One organisation which has dominated over our collective technological psyche over the course of 21st Century so far is Apple, undisputedly! Apple products and innovations have taken the industry and the consumers by storm. Even though Apple and its products are researched by millions everyday all across the world, there are details that we still do not know much about. Let’s look at some of them.
1. The mystery behind the name Apple – When Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple was asked about the reason why Apple was called so, he responded “because it came before Atari in the phone book’ (Before Jobs founded Apple, he was working with Atari). Macintosh was also the continuation of the same theme, since Macintosh is a variety of apple.
2. Three Founders – Apple was founded by 3 people- Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Wayne designed the first logo of Apple, and wrote the first manual too. But he feared that the company will not take off and his debt would not be repaid, so he sold his share of 10% to the other two for $800 within two weeks of founding Apple. That share would be worth more than $30 billion today!
3. The Original Logo – The first Apple Computer Co. logo was a picture of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree with an apple dangling just above his head, and a ribbon going around that picture with the Apple company name. This logo had to be changed because all the details were not visible when the size was reduced for printing on packages.
4. Cost of Apple 1 – Apple 1 was the first product offered by Apple. This computer was priced at $666.66. The cost of production was about $500 and with the one-thirds added for retail, the cost came to $667, which was considerably more expensive than other similar products available in the market (but Apple wanted to project itself as a lifestyle product and that policy continues till date). In the western world, the iteration of number 6 is associated with Satan, but Wozniak explained it as ‘easier to type’.
5. Jobs was fired from his own company – Steve Jobs had a fallout in 1985 with the then CEO John Sculley regarding the pricing of Apple 2. Jobs wanted to reduce the price to increase the lukewarm sales, while Sculley wanted the software to be updated without changing the price. The Board agreed with Sculley and Jobs had to go. He eventually made a comeback to the company in 1997 and took it from the brink of bankruptcy to a highly innovative organisation that gave the world iPad, iPhone, iPod and iTunes, among others. In the years that he was away from Apple, he founded NeXT and PIXAR, which were quite successful ventures.
