Apple Inc.

It's hard to talk about apple with out first mentioning Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. These two founders met working at atari.   They left to start Apple is Steve Jobs garage.  They established them selves April Fools day 1976.   The apple one went on sale in july of the same year.  The apple I was sold as a motherboard which contained a CPU, RAM, and a basic chip set.  It was originally priced $666.66 and soon after dropped below $500.  (This will not be the first time apple shafts early adopters.)

 Apple II was introduced April 16th, 1977 for$1298 with 4 kB of RAM. There where many RAM configurations maxing out at $2638 for 48 kB of RAM.   The killer ap of the apple II was a spreadsheet called vissical, and a "basic" code compiler.  The Apple II was the first computer designed to look more like a home appliance than a computer.   Steve Jobs explained that he didn't want the computer to seem out of place in the home.   It obviously didn't the Apple II line was a huge success garnering more than a 70% of the home computer market.  One of apples most notable early competitors was IBM who focused on the business market and didn't target home computers until the early 80s.   

Steve Jobs could feel the pressure from IBM and other computer manufactures.  In December of 1979 steve got to preview xerox's technology by offering them 1 million dollars in stock options.  They showed him three things, a digital scanner, a printing method, and the mouse.   With that Apple reinvented the Typical UI.  They essentially traded 1 million dollars in pre-IPO stock for the concept of the Graphical User Interface.   Steve spawned two GUI projects.  The expensive powerful lisa which debuted to shaky economy in 1983 for $9995-.  With no killer ap it failed.  But with out having invested into the lisa, they wouldn't have been able to pull of the Macintosh.  

GUI concepts pioneered in lisa flowed to the Macintosh computer.   In 1984 the macintosh launched bundled with some full featured apple developed software, and a more aggressive price of $1995-.  It was a deal for a computer bundled with speakers, a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, and a magical operating system.  Even with Mac paint and Mac draw the macintoshes true killer aps was the original Microsoft Office, and Lotus Jazz (Lotus 1-2-3 for the mac. )  Without the support of Microsoft the macintosh wouldn't have been a success.    The eventual down fall of the macintosh is that is was difficult to program for.  You had to use an object oriented programming code like C instead of a linear code like basic.  There where more aps on the DOS platform, and was a major marketing point against the Mac.   

Steve Jobs apples founder and visionary lost in a power struggle with, then runner of day to day operations, John Sculley.   People believe it was over the enormous resources Jobs was pouring into r&d.  3 times that of similar companies.   At first with steve's absence apple flourished.  They introduced the portable mac in 1989 for a premium, but followed up with a less expensive round 2 called the powerbook.  Which established the modern form and ergonomic layout of the laptop computer. Mac addict claims that 1989-1991 as apples first golden years.  However after that apple began to struggle, apple was spreading its self too thin, with a portable device called the newton that was way ahead of it's time, and a home video game system called the pippin.  But spreading it's self thin apple didn't pay attention to the mac bussiness.  The macintosh line was confusing.  They had the Quadra Line of computers, the centris line, and the performa line,  also a whole range of portable computers.  They had different configurations show sears, price-club, walmart weren't competing in price.  Some apple computers where shipped with lesser quality components, making some configurations unstable.  The apple operating system evolved but was still difficult to program for.  Windows was gaining popularity,  and offered cheaper hardware options.   

    The Leadership at Apple also grew shaky.  John Sculley tarnished the reputation of Apple and was replaced as CEO by Michael Spinder.  And then again by Gil Amelio, the layoff king.  The Mac OS ceased evolving, due to lack of R&D so in 1996 Amelio did the right thing.  He purchased NeXT, a company that developed a more advanced operating system, NeXTSTEP.   With that aquisition came Steve Jobs, apples original CEO.  In 1997 Steve Jobs replaced Gil Amelio as CEO.  He ended all projects at Apple other than the Mac.  He introduced a consolidated four model line, which included the iMac, Power Mac, Power Book, and eventually the iBook.  He was forced to barrow money for Microsoft to abandon the clone project.  He also introduced a more user friendly version os NeXTSTEP as Mac OSX. (OS Ten)  Economies of scale helped apple climb out of the hole and eventually become profitable.  They weren't competing to gain market-share, they competed to become profitable.