On April Fool's Day back in 1976, 3 entreprenurial young guys founded Apple Computer, Inc., with the intention of creating & distributing personal computers. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, & Ronald Wayne started with a dream of making computers smaller & readily available to the general population. They built their computers in Jobs' parent's garage & debuted the Apple I personal computer kit in 1976, the same year they started Apple. Eventually, 200 of these computers would be created.

Steve Jobs approached a local computer store, The Byte Shop, which ordered 50 units & paid $500 for each unit 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 variety of methods, including borrowing space from friends & family & selling various items (including a Volkswagen Bus), Jobs managed to acquire the parts required while Wozniak & Wayne built the Apple I kits.

In 1977, the Apple II was introduced & almost immediately became much more popular than its competitors, 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 benefits 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 brought in many more software & hardware developers to the machine, plus it attracted home users in an effort to be compatible with their workplace computers.

Over the years, Apple Computer would release many more designs, with each one just a little 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 quite 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 general layout & form for the portable computers we know today. This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer of both desktop & laptop 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 80% market share.

Reflecting this branching 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 continued to be a solid presence in the desktop computer & portable market. Their products have continued to develop to meet the needs of both the business and individual user.

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