II. Reading
Apple Inc. is an American corporation, a manufacturer of personal and tablet computers, music players, phones and software. Its headquarters is located in Cupertino, California. The history of Apple started in 1976 when friends Steve Jobs, Stephen Wozniak and Ronald Wayne decided to found his own company to manufacture and produce computers. Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer. The kits were hand-built by Wozniak. The Apple I was Apple’s first product, and to finance its creation, Jobs sold his only means of transportation, a VW Microbus, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator. The company was demonstrated in July in 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard, which is less than what is today considered a complete personal computer. Officially, the company was founded on the first of April 1976, and incorporated as Apple Computer 1977 without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak. Multi-millionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $ 250,000 during the incorporation of Apple. During the first five years of operations, revenues doubled every four months, an average growth rate of 700 %. The Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16, 1977. The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the spreadsheet program VisiCalc. This program created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users compatibility with the office, an additional reason to buy an Apple II. By the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line.The company introduced the Apple III in May 1980 in an attempt to compete with IBM and Microsoft in the business and corporate computing market. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s Apple II and their cloneswere most common in the world of personal computers. It has sold more than 5 million computers Apple II around the world. 1984 Steve Jobs introduced a line of personal computers, the Macintosh (Mac). This was the first mass-market personal computer featuring a graphical user interface and mouse. The Macintosh was the first personal computer to be sold without a programming language at all. In 1985 U.S. President Ronald Reagan awarded Jobs and Wozniak medals for the development of technical progress. In the same year Steve Jobs left the companybecause of the conflict withthe board of directors who removed him from the managerial duties. The same year Jobs founded NeXT Inc. which had no significant success. Wozniak permanently ended his full-time employment with Apple in 1987, 12 years after having created the company. He also kept in touch with Steve Jobs until Jobs’ death in October 2011. During 1990s revenues from Apple began a long-term decline and by 1997 its losses had amounted to $ 1.86 billion. The situation changed with the return of Steve Jobs in 1997. In 1997 Apple introduced the Apple Online Store, tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing strategy. In 2001 Apple opened the first official Apple Retail Stores in Virginia and California. On October of the same year, Apple announced the iPod portable digital audio player, and started selling. The product was phenomenally successful – over 100 million units were sold within six years. In 2003 Apple’s iTunes Store was introduced, offering online music downloads for $0.99 a song and integration with the iPod. The service quickly became the market leader in online music services. In 2007 – 2011 Apple achieved widespread success with its iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad products, which introduced innovations in mobile phones, portable music players and personal computers respectively. Touch screens had been invented and seen in mobile devices before, but Apple was the first to achieve mass market adoption of such a user interface that included particular pre-programmed touch gestures. In 2007 the official name of the corporation for more than 30 years has been «Apple Computer, Inc.». The refusal of the word «Computer» shows a change in the name of the main focus of the corporation with its traditional computer market in the consumer electronics market. In 2011 Jobs announced that he would take the medical leave for an indefinite period because of problems with the health. Chief operating officer Tim Cook assumed Jobs’ day-to-day operations at Apple, althoughJobs would still remain «involved in major strategic decisions for the company». Apple became the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world. In June 2011, Steve Jobs surprisingly took the stage and unveiled iCloud, an online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files and software which replaced MobileMe, Apple’s previous attempt at content syncing. In 2010 Apple introduced their much-anticipated media tablet, the iPad. It offers multi-touch interaction with multimedia formats including newspapers, magazines, e-books, textbooks, photos, movies, videos of TV shows, music, word processing documents, spreadsheets, videogames, and most existing iPhone apps. In 2012 Apple’s fourth-generation iPad came out. In 2013 Apple Apple is the world’s second-largest information technology company by revenue after Samsung Electronics, and the world’s third-largest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia. Thanks to innovative technology and aesthetic design, Apple Inc. has established a unique reputation comparable to that of a cult in the consumer electronics industry. Nowadays a trademark of Apple is considered to be as the most expensive brand in the world (with estimate of
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