On April first, 1976, three enterprising young guys started Apple Computer, Inc, with the intention of creating & distributing truly personal computers. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, & Ronald Wayne started with a dream of creating computers smaller & readily available to the public. They put together their computers in Jobs' parent's garage & rolled out the Apple I personal computer kit in 1976, the same year they started Apple. Eventually, two hundred of these computer kits would be created.

Jobs approached a local pc store, The Byte Shop, which ordered fifty units & paid $500 for each kit after much persuasion from Jobs, whose persuasive techniques have since become known as "the reality-distortion field". Jobs then ordered components from Cramer Electronics, a national electronics parts distributor. Using a number of methods, including borrowing space from friends & family & selling various items (including a Volkswagen Bus), Jobs managed to secure the components required while Wozniak & Wayne assembled the Apple I kits.

In 1977, the Apple II was introduced & quickly became much more popular than its major competition, the TRS-80 (which used cassette tapes for storage, & was known derisively as the TRasH-80) & the Commodore 64, despite the fact that the price of the Apple was higher. One of the big advantages of Apple's computer was the development of the floppy disk drive & software.

The Apple II was chosen by programmers to be the desktop platform for the first "killer application" of the business world. This was a spreadsheet program named VisCalc. This developed a huge market for the Apple. The business market attracted many more software & hardware developers to the machine, and it also attracted home users who chose the Apple to be compatible with their business computers.

Over the years, Apple Computer would release many more designs, with each one just slightly better than the previous one. In 1984, Steve Jobs was on hand to introduce the Apple Macintosh as the "Computer for the rest of us". In 1989, Apple introduced the Macintosh Portable. However, this computer was actually extremely bulky & cumbersome & was met with mixed reviews. At this point, Apple hired industrial designers to develop a better, more portable personal computer.

In 1991, the Apple PowerBook was introduced. The PowerBook would provide the basic structure & form-factor for the portable computers we know today. This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer of both desktop & notebook machines. The success of this portable led to increased revenues & growing popularity of Apple in the computer market, and was followed up by the addition of the Apple iMac to their line of personal computers, in 1998. They also branched out into the music arena with the development of the iPod personal music player, which went on to grab an eighty percent market share.

Reflecting this expansion into other markets, on January 9, 2007, they changed their name from Apple Computer, Inc to simply Apple, Inc. While they have had their ups & downs over the years, Apple has remained a solid presence in the desktop computer & portable market. Their products have continued to expand to meet the needs of both the business and individual user.

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