at the MacWorld Expo, San Francisco.
At $7,499 the TAM featured a 250 MHz 603e processor, 12.1″ active matrix LCD, with 2MB of VRAM, 4x CD-ROM, 2GB ATA hard drive, vertically mounted Apple Floppy SuperDrive, as well as a TV/FM tuner, S-Video card, and a custom-made Bose sound system. It had a trackpad instead of a mouse, which could be detached from the keyboard if desired. When not required, the keyboard could slide under the TAM’s head unit, leaving the trackpad exposed for continued access.
iMac
Introduced in 1998, iMac is a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers. The first original form, the iMac G3 was egg-shaped with a CRT monitor, enclosed by colored, translucent plastic. In the second revision, the iMac G4, moved to a design of a hemispherical base containing all the main components and an LCD monitor on a freely moving arm attached to the top of the base. The iMac G5 and the Intel iMac placed all the components immediately behind the display, creating a slim design that tilts only up and down on a simple metal base.
Earlier this year, Apple updated its offerings for the iMac, featuring NVIDIA chipsets and the new Mini-DisplayPort.
MacBook Air
On January 15, 2008, the company introduced its ultraportable the MacBook Air, a computer that the company billed as the world’s thinnest notebook, priced starting at $1,799. Sporting a silvery finish, the MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display that has a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution. It weighs about 3 pounds, and sports a thickness of 0.16-0.76 inches. It is 12.8 inches wide and 8.95 inches deep.
Several features were sacrificed to reduce the computer’s size and weight. It is Apple’s first notebook since the PowerBook 2400c without a built-in removable media drive. It also omits a FireWire port, Ethernet port, line-in, card slots and a Kensington Security Slot. The battery is internal; not user removable and the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard. A single speaker is included for mono sound. It has been revised once since the original release.
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