Apple Inc. is an American
multinational technology company
A technology company (or tech company) is an electronics-based technological company, including, for example, business relating to digital electronics, software, and internet-related services, such as e-commerce services.
Details
According to '' ...
headquartered in
Cupertino, California
Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 57,82 ...
, United States. Apple is the
largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the
world's biggest company by market capitalization, the
fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales and
second-largest mobile phone manufacturer. It is one of the
Big Five American
information technology
Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology syste ...
companies, alongside
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
,
Meta
Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending".
In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or end ...
, and
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
.
Apple was founded as Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976, by
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, inventor, and entrepreneur, technology entrepreneur. In 1976, with business partner Steve ...
,
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...
and
Ronald Wayne
Ronald Gerald Wayne (born May 17, 1934) is a retired American electronics industry businessman. He co-founded Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) as a partnership with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs on April 1, 1976, providing administrative ...
to develop and sell Wozniak's
Apple I
The Apple Computer 1, originally released as the Apple Computer and known later as the Apple I or Apple-1, is an 8-bit desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak. The i ...
personal computer. It was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc. in 1977 and the company's next computer, the
Apple II
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
, became a best seller and one of the first mass-produced
microcomputers
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...
. Apple
went public in 1980 to instant financial success. The company developed computers featuring innovative
graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...
s, including the 1984
original Macintosh, announced that year in
a critically acclaimed advertisement. By 1985, the high cost of its products and power struggles between executives caused problems. Wozniak stepped back from Apple amicably and pursued other ventures, while Jobs resigned bitterly and founded
NeXT
Next may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare
* ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage
* '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film
Lit ...
, taking some Apple employees with him.
As the market for personal computers expanded and evolved throughout the 1990s, Apple lost considerable
market share
Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those units would have a ...
to the lower-priced duopoly of the
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
operating system on
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...
-powered
PC clone
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...
s (also known as "
Wintel
Wintel (portmanteau of Windows and Intel) is the partnership of Microsoft Windows and Intel producing personal computers using Intel x86-compatible processors running Microsoft Windows.
Background
By the early 1980s, the chaos and incompatibi ...
"). In 1997, weeks away from bankruptcy, the company bought NeXT to resolve Apple's unsuccessful
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
strategy and entice Jobs back to the company. Over the next decade, Jobs guided Apple back to profitability through a number of tactics including introducing the
iMac
iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms.
In it ...
,
iPod
The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes wa ...
,
iPhone and
iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, ...
to critical acclaim, launching "
Think different
"Think different" is an advertising slogan used from 1997 to 2002 by Apple Computer, Inc., now named Apple Inc. The campaign was created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day.
The slogan has been widely taken as a resp ...
" and other memorable advertising campaigns, opening the
Apple Store
The Apple Store is a chain of retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc. The stores sell various Apple products, including Mac personal computers, iPhone smartphones, iPad tablet computers, Apple Watch smartwatches, Apple TV digital me ...
retail chain, and
acquiring numerous companies to broaden the company's product portfolio. When Jobs resigned in 2011 for health reasons, and died two months later, he was succeeded as CEO by
Tim Cook
Timothy Donald Cook (born November 1, 1960) is an American business executive who has been the chief executive officer of Apple Inc. since 2011. Cook previously served as the company's chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs ...
.
Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be
valued at over $1 trillion in August 2018, then $2 trillion in August 2020, and most recently $3 trillion in January 2022. The company
receives criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors, its environmental practices, and its business ethics, including
anti-competitive practices
Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market. Antitrust laws differ among state and federal laws to ensure businesses do not engage in competitive practices that harm other, usuall ...
and materials sourcing. Nevertheless, the company has
a large following and enjoys a high level of
brand loyalty
In marketing, brand loyalty describes a consumer's positive feelings towards a brand, and their dedication to purchasing the brand's products and/or services repeatedly, regardless of deficiencies, a competitor's actions, or changes in the en ...
. It is ranked as one of the
world's most valuable brands.
History
1976–1980: Founding and incorporation
![Apple II Plus, Museum of the Moving Image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Apple_II_Plus%2C_Museum_of_the_Moving_Image.jpg)
Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, by
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...
,
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, inventor, and entrepreneur, technology entrepreneur. In 1976, with business partner Steve ...
, and
Ronald Wayne
Ronald Gerald Wayne (born May 17, 1934) is a retired American electronics industry businessman. He co-founded Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) as a partnership with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs on April 1, 1976, providing administrative ...
as a
partnership
A partnership is an arrangement where parties, known as business partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The partners in a partnership may be individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments ...
. The company's first product was the
Apple I
The Apple Computer 1, originally released as the Apple Computer and known later as the Apple I or Apple-1, is an 8-bit desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. It was designed by Steve Wozniak. The i ...
, a computer designed and hand-built entirely by Wozniak. To finance its creation, Jobs sold his
Volkswagen Bus Volkswagen Bus or Volkswagen Van is a type of vehicle produced by Volkswagen/Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles.
There have been a number of notable versions of it produced.
Volkswagen Bus light commercial vehicles
Six generations of Volkswagen Transp ...
, and Wozniak sold his
HP-65
The HP-65 is the first magnetic card-programmable handheld calculator. Introduced by Hewlett-Packard in 1974 at an MSRP of $795 (), it featured nine storage registers and room for 100 keystroke instructions. It also included a magnetic card re ...
calculator. Wozniak debuted the first prototype Apple I at the
Homebrew Computer Club
The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club had an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that asp ...
in July 1976. The Apple I was sold as a
motherboard
A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...
with
CPU
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...
,
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
, and basic textual-video chips—a base kit concept which would not yet be marketed as a complete personal computer. It went on sale soon after debut for .
Wozniak later said he was unaware of the coincidental
mark of the beast
The number of the beast ( grc-koi, Ἀριθμὸς τοῦ θηρίου, ) is associated with the Beast of Revelation in chapter 13, verse 18 of the Book of Revelation. In most manuscripts of the New Testament and in English translations of t ...
in the number 666, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits".
Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated on January 3, 1977,
without Wayne, who had left and sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800 only twelve days after having co-founded Apple. Multimillionaire
Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of to Jobs and Wozniak during the incorporation of Apple. During the first five years of operations, revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118 million, an average annual growth rate of 533%.
The
Apple II
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
, also invented by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16, 1977, at the first
West Coast Computer Faire
The West Coast Computer Faire was an annual computer industry conference and exposition most often associated with San Francisco, its first and most frequent venue. The first fair was held in 1977 and was organized by Jim Warren and Bob Reil ...
. It differed from its major rivals, the
TRS-80
The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of ' ...
and
Commodore PET
The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, ...
, because of its character cell-based color graphics and
open architecture
Open architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture intended to make adding, upgrading, and swapping components with other computers easy. For example, the IBM PC, Amiga 500 and Apple IIe have an open architecture supp ...
. While the Apple I and early Apple II models used ordinary
audio cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a -inch
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...
drive and interface called the
Disk II
The Disk II Floppy Disk Subsystem, often rendered as Disk ] '', is a -inch floppy disk drive designed by Apple Computer, Inc. It went on sale in June 1978 at a retail price of US$495 for pre-order; it was later sold for $595 () including the Di ...
in 1978.
The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first "
killer application
In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program or software that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, a video game ...
" of the business world:
VisiCalc
VisiCalc (for "visible calculator") is the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for Apple II by VisiCorp on 17 October 1979. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hob ...
, a
spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in ...
program
Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to:
Business and management
* Program management, the process of managing several related projects
* Time management
* Program, a part of planning
Arts and entertainment Audio
* Programm ...
released in 1979. VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II: compatibility with the office. Before VisiCalc, Apple had been a distant third place competitor to
Commodore
Commodore may refer to:
Ranks
* Commodore (rank), a naval rank
** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom
** Commodore (United States)
** Commodore (Canada)
** Commodore (Finland)
** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore''
* Air commodore ...
and
Tandy. By the end of the 1970s, Apple had become the leading computer manufacturer in the United States.
On December 12, 1980, Apple (ticker symbol "AAPL") went public selling 4.6 million shares at $22 per share ($.10 per share when adjusting for
stock split
A stock split or stock divide increases the number of shares in a company. For example, after a 2-for-1 split, each investor will own double the number of shares, and each share will be worth half as much.
A stock split causes a decrease of mark ...
s ),
generating over $100 million, which was more capital than any IPO since
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...
in 1956.
By the end of the day, 300 millionaires were created, from a stock price of $29 per share
and a market cap of $1.778 billion.
1980–1990: Success with Macintosh
![Macintosh, Google NY office computer museum cropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Macintosh%2C_Google_NY_office_computer_museum_cropped.png)
A critical moment in the company's history came in December 1979 when Jobs and several Apple employees, including
human–computer interface expert
Jef Raskin
Jef Raskin (born Jeff Raskin; March 9, 1943 – February 26, 2005) was an American human–computer interface expert best known for conceiving and starting the Macintosh project at Apple in the late 1970s.
Early life and education
Jef Raskin ...
, visited
Xerox PARC
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...
in to see a demonstration of the
Xerox Alto
The Xerox Alto is a computer designed from its inception to support an operating system based on a graphical user interface (GUI), later using the desktop metaphor. The first machines were introduced on 1 March 1973, a decade before mass-market ...
, a computer using a
graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...
.
Xerox
Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (having moved from St ...
granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for the option to buy 100,000 shares (22.4 million
split-adjusted shares )
of Apple at the pre-IPO price of $10 a share. After the demonstration, Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a graphical user interface, and development of a GUI began for the
Apple Lisa
Lisa is a desktop computer developed by Apple, released on January 19, 1983. It is one of the first personal computers to present a graphical user interface (GUI) in a machine aimed at individual business users. Its development began in 1978. ...
, named after
Jobs's daughter.
The Lisa division would be plagued by infighting, and in 1982 Jobs was pushed off the project. The Lisa launched in 1983 and became the first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI, but was a commercial failure due to its high price and limited software titles.
[Hormby, Thomas]
A history of Apple's Lisa, 1979–1986
''Low End Mac
The Apple community is a group of people interested in Apple Inc. and its products, who report information in various media. Generally this has evolved into a proliferation of websites, but latterly has also expanded into podcasts (both audio and ...
'', October 6, 2005. Retrieved March 2, 2007.
Jobs, angered by being pushed off the Lisa team, took over the company's
Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
division. Wozniak and Raskin had envisioned the Macintosh as a low-cost computer with a text-based interface like the Apple II, but a plane crash in 1981 forced Wozniak to step back from the project. Jobs quickly redefined the Macintosh as a graphical system that would be cheaper than the Lisa, undercutting his former division.
Jobs was also hostile to the Apple II division, which at the time, generated most of the company's revenue.
In 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh, the first personal computer to be sold without a
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming ...
.
Its debut was signified by "
1984
Events
January
* January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888.
* January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeas ...
", a $1.5 million television advertisement directed by
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is a British film director and producer. Directing, among others, science fiction films, his work is known for its atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. Scott has received many accolades th ...
that aired during the third quarter of
Super Bowl XVIII
Super Bowl XVIII was an American football game played on January 22, 1984, at Tampa Stadium between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion and defending Super Bowl XVII champion Washington Redskins and the American Football Conference ( ...
on January 22, 1984. This is now hailed as a watershed event for Apple's success and was called a "masterpiece" by
CNN and one of the greatest TV advertisements of all time by ''
TV Guide
TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program listings information as well as entertainment and television-related news.
The company sold its print magazine division, TV Guide Magazine LLC, in 2008.
Corporat ...
''.
The advertisement created great interest in
the original Macintosh, and sales were initially good, but began to taper off dramatically after the first three months as reviews started to come in. Jobs had made the decision to equip the original Macintosh with 128 kilobytes of RAM, attempting to reach a price point, which limited its speed and the software that could be used. The Macintosh would eventually ship for , a price panned by critics in light of its slow performance. In early 1985, this sales slump triggered a power struggle between Steve Jobs and CEO
John Sculley
John Sculley III (born April 6, 1939) is an American businessman, entrepreneur and investor in high-tech startups. Sculley was vice-president (1970–1977) and president of PepsiCo (1977–1983), until he became chief executive officer (CEO) ...
, who had been hired away from
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo. Originally created and developed in 1893 by Caleb Bradham and introduced as Brad's Drink, it was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1898, and then shortened to Pepsi in 1961.
History
Pepsi wa ...
two years earlier by Jobs saying, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?" Sculley decided to remove Jobs as the head of the Macintosh division, with unanimous support from the Apple board of directors.
The board of directors instructed Sculley to contain Jobs and his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from his leadership role at Apple. Informed by
Jean-Louis Gassée
Jean-Louis Gassée (born March 1944 in Paris, France) is a business executive. He is best known as a former executive at Apple Computer, where he worked from 1981 to 1990. He also founded Be Inc., creators of the BeOS computer operating system. ...
, Sculley found out that Jobs had been attempting to organize a
boardroom coup
A boardroom coup is a sudden and often unexpected takeover or transfer of power of an organisation or company. The coup is usually performed by an individual or a small group usually from within the corporation in order to seize power.
A Boardroom ...
and called an emergency meeting at which Apple's executive staff sided with Sculley and stripped Jobs of all operational duties. Jobs resigned from Apple in September 1985 and took a number of Apple employees with him to found
NeXT
Next may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare
* ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage
* '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film
Lit ...
. Wozniak had also quit his active employment at Apple earlier in 1985 to pursue other ventures, expressing his frustration with Apple's treatment of the Apple II division and stating that the company had "been going in the wrong direction for the last five years."
Despite Wozniak's grievances, he officially remained employed by Apple, and to this day continues to work for the company as a representative,
receiving a stipend estimated to be $120,000 per year for this role.
Both Jobs and Wozniak remained Apple shareholders after their departures.
[Apple's ''Other'' Steve (Stock Research)](_blank)
March 2, 2000, The Motley Fool
The Motley Fool is a private financial and investing advice company based in Alexandria, Virginia. It was founded in July 1993 by co-chairmen and brothers David Gardner and Tom Gardner, and Erik Rydholm, who has since left the company. The compa ...
.
After the departures of Jobs and Wozniak, Sculley worked to improve the Macintosh in 1985 by
quadrupling the RAM and introducing the
LaserWriter
The LaserWriter is a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter sold by Apple, Inc. from 1985 to 1988. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMake ...
, the first reasonably priced
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Do ...
laser printer
Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to ...
.
PageMaker
Adobe PageMaker (formerly Aldus) is a discontinued desktop publishing computer program introduced in 1985 by the Aldus Corporation on the Apple Macintosh. The combination of the Macintosh's graphical user interface, PageMaker publishing software, ...
, an early
desktop publishing
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...
application taking advantage of the PostScript language, was also released by
Aldus Corporation
Aldus Corporation was an American software company best known for its pioneering desktop publishing (DTP) software. PageMaker, the company's most well-known product, ushered in the modern era of desktop computers such as the Macintosh seeing ...
in July 1985. It has been suggested that the combination of Macintosh, LaserWriter and PageMaker was responsible for the creation of the
desktop publishing
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...
market.
This dominant position in the desktop publishing market allowed the company to focus on higher price points, the so-called "high-right policy" named for the position on a chart of price vs. profits. Newer models selling at higher price points offered higher
profit margin
Profit margin is a measure of profitability. It is calculated by finding the profit as a percentage of the revenue.
\text = =
There are 3 types of profit margins: gross profit margin, operating profit margin and net profit margin.
* Gross Pro ...
, and appeared to have no effect on total sales as
power user
A power user is a user of computers, software and other electronic devices, who uses advanced features of computer hardware, operating systems, programs, or websites which are not used by the average user. A power user might not have extensive tec ...
s snapped up every increase in speed. Although some worried about pricing themselves out of the market, the high-right policy was in full force by the mid-1980s, notably due to Jean-Louis Gassée's mantra of "fifty-five or die", referring to the 55%
profit margin
Profit margin is a measure of profitability. It is calculated by finding the profit as a percentage of the revenue.
\text = =
There are 3 types of profit margins: gross profit margin, operating profit margin and net profit margin.
* Gross Pro ...
s of the
Macintosh II
The Macintosh II is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from March 1987 to January 1990. Based on the Motorola 68020 32-bit CPU, it is the first Macintosh supporting color graphics. When introduced, a basic s ...
.
This policy began to backfire in the last years of the decade as desktop publishing programs appeared on
PC clones
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...
that offered some or much of the same functionality of the Macintosh, but at far lower price points. The company lost its dominant position in the desktop publishing market and estranged many of its original consumer customer base who could no longer afford their high-priced products. The Christmas season of 1989 was the first in the company's history to have declining sales, which led to a 20% drop in Apple's stock price.
During this period, the relationship between Sculley and Gassée deteriorated, leading Sculley to effectively demote Gassée in January 1990 by appointing
Michael Spindler
Michael Spindler (22 December 1942 – 2017) was a German businessman who was president and CEO of Apple from 1993 to 1996. Spindler was born in Berlin.
Personal life
From 1985 until his death in 2017, Spindler lived between Paris, France, and Sa ...
as the
chief operating officer
A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the " C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if ...
. Gassée left the company later that year.
1990–1997: Decline and restructuring
The company pivoted strategy and in October 1990 introduced three lower-cost models, the
Macintosh Classic
The Macintosh Classic is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from October 1990 to September 1992. It was the first Macintosh to sell for less than US$1,000.
Production of the Classic was prompted by the succe ...
, the
Macintosh LC
The Macintosh LC is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from October 1990 to March 1992.
Overview
The first in the Macintosh LC family, the LC was introduced with the Macintosh Classic (a repackaging o ...
, and the
Macintosh IIsi
The Macintosh IIsi is a personal computer designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from October 1990 to March 1993. Introduced as a lower-cost alternative to the other Macintosh II family of desktop models, it was popular for h ...
, all of which saw significant sales due to pent-up demand. In 1991, Apple introduced the hugely successful
PowerBook
The PowerBook (known as Macintosh PowerBook before 1997) is a family of Macintosh laptop computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer from 1991 to 2006. During its lifetime, the PowerBook went through several major revisions and r ...
with a design that set the current shape for almost all modern laptops. The same year, Apple introduced
System 7
System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple C ...
, a major upgrade to the Macintosh operating system, adding color to the interface and introducing new networking capabilities.
The success of the lower-cost Macs and PowerBook brought increasing revenue.
For some time, Apple was doing incredibly well, introducing fresh new products and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine ''
MacAddict
''MacLife'' (stylized as ''Mac, Life'') is an American monthly magazine published by Future US. It focuses on the Macintosh personal computer and related products, including the iPad and iPhone. It’s sold as a print product on newsstands, and a ...
'' named the period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.
![Apple PenLite prototype, 1992](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Apple_PenLite_prototype%2C_1992.jpg)
The success of Apple's lower-cost consumer models, especially the LC, also led to the cannibalization of their higher-priced machines. To address this, management introduced several new brands, selling largely identical machines at different price points, aimed at different markets: the high-end
Quadra models, the mid-range
Centris
The genus ''Centris'' contains circa 250 species of large apid bees occurring in the Neotropical and Nearctic realms, from Kansas to Argentina. Most females of these bees possess adaptations for carrying floral oils rather than (or in addition ...
line, and the consumer-marketed
Performa
The Macintosh Performa is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1992 to 1997. The Performa brand re-used models from Apple's Quadra, Centris, LC, and Power Macintosh families with mode ...
series. This led to significant market confusion, as customers did not understand the difference between models.
The early 1990s also saw the discontinuation of the
Apple II series
The Apple II series (trademarked with square brackets as "Apple ] ''" and rendered on later models as "Apple //") is a family of home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primaril ...
, which was expensive to produce, and the company felt was still taking sales away from lower-cost Macintosh models. After the launch of the LC, Apple began encouraging developers to create applications for Macintosh rather than Apple II, and authorized salespersons to direct consumers towards Macintosh and away from Apple II. The
Apple IIe
The Apple IIe (styled as Apple //e) is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The ''e'' in the name stands for ''enhanced'', referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in ...
was discontinued in 1993.
Throughout this period, Microsoft continued to gain market share with its
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
graphical user interface that it sold to manufacturers of generally less expensive
PC clones
IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...
. While the Macintosh was more expensive, it offered a more tightly integrated user experience, but the company struggled to make the case to consumers.
Apple also experimented with a number of other unsuccessful consumer targeted products during the 1990s, including
digital cameras
A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...
,
portable CD audio players,
speakers
Speaker may refer to:
Society and politics
* Speaker (politics), the presiding officer in a legislative assembly
* Public speaker, one who gives a speech or lecture
* A person producing speech: the producer of a given utterance, especially:
** I ...
,
video game consoles
A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a ...
, the
eWorld online service, and
TV appliances. Most notably, enormous resources were invested in the problem-plagued
Newton tablet division, based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts.
Throughout this period, Microsoft continued to gain market share with
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
by focusing on delivering software to inexpensive personal computers, while Apple was delivering a richly engineered but expensive experience. Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response; instead, they sued Microsoft for using a GUI similar to the
Apple Lisa
Lisa is a desktop computer developed by Apple, released on January 19, 1983. It is one of the first personal computers to present a graphical user interface (GUI) in a machine aimed at individual business users. Its development began in 1978. ...
in ''
Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp.''
[Hormby, Thomas]
The Apple vs. Microsoft GUI lawsuit
''Low End Mac
The Apple community is a group of people interested in Apple Inc. and its products, who report information in various media. Generally this has evolved into a proliferation of websites, but latterly has also expanded into podcasts (both audio and ...
'', August 25, 2006. Retrieved March 2, 2007. The lawsuit dragged on for years before it was finally dismissed.
The major product flops and the rapid loss of market share to Windows sullied Apple's reputation, and in 1993 Sculley was replaced as CEO by
Michael Spindler
Michael Spindler (22 December 1942 – 2017) was a German businessman who was president and CEO of Apple from 1993 to 1996. Spindler was born in Berlin.
Personal life
From 1985 until his death in 2017, Spindler lived between Paris, France, and Sa ...
.
With Spindler at the helm Apple,
IBM, and
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorola ...
formed the
AIM alliance
The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the POWER instruction set architecture. It ...
in 1994 with the goal of creating a new computing platform (the
PowerPC Reference Platform
PowerPC Reference Platform (PReP) was a standard system architecture for PowerPC-based computer systems (as well as a reference implementation) developed at the same time as the PowerPC processor architecture. Published by IBM in 1994, it allo ...
; PReP), which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind and thus counter the dominance of Windows. The same year, Apple introduced the
Power Macintosh
The Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer as the core of the Macintosh brand from March 1994 until August 2006.
Described by ''MacWorld'' as "the most important te ...
, the first of many Apple computers to use Motorola's
PowerPC
PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM– ...
processor.
In the wake of the alliance, Apple opened up to the idea of allowing Motorola and other companies to build
Macintosh clone
A Macintosh clone, also known as a Clonintosh (a portmanteau of " Clone" and "Macintosh"), is a computer running the Mac OS operating system that was not produced by Apple Inc. The earliest Mac clones were based on emulators and reverse-engineere ...
s. Over the next two years, 75 distinct Macintosh clone models were introduced. However, by 1996 Apple executives were worried that the clones were cannibalizing sales of their own high-end computers, where profit margins were highest.
In 1996, Spindler was replaced by
Gil Amelio
Gilbert Frank Amelio (born March 1, 1943) is an American technology executive. Amelio worked at Bell Labs, Fairchild Semiconductor, and the semiconductor division of Rockwell International, and was also the CEO of National Semiconductor and Ap ...
as CEO. Hired for his reputation as a corporate rehabilitator, Amelio made deep changes, including extensive layoffs and cost-cutting.
This period was also marked by numerous failed attempts to modernize the Macintosh operating system (MacOS). The original Macintosh operating system (
System 1
The Macintosh "System 1" is the first version of Apple Macintosh operating system and the beginning of the classic Mac OS series. It was developed for the Motorola 68000 microprocessor. System 1 was released on January 24, 1984, along with th ...
) was not built for multitasking (running several applications at once). The company attempted to correct this with by introducing
cooperative multitasking
Cooperative multitasking, also known as non-preemptive multitasking, is a style of computer multitasking in which the operating system never initiates a context switch from a running process to another process. Instead, in order to run multiple ...
in System 5, but the company still felt it needed a more modern approach. This led to the
Pink
Pink is the color of a namesake flower that is a pale tint of red. It was first used as a color name in the late 17th century. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink is the color most often associated with charm, politeness, ...
project in 1988,
A/UX
A/UX is Apple Computer's Unix-based operating system for Macintosh computers, integrated with System 7's graphical interface and application compatibility. Launched in 1988 and discontinued in 1995 with version 3.1.1, it is Apple's first offic ...
that same year,
Copland in 1994, and the attempted purchase of
BeOS
BeOS is an operating system for personal computers first developed by Be Inc. in 1990. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware.
BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform that could be used by a substantial population of desktop users an ...
in 1996. Talks with Be stalled when the CEO, former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée, demanded $300 million instead of the $125 million Apple wanted to pay.
Only weeks away from
bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debto ...
, Apple's board decided
NeXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of propri ...
was a better choice for its next operating system and purchased
NeXT
Next may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare
* ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage
* '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film
Lit ...
in late 1996 for $400 million, bringing back Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...
.
1997–2007: Return to profitability
The NeXT acquisition was finalized on February 9, 1997,
[, ''Apple Inc.'', February 7, 1997. Retrieved June 25, 2006.] and the board brought Jobs back to Apple as an advisor. On July 9, 1997, Jobs staged a boardroom coup that resulted in Amelio's resignation after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses.
The board named Jobs as interim CEO and he immediately began a review of the company's products. Jobs would order 70% of the company's products to be cancelled, resulting in the loss of 3,000 jobs, and taking Apple back to the core of its computer offerings.
The next month, in August 1997, Steve Jobs convinced Microsoft to make a $150 million investment in Apple and a commitment to continue developing software for the Mac. The investment was seen as an "antitrust insurance policy" for Microsoft who had
recently settled with the Department of Justice over anti-competitive practices. Jobs also ended the Mac clone deals and in September 1997, purchased the largest clone maker,
Power Computing
Power Computing Corporation (often referred to as Power Computing) was the first company selected by Apple Inc to create Macintosh-compatible computers (" Mac clones"). Stephen “Steve” Kahng, a computer engineer best known for his design of ...
. On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced the
Apple Store
The Apple Store is a chain of retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc. The stores sell various Apple products, including Mac personal computers, iPhone smartphones, iPad tablet computers, Apple Watch smartwatches, Apple TV digital me ...
website, which was tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing that had been successfully used by PC manufacturer
Dell
Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies.
Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...
.
The moves paid off for Jobs, at the end of his first year as CEO, the company turned a $309 million profit.
On May 6, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the original Macintosh: the
iMac
iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms.
In it ...
. The iMac was a huge success for Apple selling 800,000 units in its first five months
and ushered in major shifts in the industry by abandoning legacy technologies like the
-inch diskette, being an early adopter of the
USB connector, and coming pre-installed with internet connectivity (the "i" in iMac)
via Ethernet and a dial-up modem. The device also had a striking eardrop shape and translucent materials, designed by
Jonathan Ive
Sir Jonathan Paul Ive (born 27 February 1967) is a British industrial and product designer, as well as businessman. Ive was the chief design officer (CDO) of Apple Inc. from 1997 until 2019 (known as senior vice principal of industrial design ...
, who although hired by Amelio, would go on to work collaboratively with Jobs for the next decade to chart a new course the design of Apple's products.
A little more than a year later on July 21, 1999, Apple introduced the
iBook
iBook is a line of laptop computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from 1999 to 2006. The line targeted entry-level, consumer and education markets, with lower specifications and prices than the PowerBook, Apple's higher-end ...
, a laptop for consumers. It was the culmination of a strategy established by Jobs to produce only four products: refined versions of the
Power Macintosh G3 desktop and
PowerBook G3 laptop for professionals, along with the iMac desktop and iBook laptop for consumers. Jobs felt the small product line allowed for a greater focus on quality and innovation.
At around the same time, Apple also completed numerous acquisitions to create a portfolio of digital media production software for both professionals and consumers. Apple acquired of
Macromedia
Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...
's Key Grip digital video editing software project which was renamed
Final Cut Pro
Final Cut Pro is a series of non-linear video editing software programs first developed by Macromedia Inc. and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro 10.6.4, runs on Mac computers powered by macOS Big Sur 11.5.1 or later. The ...
when it was launched on the retail market in April 1999. The development of Key Grip also led to Apple's release of the consumer video-editing product
iMovie
iMovie (known at times as iMovie HD) is a preinstalled video editing application developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices.
It was originally released in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-ena ...
in October 1999.
Next, Apple successfully acquired the German company Astarte in April 2000, which had developed the
DVD authoring
DVD authoring is the process of creating a DVD video capable of playing on a DVD player. DVD authoring software must conform to the specifications set by the DVD Forum.
DVD authoring is the second step in the process of producing finished ...
software DVDirector, which Apple would sell as the professional-oriented
DVD Studio Pro software product, and used the same technology to create
iDVD
iDVD is a discontinued DVD authoring application for Mac OS produced by Apple Inc. iDVD allows the user to burn QuickTime movies, MP3 music, and digital photos to a DVD that can then be played on a commercial DVD player. It was often conside ...
for the consumer market.
In 2000, Apple purchased the
SoundJam MP audio player software from
Casady & Greene
Casady & Greene (sometimes abbreviated to C&G) was a software publisher and developer active from 1988 to 2003. The company primarily released software for Macintosh, but also released software for Windows and Newton. Casady & Greene was forme ...
. Apple renamed the program
iTunes
iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mu ...
, while simplifying the user interface and adding the ability to burn CDs.
2001 would be a pivotal year for the Apple with the company making three announcements that would change the course of the company.
The first announcement came on March 24, 2001, that Apple was nearly ready to release a new modern operating system,
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...
. The announcement came after numerous failed attempts in the early 1990s, and several years of development. Mac OS X was based on
NeXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT Computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its range of propri ...
,
OPENSTEP
OpenStep is a defunct object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification for a legacy object-oriented operating system, with the basic goal of offering a NeXTSTEP-like environment on non-NeXTSTEP operating systems. OpenStep wa ...
, and
BSD Unix
The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berke ...
, with Apple aiming to combine the stability, reliability, and security of
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
with the ease of use afforded by an overhauled user interface, heavily influenced by NeXTSTEP. To aid users in migrating from
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the ninth major release of Apple's classic Mac OS operating system which was succeeded by Mac OS X (renamed to OS X in 2011 and macOS in 2016) in 2001. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "The Best Internet ...
, the new operating system allowed the use of OS 9 applications within Mac OS X via the
Classic Environment
This is a list of macOS built-in apps and system components.
Applications
App Store
The Mac App Store is macOS's digital distribution platform for macOS apps, created and maintained by Apple Inc. based on the iOS version, the platform was an ...
.
In May 2001, the company opened its first two
Apple Store
The Apple Store is a chain of retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc. The stores sell various Apple products, including Mac personal computers, iPhone smartphones, iPad tablet computers, Apple Watch smartwatches, Apple TV digital me ...
retail locations in Virginia and California,
offering an improved presentation of the company's products.
At the time, many speculated that the stores would fail,
but they went on to become highly successful, and the first of more than 500 stores around the world.
On October 23, 2001, Apple debuted the
iPod
The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes wa ...
portable digital audio player. The product, which was first sold on November 10, 2001, was phenomenally successful with over 100 million units sold within six years.
In 2003, Apple's
iTunes Store
The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,00 ...
was introduced. The service offered
music download
A music download (commonly referred to as a digital download) is the digital transfer of music via the Internet into a device capable of decoding and playing it, such as a personal computer, portable media player, MP3 player or smartphone. Th ...
s for 99¢ a song and integration with the iPod. The iTunes Store quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over five billion downloads by June 19, 2008. Two years later, the iTunes Store was the world's largest music retailer.
In 2002, Apple purchased
Nothing Real Nothing Real L.L.C was a company founded in October 1996 by Allen Edwards and Arnaud Hervas which developed high-end digital effects software for the feature film, broadcast and interactive gaming industries. It was purchased in February 2002 by Ap ...
for their advanced digital
compositing
Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live action, Live-action shooting for compositing is ...
application
Shake, as well as
Emagic
Emagic was a music software and hardware company based in Rellingen, Germany and a satellite office in Grass Valley, California. On July 1, 2002 Emagic was bought by Apple Computer. Emagic's Windows-based product offerings were discontinued on ...
for the music productivity application
Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from prem ...
. The purchase of Emagic made Apple the first computer manufacturer to own a music software company. The acquisition was followed by the development of Apple's consumer-level
GarageBand
GarageBand is a line of digital audio workstations developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or podcasts. GarageBand is developed by Apple for macOS, and was once part of the iLife softwar ...
application. The release of
iPhoto
iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Macintosh personal computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally so ...
in the same year completed the
iLife suite.
![MacBook Pro](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/MacBook_Pro.jpg)
At the
Worldwide Developers Conference
The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in t ...
keynote address on June 6, 2005, Jobs announced that Apple would move away from PowerPC processors, and the
Mac would transition to Intel processors in 2006.
[Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006](_blank)
Apple Inc., June 6, 2005. Retrieved March 2, 2007. On January 10, 2006, the new
MacBook Pro and
iMac
iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms.
In it ...
became the first Apple computers to use Intel's
Core Duo
Intel Core is a line of streamlined midrange consumer, workstation and enthusiast computer central processing units (CPUs) marketed by Intel Corporation. These processors displaced the existing mid- to high-end Pentium processors at the time o ...
CPU. By August 7, 2006, Apple made the transition to Intel chips for the entire Mac product line—over one year sooner than announced.
The Power Mac, iBook, and PowerBook brands were retired during the transition; the Mac Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Pro became their respective successors. On April 29, 2009, ''The Wall Street Journal'' reported that Apple was building its own team of engineers to design microchips. Apple also introduced Boot Camp (software), Boot Camp in 2006 to help users install Windows XP or Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X.
Apple's success during this period was evident in its stock price. Between early 2003 and 2006, the price of Apple's stock increased more than tenfold, from around $6 per share (
split-adjusted) to over $80. When Apple surpassed
Dell
Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies.
Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...
's market cap in January 2006,
[Gamet, Jeff (January 16, 2006)]
Apple Passes Dell's Market Cap
''The MacObserver''. Retrieved March 2, 2007. Jobs sent an email to Apple employees saying Dell's CEO Michael Dell should eat his words. Nine years prior, Dell had said that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders".
2007–2011: Success with mobile devices
![First iPhone Macworld 2007 DSCF1283](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/First_iPhone_Macworld_2007_DSCF1283.agr.jpg)
During his keynote speech at the Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced that Apple Computer, Inc. would thereafter be known as "Apple Inc.", because the company had shifted its emphasis from computers to consumer electronics. This event also saw the announcement of the
iPhone and the Apple TV. The company sold 270,000 iPhone units during the first 30 hours of sales, and the device was called "a game changer for the industry".
In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the
iTunes Store
The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,00 ...
without digital rights management (DRM), thereby allowing tracks to be played on third-party players, if record labels would agree to drop the technology. On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in the iTunes Store, effective in May 2007. Other record labels eventually followed suit and Apple published a press release in January 2009 to announce that all songs on the iTunes Store are available without their FairPlay DRM.
In July 2008, Apple launched the App Store (iOS), App Store to sell third-party applications for the
iPhone and iPod Touch. Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and registered an average daily revenue of $1 million, with Jobs speculating in August 2008 that the App Store (iOS/iPadOS), App Store could become a billion-dollar business for Apple. By October 2008, Apple was the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone.
On January 14, 2009, Jobs announced in an internal memo that he would be taking a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple until the end of June 2009 and would spend the time focusing on his health. In the email, Jobs stated that "the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well", and explained that the break would allow the company "to focus on delivering extraordinary products". Though Jobs was absent, Apple recorded its best non-holiday quarter (Q1 FY 2009) during the late-2000s recession, recession with revenue of $8.16 billion and profit of $1.21 billion.
After years of speculation and multiple rumored "leaks", Apple unveiled a large screen, tablet-like media device known as the
iPad
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, ...
on January 27, 2010. The iPad ran the same touch-based operating system as the iPhone, and all iPhone apps were compatible with the iPad. This gave the iPad a large app catalog on launch, though having very little development time before the release. Later that year on April 3, 2010, the iPad was launched in the US. It sold more than 300,000 units on its first day, and 500,000 by the end of the first week. In May of the same year, Apple's market cap exceeded that of competitor
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
for the first time since 1989.
In June 2010, Apple released the iPhone 4, which introduced video calling using FaceTime, computer multitasking, multitasking, and a new electrical insulation, uninsulated stainless steel design that acted as the phone's antenna. Later that year, Apple again refreshed its
iPod
The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes wa ...
line of MP3 players by introducing a multi-touch iPod Nano, an iPod Touch with FaceTime, and an iPod Shuffle that brought back the clickwheel buttons of earlier generations. It also introduced the smaller, cheaper second generation Apple TV which allowed renting of movies and shows.
On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he would take another medical leave of absence for an indefinite period to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer
Tim Cook
Timothy Donald Cook (born November 1, 1960) is an American business executive who has been the chief executive officer of Apple Inc. since 2011. Cook previously served as the company's chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs ...
assumed Jobs's day-to-day operations at Apple, although Jobs would still remain "involved in major strategic decisions".
Apple became the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world. In June 2011, 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. This would be the last product launch Jobs would attend before his death.
On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned his position as CEO of Apple. He was replaced by Cook and Jobs became Apple's chairman. Apple did not have a chairman at the time and instead had two co-lead directors, Andrea Jung and Arthur D. Levinson, who continued with those titles until Levinson replaced Jobs as chairman of the board in November after Jobs' death.
2011–present: Post-Jobs era, Cook's leadership
On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs died, marking the end of an era for Apple. The first major product announcement by Apple following Jobs's passing occurred on January 19, 2012, when Apple's Phil Schiller introduced Apple Books, iBook's Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York City. Jobs stated in the biography "Jobs" that he wanted to reinvent the textbook industry and education.
From 2011 to 2012, Apple released the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, which featured improved cameras, an Intelligent personal assistant, intelligent software assistant named Siri, and cloud-synced data with iCloud; the iPad (third generation), third- and iPad (fourth generation), fourth-generation iPads, which featured Retina Display, Retina displays;
and the iPad Mini, which featured a 7.9-inch screen in contrast to the iPad's 9.7-inch screen.
These launches were successful, with the iPhone 5 (released September 21, 2012) becoming Apple's biggest iPhone launch with over two million pre-orders and sales of three million iPads in three days following the launch of the iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad (released November 3, 2012). Apple also released a third-generation 13-inch
MacBook Pro with a Retina display and new
iMac
iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms.
In it ...
and Mac Mini computers.
On August 20, 2012, Apple's rising stock price increased the company's market capitalization to a then-record $624 billion. This beat the non-inflation-adjusted record for market capitalization previously set by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
in 1999. On August 24, 2012, a US jury ruled that Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion (£665m) in damages in an intellectual property lawsuit. Samsung appealed the damages award, which was reduced by $450 million
and further granted Samsung's request for a new trial.
On November 10, 2012, Apple confirmed a global settlement that dismissed all existing lawsuits between Apple and HTC up to that date, in favor of a ten-year license agreement for current and future patents between the two companies. It is predicted that Apple will make $280 million a year from this deal with HTC.
In May 2014, the company confirmed its intent to acquire Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's audio company Beats Electronics—producer of the "Beats by Dr. Dre" line of headphones and speaker products, and operator of the music streaming service Beats Music—for $3 billion, and to sell their products through Apple's retail outlets and resellers. Iovine believed that Beats had always "belonged" with Apple, as the company modeled itself after Apple's "unmatched ability to marry culture and technology." The acquisition was the largest purchase in Apple's history.
During a press event on September 9, 2014, Apple introduced a smartwatch, the Apple Watch.
[; ] Initially, Apple marketed the device as a fashion accessory
and a complement to the iPhone, that would allow people to look at their smartphones less.
Over time, the company has focused on developing health and fitness-oriented features on the watch, in an effort to compete with dedicated activity trackers.
In January 2016, it was announced that one billion Apple devices were in active use worldwide.
On June 6, 2016, Fortune released Fortune 500, their list of companies ranked on revenue generation. In the trailing fiscal year (2015), Apple appeared on the list as the top tech company.
It ranked third, overall, with $233 billion in revenue.
This represents a movement upward of two spots from the previous year's list.
In June 2017, Apple announced the HomePod, its smart speaker aimed to compete against Sonos, Google Home, and Amazon Echo. Towards the end of the year, ''TechCrunch'' reported that Apple was acquiring Shazam (application), Shazam, a company that introduced its products at WWDC and specializing in music, TV, film and advertising recognition. The acquisition was confirmed a few days later, reportedly costing Apple $400 million, with media reports noting that the purchase looked like a move to acquire data and tools bolstering the Apple Music streaming service. The purchase was approved by the European Union in September 2018.
Also in June 2017, Apple appointed Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg to head the newly formed worldwide video unit. In November 2017, Apple announced it was branching out into original scripted programming: Top of the Morning (TV series), a drama series starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, and a reboot of the anthology series Amazing Stories (2020 TV series), Amazing Stories with Steven Spielberg. In June 2018, Apple signed the Writers Guild of America's minimum basic agreement and Oprah Winfrey to a multi-year content partnership. Additional partnerships for original series include Sesame Workshop and DHX Media and its subsidiary Peanuts Worldwide, as well as a partnership with A24 to create original films.
During the List of Apple Inc. media events#Apple Special Event (September 12, 2017), Apple Special Event in September 2017, the AirPower (Apple), AirPower wireless charger was announced alongside the iPhone X, iPhone 8, 8 and Apple Watch#Third generation (Series 3), Watch Series 3. The AirPower was intended to wirelessly charge multiple devices, simultaneously. Though initially set to release in early 2018, the AirPower would be canceled in March 2019, marking the first cancellation of a device under Cook's leadership.
On August 19, 2020, Apple's share price briefly topped $467.77, making Apple the first US company with a market capitalization of $2 trillion.
During its annual Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, WWDC keynote speech on June 22, 2020, Apple announced it would move away from Intel processors, and the Mac transition to Apple silicon, Mac would transition to processors developed in-house. The announcement was expected by industry analysts, and it has been noted that Macs featuring Apple's processors would allow for big increases in performance over current Intel-based models. On November 10, 2020, the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and the Mac Mini became the first Mac devices powered by an Apple-designed processor, the Apple M1.
In April 2022, it was reported that Samsung Electro-Mechanics would be collaborating with Apple on its M2 chip instead of LG Innotek. Developer logs showed that at least nine Mac models with four different M2 chips were being tested.
The Wall Street Journal reported that an effort to develop its own chips left Apple better prepared to deal with the semiconductor shortage that emerged during the pandemic era and led to increased profitability, with sales of Mac computers that included M1 chips rising sharply in 2020 and 2021. It also inspired other companies like Tesla, Inc., Tesla,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
, and Meta Platforms to pursue a similar path.
In April 2022, Apple opened an online store that allowed anyone in the US to view repair manuals and order replacement parts for specific recent iPhones, although the difference in cost between this method and official repair is anticipated to be minimal.
In May 2022, a trademark was filed for RealityOS, an operating system reportedly intended for virtual and augmented reality headsets, first mentioned in 2017. According to Bloomberg, the headset may come out in 2023. Further insider reports state that the device uses iris scanning for payment confirmation and signing into accounts.
On June 18, 2022, the Apple Store in Towson, Maryland became the first to unionize in the U.S., with the employees voting to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
On July 7, 2022, Apple added Lockdown Mode to macOS 13 and iOS 16, as a response to the earlier Pegasus revelations; the mode increases security protections for high-risk users against targeted Zero-day (computing), zero-day malware.
Products
Mac
The Mac is Apple's family of Personal computer, personal computers. Macs are known for their ease of use and distinctive aluminium, Minimalism, minimalist designs. Macs have been popular among students, creative professionals, and software engineers. The current lineup consists of the MacBook Air and
MacBook Pro laptops, and the
iMac
iMac is a family of all-in-one Mac desktop computers designed and built by Apple Inc. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its debut in August 1998, and has evolved through seven distinct forms.
In it ...
, Mac mini, Mac Studio and Mac Pro desktop computers. All Macs except the Mac Pro use Apple silicon chips.
Macs run the macOS operating system, and include the Safari (web browser), Safari web browser,
iMovie
iMovie (known at times as iMovie HD) is a preinstalled video editing application developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices.
It was originally released in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-ena ...
for home movie editing,
GarageBand
GarageBand is a line of digital audio workstations developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or podcasts. GarageBand is developed by Apple for macOS, and was once part of the iLife softwar ...
for music creation, and the iWork productivity suite. Apple also makes Pro apps (Apple), pro apps:
Final Cut Pro
Final Cut Pro is a series of non-linear video editing software programs first developed by Macromedia Inc. and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro 10.6.4, runs on Mac computers powered by macOS Big Sur 11.5.1 or later. The ...
for video production, Logic Pro for musicians and producers, and Xcode for software developers.
Apple also sells a variety of accessories for Macs, including the Pro Display XDR, Apple Studio Display, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Keyboard (Mac), Magic Keyboard.
iPhone
![IPhone 14 Pro - 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/IPhone_14_Pro_-_2.jpg)
The iPhone is Apple's line of smartphones, which run the iOS operating system. The iPhone (1st generation), first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007. Since then, new models have been released annually. When it was introduced, its multi-touch screen was described as "revolutionary" and a "game-changer" for the mobile phone industry. The device has been credited with creating the Mobile app development, app economy.
As of 2022, the iPhone has 15% market share, yet represents 50% of global smartphone revenues, with Android (operating system), Android phones accounting for the rest. The iPhone has generated large profits for the company, and is credited with helping to make Apple one of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies.
The most recent iPhones are the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
iPad
![IPad Pro 2020 with Magic Keyboard - 5](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/IPad_Pro_2020_with_Magic_Keyboard_-_5.jpg)
iPad is Apple's line of tablet computer, tablets which run iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was announced on January 27, 2010. The iPad is mainly marketed for consuming multimedia, creating art, working on documents, videoconferencing, and playing games. The iPad lineup consists of several base iPad models, and the smaller iPad Mini, upgraded iPad Air, and high-end iPad Pro. Apple has consistently improved the iPad's performance, with the iPad Pro adopting the same Apple M1, M1 and Apple M2, M2 chips as the Mac; but the iPad still receives criticism for its limited OS.
Apple has sold more than 500 million iPads, though sales peaked in 2013.
[; ; ] The iPad still remains the most popular tablet computer by sales , and accounted for nine percent of the company's revenue .
Apple sells several List of iPad accessories, iPad accessories, including the Apple Pencil, Smart Keyboard, Smart Keyboard Folio, Magic Keyboard for iPad, Magic Keyboard, and several adapters.
Other products
Apple also makes several other products that it categorizes as "Wearables, Home and Accessories". These products include the Apple headphones, AirPods line of wireless headphones, Apple TV digital media players, Apple Watch smartwatches, Beats Electronics, Beats headphones and HomePod Mini smart speakers.
, this broad line of products comprises about 11% of the company's revenues.
Services
Apple also offers a broad line of services that it earns revenue on, including advertising in the App Store and Apple News app, the AppleCare+ extended warranty plan, the iCloud+ cloud-based data storage service, payment services through the Apple Card credit card and the Apple Pay processing platform, a digital content services including Apple Books, Fitness (Apple), Apple Fitness+, Apple Music, Apple News+, Apple TV+, and the
iTunes Store
The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,00 ...
.
, services comprise about 19% of the company's revenue.
Many of the services have been launched since 2019 when Apple announced it would be making a concerted effort to expand its service revenues.
Corporate identity
Logo
According to Steve Jobs, the company's name was inspired by his visit to an apple farm while on a fruitarian diet. Jobs thought the name "Apple" was "fun, spirited and not intimidating."
Apple's first logo, designed by Ron Wayne, depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. It was almost immediately replaced by Rob Janoff's "rainbow Apple", the now-familiar rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. Janoff presented Jobs with several different monochromatic themes for the "bitten" logo, and Jobs immediately took a liking to it. However, Jobs insisted that the logo be colorized to humanize the company. The logo was designed with a bite so that it would not be confused with a cherry.
The colored stripes were conceived to make the logo more accessible, and to represent the fact the Apple II could generate graphics in color.
This logo is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to Alan Turing#Death, his method of suicide. Both Janoff and Apple deny any homage to Turing in the design of the logo.
On August 27, 1999
(the year following the introduction of the iMac G3), Apple officially dropped the rainbow scheme and began to use monochromatic logos nearly identical in shape to the previous rainbow incarnation. An Aqua (user interface), Aqua-themed version of the monochrome logo was used from 1998 to 2003, and a glass-themed version was used from 2007 to 2013.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were fans of the Beatles, but Apple Inc. had name and logo trademark issues with Apple Corps, Apple Corps Ltd., a multimedia company started by the Beatles in 1968. This resulted in a Apple Corps v Apple Computer, series of lawsuits and tension between the two companies. These issues ended with the settling of their lawsuit in 2007.
Advertising
Apple's first slogan, "Byte into an Apple", was coined in the late 1970s. From 1997 to 2002, the slogan "
Think different
"Think different" is an advertising slogan used from 1997 to 2002 by Apple Computer, Inc., now named Apple Inc. The campaign was created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day.
The slogan has been widely taken as a resp ...
" was used in advertising campaigns, and is still closely associated with Apple. Apple also has slogans for specific product lines—for example, "iThink, therefore iMac" was used in 1998 to promote the iMac, and "Say hello to iPhone" has been used in iPhone advertisements. "Hello" was also used to introduce the original Macintosh,
Newton, iMac ("hello (again)"), and iPod.
From the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984, with the 1984 (television commercial), 1984 Super Bowl advertisement to the more modern Get a Mac adverts, Apple has been recognized for its efforts towards effective advertising and marketing for its products. However, claims made by later campaigns Apple Inc. advertising#Criticism, were criticized, particularly the 2005 Power Mac ads. Apple's product advertisements gained a lot of attention as a result of their eye-popping graphics and catchy tunes.
[Farber, Jim]
Apple ad creates recognition for Yael Naim
''New York Daily News'', March 11, 2008. Musicians who benefited from an improved profile as a result of their songs being included on Apple advertisements include Canadian singer Feist (singer), Feist with the song "1234 (Feist song), 1234" and Yael Naim, Yael Naïm with the song "New Soul".
Brand loyalty
Apple customers gained a reputation for devotion and loyalty early in the company's history. In 1984, ''BYTE'' stated that:
![Ifc shanghai Apple Store](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Ifc_shanghai_Apple_Store.jpg)
Apple evangelists were actively engaged by the company at one time, but this was after the phenomenon had already been firmly established. Apple Evangelism marketing, evangelist Guy Kawasaki has called the brand fanaticism "something that was stumbled upon," while Ive explained in 2014 that "People have an incredibly personal relationship" with Apple's products.
Apple Store
The Apple Store is a chain of retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc. The stores sell various Apple products, including Mac personal computers, iPhone smartphones, iPad tablet computers, Apple Watch smartwatches, Apple TV digital me ...
openings and new product releases can draw crowds of hundreds, with some waiting in line as much as a day before the opening.
The opening of New York City's Apple Fifth Avenue store in 2006 was highly attended, and had visitors from Europe who flew in for the event. In June 2017, a newlywed couple took their wedding photos inside the then-recently opened Orchard Road Apple Store in Singapore. The high level of brand loyalty has been criticized and ridiculed, applying the epithet "Apple fanboy" and mocking the lengthy lines before a product launch. An internal memo leaked in 2015 suggested the company planned to discourage long lines and direct customers to purchase its products on its website.
''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to 2012. On September 30, 2013, Apple surpassed Coca-Cola to become the world's most valuable brand in the Omnicom Group's "Best Global Brands" report. Boston Consulting Group has ranked Apple as the world's most innovative brand every year since 2005.
''The New York Times'' in 1985 stated that "Apple above all else is a marketing company".
John Sculley agreed, telling ''The Guardian'' newspaper in 1997 that "People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company. It was the marketing company of the decade." Research in 2002 by Nielsen Online, NetRatings indicate that the average Apple consumer was usually more affluent and better educated than other PC company consumers. The research indicated that this correlation could stem from the fact that on average Apple Inc. products were more expensive than other PC products.
In response to a query about the devotion of loyal Apple consumers, Jonathan Ive responded: there are 1.65 billion Apple products in active use.
Headquarters and major facilities
![Apple park cupertino 2019](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Apple_park_cupertino_2019.jpg)
Apple Inc.'s world corporate headquarters are located in Cupertino, California, Cupertino, in the middle of California's Silicon Valley, at Apple Park, a massive circular groundscraper building with a circumference of . The building opened in April 2017 and houses more than 12,000 employees. Apple co-founder
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...
wanted Apple Park to look less like a business park and more like a nature refuge, and personally appeared before the Cupertino City Council in June 2011 to make the proposal, in his final public appearance before his death.
![Apple Headquarters in Cupertino](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Apple_Headquarters_in_Cupertino.jpg)
Apple also operates from the Apple Campus (also known by its address, 1 Infinite Loop), a grouping of six buildings in Cupertino that total located about to the west of Apple Park. The Apple Campus was the company's headquarters from its opening in 1993, until the opening of Apple Park in 2017. The buildings, located at 1–6 Infinite Loop (street), Infinite Loop, are arranged in a circular pattern around a central Green infrastructure, green space, in a design that has been compared to that of a university.
In addition to Apple Park and the Apple Campus, Apple occupies an additional thirty office buildings scattered throughout the city of Cupertino, including three buildings that also served as prior headquarters: "Stephens Creek Three" (1977–1978), Bandley One" (1978–1982), and "Mariani One" (1982–1993). In total, Apple occupies almost 40% of the available office space in the city.
Apple's headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are located in Cork (city), Cork in the south of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, called the Hollyhill campus. The facility, which opened in 1980, houses 5,500 people and was Apple's first location outside of the United States. Apple's international sales and distribution arms operate out of the campus in Cork.
Apple has two campuses near Austin, Texas: a campus opened in 2014 houses 500 engineers who work on Apple silicon and a campus opened in 2021 where 6,000 people to work in technical support, supply chain management, online store curation, and Apple Maps data management.
The company, also has several other locations in Boulder, Colorado, Culver City, California, Herzliya (Israel), London, New York, Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Seattle that each employ hundreds of people.
Stores
![Apple Genius Bar Regentstreet London](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Apple_Genius_Bar_Regentstreet_London.jpg)
The first Apple Stores were originally opened as two locations in May 2001 by then-CEO Steve Jobs,
after years of attempting but failing store-within-a-store concepts.
Seeing a need for improved retail presentation of the company's products, he began an effort in 1997 to revamp the retail program to get an improved relationship to consumers, and hired Ron Johnson (businessman), Ron Johnson in 2000.
Jobs relaunched Apple's online store in 1997, and opened the first two physical stores in 2001.
The media initially speculated that Apple would fail,
but its stores were highly successful, bypassing the sales numbers of competing nearby stores and within three years reached US$1 billion in annual sales, becoming the fastest retailer in history to do so.
Over the years, Apple has expanded the number of retail locations and its geographical coverage, with 499 stores across 22 countries worldwide .
Strong product sales have placed Apple among the top-tier retail stores, with sales over $16 billion globally in 2011.
In May 2016, Angela Ahrendts, Apple's then Senior Vice President of Retail, unveiled a significantly redesigned Apple Store in Union Square, San Francisco, Union Square, San Francisco, featuring large glass doors for the entry, open spaces, and re-branded rooms. In addition to purchasing products, consumers can get advice and help from "Creative Pros" – individuals with specialized knowledge of creative arts; get product support in a tree-lined Genius Grove; and attend sessions, conferences and community events, with Ahrendts commenting that the goal is to make Apple Stores into "town squares", a place where people naturally meet up and spend time. The new design will be applied to all Apple Stores worldwide, a process that has seen stores temporarily relocate or close.
![When the Apple logo goes red](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/When_the_Apple_logo_goes_red....._-DC_-applecarnegielibrary_-WearAMask_-SonyAlpha_%2850696381517%29.jpg)
Many Apple Stores are located inside shopping malls, but Apple has built several stand-alone "flagship" stores in high-profile locations.
It has been granted design patents and received architectural awards for its stores' designs and construction, specifically for its use of glass staircases and cubes. The success of Apple Stores have had significant influence over other consumer electronics retailers, who have lost traffic, control and profits due to a perceived higher quality of service and products at Apple Stores. Apple's notable brand loyalty among consumers causes long lines of hundreds of people at new Apple Store openings or product releases.
Due to the popularity of the brand, Apple receives a large number of job applications, many of which come from young workers.
Although Apple Store employees receive above-average pay, are offered money toward education and health care, and receive product discounts,
there are limited or no paths of career advancement.
A May 2016 report with an anonymous retail employee highlighted a hostile work environment with harassment from customers, intense internal criticism, and a lack of significant bonuses for securing major business contracts.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple closed its stores outside China until March 27, 2020. Despite the stores being closed, hourly workers continue to be paid. Workers across the company are allowed to work remotely if their jobs permit it. On March 24, 2020, in a memo, Senior Vice President of People and Retail Deirdre O'Brien announced that some of its retail stores are expected to reopen at the beginning of April.
Corporate affairs
Leadership
Board of directors
As of October 26, 2019, the board of directors of Apple Inc. includes:
* Arthur D. Levinson (chairman)
*
Tim Cook
Timothy Donald Cook (born November 1, 1960) is an American business executive who has been the chief executive officer of Apple Inc. since 2011. Cook previously served as the company's chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs ...
(executive director and CEO)
* James A. Bell (non-executive director)
* Al Gore (non-executive director)
* Andrea Jung (non-executive director)
* Ronald Sugar (non-executive director)
* Susan Wagner (non-executive director)
Senior management
As of March 16, 2021, the management of Apple Inc. includes:
*
Tim Cook
Timothy Donald Cook (born November 1, 1960) is an American business executive who has been the chief executive officer of Apple Inc. since 2011. Cook previously served as the company's chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs ...
(chief executive officer)
* Jeff Williams (Apple), Jeff Williams (
chief operating officer
A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the " C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if ...
)
* Luca Maestri (senior vice president and chief financial officer)
* Katherine L. Adams (senior vice president and general counsel)
* Eddy Cue (senior vice president – Internet Software and Services)
* Craig Federighi (senior vice president – Software Engineering)
* John Giannandrea (senior vice president – Machine Learning and AI Strategy)
* Deirdre O'Brien (senior vice president – Apple Store, Retail + People)
* John Ternus (senior vice president – Hardware Engineering)
* Greg Joswiak, Greg Josiwak (senior vice president – Worldwide Marketing)
* Johny Srouji (senior vice president – Hardware Technologies)
* Sabih Khan (senior vice president – Operations)
Previous CEOs
# Michael Scott (Apple), Michael Scott (1977–1981)
#
Mike Markkula (1981–1983)
#
John Sculley
John Sculley III (born April 6, 1939) is an American businessman, entrepreneur and investor in high-tech startups. Sculley was vice-president (1970–1977) and president of PepsiCo (1977–1983), until he became chief executive officer (CEO) ...
(1983–1993)
#
Michael Spindler
Michael Spindler (22 December 1942 – 2017) was a German businessman who was president and CEO of Apple from 1993 to 1996. Spindler was born in Berlin.
Personal life
From 1985 until his death in 2017, Spindler lived between Paris, France, and Sa ...
(1993–1996)
#
Gil Amelio
Gilbert Frank Amelio (born March 1, 1943) is an American technology executive. Amelio worked at Bell Labs, Fairchild Semiconductor, and the semiconductor division of Rockwell International, and was also the CEO of National Semiconductor and Ap ...
(1996–1997)
#
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...
(1997–2011)
Corporate culture
![Colleges with the most alumni at Apple](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Colleges_with_the_most_alumni_at_Apple.png)
Apple is one of several highly successful companies founded in the 1970s that bucked the traditional notions of corporate culture. Jobs often walked around the office barefoot even after Apple became a Fortune 500 company. By the time of the 1984 (advertisement), "1984" television advertisement, Apple's informal culture had become a key trait that differentiated it from its competitors. According to a 2011 report in ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune,'' this has resulted in a corporate culture more akin to a startup rather than a multinational corporation.
In a 2017 interview, Wozniak credited watching ''Star Trek'' and attending Star Trek convention, ''Star Trek'' conventions while in his youth as a source of inspiration for his co-founding Apple.
As the company has grown and been led by a series of differently opinionated chief executives, it has arguably lost some of its original character. Nonetheless, it has maintained a reputation for fostering individuality and excellence that reliably attracts talented workers, particularly after Jobs returned to the company. Numerous Apple employees have stated that projects without Jobs's involvement often took longer than projects with it.
To recognize the best of its employees, Apple created the Apple Fellow#Industry and corporate fellows, Fellows program which awards individuals who make extraordinary technical or leadership contributions to personal computing while at the company. The Apple Fellowship has so far been awarded to individuals including Bill Atkinson,
[Andy Hertzfeld, Hertzfeld, Andy]
Credit Where Due
''Folklore.org'', January 1983. Retrieved May 26, 2006. Steve Capps, Rod Holt,
Alan Kay,
[Eisenhart, Mary]
Fighting Back For Mac
''MicroTimes'', 1997. Retrieved May 26, 2006. Guy Kawasaki,
Al Alcorn, Don Norman,
Rich Page,
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, inventor, and entrepreneur, technology entrepreneur. In 1976, with business partner Steve ...
,
and Phil Schiller.
At Apple, employees are intended to be specialists who are not exposed to functions outside their area of expertise. Jobs saw this as a means of having "best-in-class" employees in every role. For instance, Ron Johnson (businessman), Ron Johnson—Senior Vice President of Retail Operations until November 1, 2011—was responsible for site selection, in-store service, and store layout, yet had no control of the inventory in his stores. This was done by Tim Cook, who had a background in supply-chain management.
Apple is known for strictly enforcing accountability. Each project has a "directly responsible individual" or "DRI" in Apple jargon.
As an example, when iOS senior vice president Scott Forstall refused to sign Apple's official apology for numerous errors in the redesigned Apple Maps, Maps app, he was forced to resign. Unlike other major U.S. companies, Apple provides a relatively simple compensation policy for executives that does not include perks enjoyed by other CEOs like country club fees or private use of company aircraft. The company typically grants stock options to executives every other year.
In 2015, Apple had 110,000 full-time employees. This increased to 116,000 full-time employees the next year, a notable hiring decrease, largely due to its first revenue decline. Apple does not specify how many of its employees work in retail, though its 2014 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC filing put the number at approximately half of its employee base. In September 2017, Apple announced that it had over 123,000 full-time employees.
Apple has a strong culture of corporate secrecy, and has an anti-news leak, leak Global Security team that recruits from the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Secret Service.
In December 2017, Glassdoor said Apple was the 48th best place to work, having originally entered at rank 19 in 2009, peaking at rank 10 in 2012, and falling down the ranks in subsequent years.
Finance
Apple is the List of largest technology companies by revenue, world's largest technology company by revenue, the world's largest technology company by asset, total assets, and the mobile phone#By manufacturer, world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung.
In its fiscal year ending in September 2011, Apple Inc. reported a total of $108 billion in annual revenues—a significant increase from its 2010 revenues of $65 billion—and nearly $82 billion in Reserve (accounting), cash reserves. On March 19, 2012, Apple announced plans for a $2.65-per-share dividend beginning in fourth quarter of 2012, per approval by their board of directors.
The company's worldwide annual revenue in 2013 totaled $170 billion. In May 2013, Apple entered the top ten of the Fortune 500, ''Fortune'' 500 list of companies for the first time, rising 11 places above its 2012 ranking to take the sixth position. , Apple has around US$234 billion of cash and marketable securities, of which 90% is located outside the United States for tax purposes.
Apple amassed 65% of all profits made by the eight largest worldwide smartphone manufacturers in quarter one of 2014, according to a report by Canaccord Genuity. In the first quarter of 2015, the company garnered 92% of all earnings.
On April 30, 2017, ''The Wall Street Journal'' reported that Apple had cash reserves of $250 billion, officially confirmed by Apple as specifically $256.8 billion a few days later.
, Apple was the list of corporations by market capitalization, largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. On August 2, 2018, Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market value.
Apple was ranked No. 4 on the 2018 ''Fortune'' 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
Tax practices
Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places such as Republic of Ireland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the British Virgin Islands to cut the taxes it pays around the world. According to ''The New York Times,'' in the 1980s Apple was among the first tech companies to designate overseas salespeople in high-tax countries in a manner that allowed the company to sell on behalf of low-tax subsidiaries on other continents, sidestepping income taxes. In the late 1980s, Apple was a pioneer of an accounting technique known as the "Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich", which reduces taxes by routing profits through Irish subsidiaries and the Netherlands and then to the Caribbean.
British Conservative Party Member of Parliament Charlie Elphicke published research on October 30, 2012, which showed that some multinational companies, including Apple Inc., were making billions of pounds of profit in the UK, but were paying an effective tax rate to the UK Treasury of only 3 percent, well below standard corporation tax. He followed this research by calling on the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne to force these multinationals, which also included Google and The Coca-Cola Company, to state the effective rate of tax they pay on their UK revenues. Elphicke also said that government contracts should be withheld from multinationals who do not pay their fair share of UK tax.
Apple Inc. claims to be the single largest taxpayer to the United States Department of the Treasury, Department of the Treasury of the United States of America with an tax rate, effective tax rate of approximately of 26% as of the second quarter of the Apple fiscal year 2016. In an interview with the German newspaper FAZ in October 2017, Tim Cook stated, that Apple is the biggest taxpayer worldwide.
In 2015, Reuters reported that Apple had earnings abroad of $54.4 billion which were untaxed by the IRS of the United States. Under U.S. tax law governed by the Internal Revenue Code, IRC, corporations don't pay income tax on overseas profits unless the profits are repatriated into the United States and as such Apple argues that to benefit its shareholders it will leave it overseas until a repatriation holiday or comprehensive tax reform takes place in the United States.
On July 12, 2016, the Central Statistics Office (Ireland), Central Statistics Office of Ireland announced that 2015 Irish GDP had grown by 26.3%, and 2015 Irish GNP had grown by 18.7%. The figures attracted international scorn, and were labelled by Nobel-prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, as leprechaun economics. It was not until 2018 that Irish economists could definitively prove that the 2015 growth was due to Apple restructuring its controversial double Irish subsidiaries (Apple Sales International), which Apple converted into a new Irish corporation tax in the Republic of Ireland#Multinational tax schemes, capital allowances for intangible assets tax scheme (expires in January 2020). The affair required the Central Bank of Ireland to create a new measure of Irish economic growth, modified gross national income, Modified GNI* to replace Irish GDP, given the distortion of Apple's tax schemes. Irish GDP is 143% of Irish Modified GNI*.
On August 30, 2016, after EU illegal State aid case against Apple in Ireland, a two-year investigation, the EU Competition Commissioner concluded Apple received "illegal state aid" from Ireland. The EU ordered Apple to pay 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion), plus interest, in unpaid Irish taxes for 2004–2014.
[Kanter, James and Scott, Mark (August 30, 2016]
Apple Must Pay Billions for Tax Breaks in Ireland, E.U. Orders
''The New York Times''. It is the largest tax fine in history. The Commission found that Apple had benefited from a private Irish Revenue Commissioners tax ruling regarding its double Irish tax structure, Apple Sales International (ASI).
Instead of using two companies for its double Irish structure, Apple was given a ruling to split ASI into two internal "branches". The Chancellor of Austria, Christian Kern, put this decision into perspective by stating that "every Vienna, Viennese cafe, every sausage stand pays more tax in Austria than a multinational corporation".
, Apple agreed to start paying €13 billion in back taxes to the Irish government, the repayments will be held in an escrow account while Apple and the Irish government continue their appeals in EU courts.
On July 15, 2020, the EU General Court annuls the European Commission's decision in Apple State aid case: Apple will not have to repay €13 billion to Ireland.
In July 2022, Apple reported an 11% decline in Q3 profits compared to 2021. Its revenue in the same period rose 2% year-on-year to $83 billion, though this figure was also lower than in 2021, where the increase was at 36%. The general downturn is reportedly caused by the slowing global economy and supply chain disruptions in China.
Litigation
Apple has been a participant in various legal proceedings and claims since it began operation. In particular, Apple is known for and promotes itself as actively and aggressively enforcing its intellectual property interests. Some litigation examples include ''Apple v. Samsung'', ''Apple v. Microsoft'', ''Motorola Mobility v. Apple Inc.'', and ''Apple Corps v. Apple Computer''. Apple has also had to defend itself against charges on numerous occasions of violating intellectual property rights. Most have been dismissed in the courts as Shell corporation, shell companies known as patent trolls, with no evidence of actual use of patents in question. On December 21, 2016, Nokia announced that in the U.S. and Germany, it has filed a suit against Apple, claiming that the latter's products infringe on Nokia's patents. Most recently, in November 2017, the United States International Trade Commission announced an investigation into allegations of patent infringement in regards to Apple's remote desktop technology; Aqua Connect, a company that builds remote desktop software, has claimed that Apple infringed on two of its patents. In January 2022, Ericsson sued Apple over payment of royalty of 5G technology.
Corporate practices
Apple has been criticized for alleged Anti-competitive practices, anti-competitive behavior, rash litigation, dubious tax tactics, the use of sweatshop labor,
customer service issues involving allegedly misleading warranties and insufficient data security, and its products' environmental footprint. Apple has also received criticism for its willingness to work and conduct business with nations such as China and Russia, engaging in practices that have been criticized by human rights groups. Critics have claimed that Apple products combine stolen or purchased designs that Apple claims are its original creations. It has been criticized for its alleged collaboration with the U.S. surveillance program PRISM (surveillance program), PRISM. The company denied any collaboration.
Charitable contributions
Apple is a partner of Product Red, (PRODUCT)RED, a fundraising campaign for HIV/AIDS, AIDS charity. In November 2014, Apple arranged for all App Store (iOS), App Store revenue in a two-week period to go to the fundraiser, generating more than US$20 million, and in March 2017, it released an iPhone 7 with a red color finish.
Apple contributes financially to fundraisers in times of natural disasters. In November 2012, it donated $2.5 million to the American Red Cross to aid relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy, and in 2017 it donated $5 million to relief efforts for both Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Harvey, as well as for the 2017 Central Mexico earthquake. The company has also used its
iTunes
iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mu ...
platform to encourage donations in the wake of environmental disasters and humanitarian crises, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, 2011 Japan earthquake, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013, and the 2015 European migrant crisis. Apple emphasizes that it does not incur any processing or other fees for iTunes donations, sending 100% of the payments directly to relief efforts, though it also acknowledges that the Red Cross does not receive any personal information on the users donating and that the payments may not be tax deductible.
On April 14, 2016, Apple and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) announced that they have engaged in a partnership to, "help protect life on our planet." Apple released a special page in the App Store (iOS), iTunes App Store, Apps for Earth. In the arrangement, Apple has committed that through April 24, WWF will receive 100% of the proceeds from the applications participating in the App Store via both the purchases of any paid apps and the In-App Purchases. Apple and WWF's Apps for Earth campaign raised more than $8 million in total proceeds to support WWF's conservation work. WWF announced the results at WWDC 2016 in San Francisco.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple's CEO Cook announced that the company will be donating "millions" of masks to health workers in the United States and Europe.
On January 13, 2021, Apple announced a $100 million "Racial Equity and Justice Initiative" to help combat institutional racism worldwide.
Customer privacy
![Prism-slide-8](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Prism-slide-8.jpg)
Apple has a notable pro-privacy stance, actively making privacy-conscious features and settings part of its conferences, promotional campaigns, and public image. With its iOS 8 mobile operating system in 2014, the company started encrypting all contents of iOS devices through users' passcodes, making it impossible at the time for the company to provide customer data to law enforcement requests seeking such information. With the popularity rise of cloud storage solutions, Apple began a technique in 2016 to do deep learning scans for facial data in photos on the user's local device and encrypting the content before uploading it to Apple's iCloud storage system. It also introduced "differential privacy", a way to collect crowdsourced data from many users, while keeping individual users anonymous, in a system that ''Wired (website), Wired'' described as "trying to learn as much as possible about a group while learning as little as possible about any individual in it". Users are explicitly asked if they want to participate, and can actively opt-in or opt-out.
With Apple's release of an update to iOS 14, Apple required all developers of iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch applications to directly ask iPhone users permission to track them. The feature, titled "App Tracking Transparency", received heavy criticism from Facebook, whose primary business model revolves around the tracking of users' data and sharing such data with advertisers so users can see more relevant ads, a technique commonly known as targeted advertising. Despite Facebook's measures, including purchasing full-page newspaper advertisements protesting App Tracking Transparency, Apple released the update in mid-spring 2021. A study by Verizon Communications, Verizon subsidiary Flurry Analytics reported only 4% of iOS users in the United States and 12% worldwide have opted into tracking.
However, Apple aids law enforcement in criminal investigations by providing iCloud backups of users' devices, and the company's commitment to privacy has been questioned by its efforts to promote Biometrics, biometric authentication technology in its newer
iPhone models, which don't have the same level of United States Constitution, constitutional privacy as a passcode in the United States.
Prior to the release of iOS 15, Apple announced new efforts at combating Child pornography, child sexual abuse material on iOS and Mac platforms. Parents of minor iMessage users can now be alerted if their child sends or receives nude photographs. Additionally, on-device Hash function, hashing would take place on media destined for upload to iCloud, and hashes would be compared to a list of known abusive images provided by law enforcement; if enough matches were found, Apple would be alerted and authorities informed. The new features received praise from law enforcement and victims rights advocates, however privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, condemned the new features as invasive and highly prone to abuse by authoritarian governments.
Ireland's Data Protection Commission launched a privacy investigation to examine whether Apple complied with the EU's GDPR law following an investigation into how the company processes personal data with targeted ads on its platform.
In December 2019, a report found that the iPhone 11 Pro continues tracking location and collecting user data even after users have disabled location services. In response, an Apple engineer said the Location Services icon "appears for system services that do not have a switch in settings."
According to published reports by Bloomberg News on March 30, 2022, Apple turned over data such as phone numbers, physical addresses, and IP addresses to hackers posing as law enforcement officials using forged documents. The law enforcement requests sometimes included forged signatures of real or fictional officials. When asked about the allegations, an Apple representative referred the reporter to a section of the company policy for law enforcement guidelines, which stated, "We review every data request for legal sufficiency and use advanced systems and processes to validate law enforcement requests and detect abuse."
Compliance with governments
In January 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump and attorney general William Barr, William P. Barr criticized Apple for refusing to unlock two
iPhones of a Saudi national, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, who Naval Air Station Pensacola shooting, shot and killed three American sailors and injured eight others at Naval Air Station Pensacola. The Naval Air Station Pensacola shooting, shooting was declared an "act of terrorism" by the FBI, but Apple denied the request to crack the phones to reveal possible terrorist information citing its data privacy policy.
Apple Inc., shareholders increased pressure on the company to publicly commit "to respect freedom of expression as a human right", upon which Apple committed to freedom of expression and information in its human rights policy document. It said that the policy is based on the guidelines of the United Nations on business and human rights, in early September 2020.
In 2021, Apple complied with a request by the Chinese government to ban a Quran app from its devices and platforms. The request occurred in the context of the Chinese government's ongoing mass repression of Muslims, particularly Uyghurs, in Xinjiang, which some have labeled Uyghur genocide, a genocide.
In December 2021, The Information (website), The Information reported that CEO Tim Cook had negotiated, in 2016, a five-year agreement with the Chinese government, motivated in part to allay regulatory issues that had harmed the company's business in China. The agreement entailed promised investments totaling $275 billion.
In September 2021, Apple removed an app from its App Store created by Alexei Navalny meant to coordinate protest voting during the 2021 Russian legislative election. The Russian government had threatened to arrest individual Apple employees working in the country unless Apple complied.
In November 2022, Apple limited AirDrop filesharing in China weeks before 2022 COVID-19 protests in China, mass protests against COVID-19 lockdowns in the country.
Environmental practices and initiatives
Apple Energy
Apple Energy, LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apple Inc. that sells solar energy. , Apple's solar farms in California and Nevada have been declared to provide 217.9 megawatts of solar generation capacity. In addition to the company's solar energy production, Apple has received regulatory approval to construct a Landfill gas utilization, landfill gas energy plant in North Carolina. Apple will use the methane emissions to generate electricity. Apple's North Carolina data center is already powered entirely with energy from renewable sources.
Energy and resources
Following a Greenpeace protest, Apple released a statement on April 17, 2012, committing to ending its use of coal and shifting to 100% renewable clean energy.
By 2013, Apple was using 100% renewable energy to power their data centers. Overall, 75% of the company's power came from clean renewable sources.
In 2010, Climate Counts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to directing consumers toward the greenest companies, gave Apple a score of 52 points out of a possible 100, which puts Apple in their top category "Striding". This was an increase from May 2008, when Climate Counts only gave Apple 11 points out of 100, which placed the company last among electronics companies, at which time Climate Counts also labeled Apple with a "stuck icon", adding that Apple at the time was "a choice to avoid for the climate-conscious consumer".
In May 2015, Greenpeace evaluated the state of the Green Internet and commended Apple on their environmental practices saying, "Apple's commitment to renewable energy has helped set a new bar for the industry, illustrating in very concrete terms that a 100% renewable Internet is within its reach, and providing several models of intervention for other companies that want to build a sustainable Internet."
, Apple states that 100% of its U.S. operations run on renewable energy, 100% of Apple's data centers run on renewable energy and 93% of Apple's global operations run on renewable energy. However, the facilities are connected to the local Electrical grid, grid which usually contains a mix of fossil and renewable sources, so Apple carbon offsets its electricity use. The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) allows consumers to see the effect a product has on the environment. Each product receives a Gold, Silver, or Bronze rank depending on its efficiency and sustainability. Every Apple tablet computer, tablet, laptop, notebook, desktop computer, and computer monitor, display that EPEAT ranks achieves a Gold rating, the highest possible. Although Apple's data centers recycle water 35 times, the increased activity in retail, corporate and data centers also increase the amount of water use to in 2015.
During an event on March 21, 2016, Apple provided a status update on its environmental initiative to be 100% renewable in all of its worldwide operations. Lisa P. Jackson, Apple's vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives who reports directly to CEO, Tim Cook, announced that , 93% of Apple's worldwide operations are powered with renewable energy. Also featured was the company's efforts to use sustainable paper in their product packaging; 99% of all paper used by Apple in the product packaging comes from post-consumer recycled paper or sustainably managed forests, as the company continues its move to all paper packaging for all of its products. Apple working in partnership with The Conservation Fund, Conservation Fund, have preserved 36,000 acres of working forests in Maine and North Carolina. Another partnership announced is with the World Wide Fund for Nature, World Wildlife Fund to preserve up to of forests in China. Featured was the company's installation of a 40 Megawatt, MW solar power plant in the Sichuan province of China that was tailor-made to coexist with the indigenous yaks that eat hay produced on the land, by raising the panels to be several feet off of the ground so the yaks and their feed would be unharmed grazing beneath the array. This installation alone compensates for more than all of the energy used in Apple's Stores and Offices in the whole of China, negating the company's energy carbon footprint in the country. In Singapore, Apple has worked with the Singaporean government to cover the rooftops of 800 buildings in the city-state with solar panels allowing Apple's Singapore operations to be run on 100% renewable energy. Liam was introduced to the world, an advanced robotic disassembler and sorter designed by Apple Engineers in California specifically for recycling outdated or broken iPhones. Reuses and recycles parts from traded in products.
Apple announced on August 16, 2016, that Lens Technology, one of its major suppliers in China, has committed to power all its glass production for Apple with 100 percent renewable energy by 2018. The commitment is a large step in Apple's efforts to help manufacturers lower their carbon footprint in China. Apple also announced that all 14 of its final assembly sites in China are now compliant with UL (safety organization), UL's Zero Waste to Landfill validation. The standard, which started in January 2015, certifies that all manufacturing waste is reused, recycled, composted, or converted into energy (when necessary). Since the program began, nearly 140,000 metric tons of waste have been diverted from landfills.
On July 21, 2020, Apple announced its plan to become carbon neutrality, carbon neutral across its entire business, manufacturing supply chain, and product life cycle by 2030. In the next 10 years, Apple will try to lower emissions with a series of innovative actions, including: low carbon product design, expanding energy efficiency, renewable energy, process and material innovations, and carbon removal.
In April 2021, Apple said that it had started a $200 million fund in order to combat climate change by removing 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.
Toxins
Following further campaigns by Greenpeace,
in 2008, Apple became the first electronics manufacturer to eliminate all polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in its complete product line. In June 2007, Apple began replacing the cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlit LCD displays in its computers with mercury (element), mercury-free LED-backlit LCD displays and arsenic-free glass, starting with the upgraded
MacBook Pro.
Apple offers comprehensive and transparent information about the carbon dioxide equivalent, CO
2e, greenhouse gas#Direct greenhouse gas emissions, emissions, materials, and electric energy consumption, electrical usage concerning every product they currently produce or have sold in the past (and which they have enough data needed to produce the report), in their portfolio on their homepage. Allowing consumers to make informed purchasing decisions on the products they offer for sale. In June 2009, Apple's iPhone 3GS was free of PVC, arsenic, and BFRs.
All Apple products now have mercury-free LED-backlit LCD displays, arsenic-free glass, and non-PVC cables. All Apple products have EPEAT Gold status and beat the latest Energy Star guidelines in each product's respective regulatory category.
In November 2011, Apple was featured in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics, which ranks electronics manufacturers on sustainability, climate and energy policy, and how "green" their products are. The company ranked fourth of fifteen electronics companies (moving up five places from the previous year) with a score of 4.6/10. Greenpeace praises Apple's sustainability metrics and indices, sustainability, noting that the company exceeded its 70% global recycling goal in 2010. It continues to score well on the products rating with all Apple products now being free of PVC plastic and BFRs. However, the guide criticizes Apple on the Energy criteria for not seeking external verification of its greenhouse gas emissions data and for not setting out any targets to reduce emissions. In January 2012, Apple requested that its cable maker, Volex, begin producing Low smoke zero halogen, halogen-free
USB and power cables.
Green bonds
In February 2016, Apple issued a US$1.5 billion green bond (climate bond), the first ever of its kind by a U.S. tech company. The green bond proceeds are dedicated to the financing of environmental projects.
;Racial Justice and Equality Initiatives
In June 2020, Apple committed $100 million for its Racial Equity and Justice initiative (REJI) and in Jan 2021 announced various projects as part of the initiative.
Innovativeness
An editorial article in ''The Verge'' in September 2016 by technology journalist Thomas Ricker explored some of the public's perceived lack of innovation at Apple in recent years, specifically stating that Samsung has "matched and even surpassed Apple in terms of smartphone industrial design" and citing the belief that Apple is incapable of producing another breakthrough moment in technology with its products. He goes on to write that the criticism focuses on individual pieces of hardware rather than the Apple ecosystem as a whole, stating "Yes, iteration is boring. But it's also how Apple does business. [...] It enters a new market and then refines and refines and continues refining until it yields a success". He acknowledges that people are wishing for the "excitement of revolution", but argues that people want "the comfort that comes with harmony". Furthermore, he writes that "a device is only the starting point of an experience that will ultimately be ruled by the ecosystem in which it was spawned", referring to how decent hardware products can still fail without a proper ecosystem (specifically mentioning that Walkman did not have an ecosystem to keep users from leaving once something better came along), but how Apple devices in different hardware segments are able to communicate and cooperate through the iCloud cloud service with features including Universal Clipboard (in which text copied on one device can be pasted on a different device) as well as inter-connected device functionality including Auto Unlock (in which an Apple Watch can unlock a Mac (computer), Mac in close proximity). He argues that Apple's ecosystem is its greatest innovation.
''The Wall Street Journal'' reported in June 2017 that Apple's increased reliance on Siri, its Virtual assistant (artificial intelligence), virtual personal assistant, has raised questions about how much Apple can actually accomplish in terms of functionality. Whereas Google and
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
make use of big data and analyze customer information to personalize results, Apple has a strong #Privacy stance, pro-privacy stance, intentionally not retaining user data. "Siri is a textbook of iPhone, leading on something in tech and then losing an edge despite having all the money and the talent and sitting in Silicon Valley", Holger Mueller, a technology analyst, told the ''Journal''. The report further claims that development on Siri has suffered due to team members and executives leaving the company for competitors, a lack of ambitious goals, and shifting strategies. Though switching Siri's functions to machine learning and algorithms, which dramatically cut its error rate, the company reportedly still failed to anticipate the popularity of Amazon's Amazon Echo, Echo, which features the Amazon Alexa, Alexa personal assistant. Improvements to Siri stalled, executives clashed, and there were disagreements over the restrictions imposed on third-party app interactions. While Apple acquired an England-based startup specializing in conversational assistants, Google's Google Assistant, Assistant had already become capable of helping users select Wi-Fi networks by voice, and Siri was lagging in functionality.
In December 2017, two articles from ''The Verge'' and ''ZDNet'' debated what had been a particularly devastating week for Apple's macOS and iOS software platforms. The former had experienced a severe security vulnerability, in which Macs running the then-latest macOS High Sierra software were vulnerable to a bug that let anyone gain administrator privileges by entering "root" as the username in system prompts, leaving the password field empty and twice clicking "unlock", gaining full access. The bug was publicly disclosed on Twitter, rather than through proper bug bounty programs. Apple released a security fix within a day and issued an apology, stating that "regrettably we stumbled" in regards to the security of the latest updates. After installing the security patch, however, file sharing was broken for users, with Apple releasing a support document with instructions to separately fix that issue. Though Apple publicly stated the promise of "auditing our development processes to help prevent this from happening again", users who installed the security update while running the older 10.13.0 version of the High Sierra operating system rather than the then-newest 10.13.1 release experienced that the "root" security vulnerability was re-introduced, and persisted even after fully updating their systems. On iOS, a date bug caused iOS devices that received local app notifications at 12:15am on December 2, 2017, to repeatedly restart. Users were recommended to turn off notifications for their apps. Apple quickly released an update, done during the nighttime in Cupertino, California time and outside of their usual software release window,
with one of the headlining features of the update needing to be delayed for a few days. The combined problems of the week on both macOS and iOS caused ''The Verge''s Tom Warren to call it a "nightmare" for Apple's software engineers and described it as a significant lapse in Apple's ability to protect its more than 1 billion devices.
''ZDNet''s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wrote that "it's hard to not come away from the last week with the feeling that Apple is slipping".
Kingsley-Hughes also concluded his piece by referencing an earlier article, in which he wrote that "As much as I don't want to bring up the tired old 'Apple wouldn't have done this under Steve Jobs's watch' trope, a lot of what's happening at Apple lately is different from what they came to expect under Jobs. Not to say that things didn't go wrong under his watch, but product announcements and launches felt a lot tighter for sure, as did the overall quality of what Apple was releasing." He did, however, also acknowledge that such failures "may indeed have happened" with Jobs in charge, though returning to the previous praise for his demands of quality, stating "it's almost guaranteed that given his personality that heads would have rolled, which limits future failures".
Manufacturing
The company's manufacturing, procurement, and logistics enable it to execute massive product launches without having to maintain large, profit-sapping inventories. In 2011, Apple's profit margins were 40 percent, compared with between 10 and 20 percent for most other hardware companies. Cook's catchphrase to describe his focus on the company's operational arm is: "Nobody wants to buy sour milk."
In May 2017, the company announced a $1 billion funding project for "advanced manufacturing" in the United States, and subsequently invested $200 million in Corning Inc., a manufacturer of toughened Gorilla Glass technology used in its
iPhone devices. The following December, Apple's chief operating officer, Jeff Williams (Apple), Jeff Williams, told ''CNBC'' that the "$1 billion" amount was "absolutely not" the final limit on its spending, elaborating that "We're not thinking in terms of a fund limit... We're thinking about, where are the opportunities across the U.S. to help nurture companies that are making the advanced technology— and the advanced manufacturing that goes with that— that quite frankly is essential to our innovation."
As of 2021, Apple uses components from 43 countries. The majority of assembling is done by Taiwanese original design manufacturer firms Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron and Compal Electronics with factories mostly located inside China, but also Brazil, and India.
TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., (TSMC) is a Foundry model, pure-play semiconductor manufacturing company. They make the majority of Apple's smartphone SoCs, with Samsung Semiconductor, playing a minority role. Apple, alone accounted for over 25% of TSMC's total income in 2021. Apple's Bionic lineup of smartphone SoCs, are currently made exclusively by TSMC from the A7 bionic onwards, previously manufacturing was shared with Samsung. The Apple M series, M series of Apple SoC for consumer computers and tablets is made by TSMC as well.
During the Mac's early history Apple generally refused to adopt prevailing industry standards for hardware, instead creating their own. This trend was largely reversed in the late 1990s, beginning with Apple's adoption of the Peripheral Component Interconnect, PCI bus in the Power Macintosh 7500, 7500/Power Macintosh 8500, 8500/Power Macintosh 9500, 9500 Power Macintosh, Power Macs. Apple has since joined the industry standards groups to influence the future direction of technology standards such as
USB, Accelerated Graphics Port, AGP, HyperTransport, Wi-Fi, NVM Express, NVMe, PCI Express, PCIe and others in its products. FireWire is an Apple-originated standard that was widely adopted across the industry after it was standardized as IEEE 1394 and is a legally mandated port in all Cable TV boxes in the United States.
Apple has gradually expanded its efforts in getting its products into the Indian market. In July 2012, during a conference call with investors, CEO
Tim Cook
Timothy Donald Cook (born November 1, 1960) is an American business executive who has been the chief executive officer of Apple Inc. since 2011. Cook previously served as the company's chief operating officer under its co-founder Steve Jobs ...
said that he "[loves] India", but that Apple saw larger opportunities outside the region. India's requirement that 30% of products sold be manufactured in the country was described as "really adds cost to getting product to market". In May 2016, Apple opened an iOS app development center in Bangalore and a maps development office for 4,000 staff in Hyderabad. In March, ''The Wall Street Journal'' reported that Apple would begin manufacturing iPhone models in India "over the next two months", and in May, the ''Journal'' wrote that an Apple manufacturer had begun production of iPhone SE (1st generation), iPhone SE in the country, while Apple told ''CNBC'' that the manufacturing was for a "small number" of units. In April 2019, Apple initiated manufacturing of iPhone 7 at its Bengaluru facility, keeping in mind demand from local customers even as they seek more incentives from the government of India. At the beginning of 2020, Tim Cook announced that Apple schedules the opening of its first physical outlet in India for 2021, while an online store is to be launched by the end of the year.
Labor practices
The company advertised its products as being made in America until the late 1990s; however, as a result of outsourcing initiatives in the 2000s, almost all of its manufacturing is now handled abroad. According to a report by ''The New York Times'', Apple insiders "believe the vast scale of overseas factories, as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers, have so outpaced their American counterparts that "Made in USA, Made in the USA" is no longer a viable option for most Apple products".
In 2006, one complex of factories in Shenzhen, China that assembled the iPod and other items had over 200,000 workers living and working within it. Employees regularly worked more than 60 hours per week and made around $100 per month. A little over half of the workers' earnings was required to pay for rent and food from the company.
Apple immediately launched an investigation after the 2006 media report, and worked with their manufacturers to ensure acceptable working conditions. In 2007, Apple started yearly audits of all its suppliers regarding worker's rights, slowly raising standards and pruning suppliers that did not comply. Yearly progress reports have been published since 2008. In 2011, Apple admitted that its suppliers' child labor practices in China had worsened.
The Foxconn suicides occurred between January and November 2010, when 18 Foxconn (Chinese: 富士康) employees attempted suicide,
resulting in 14 deaths—the company was the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, for clients including Apple, at the time.
The suicides drew media attention, and employment practices at Foxconn were investigated by Apple.
Apple issued a public statement about the suicides, and company spokesperson Steven Dowling said:
The statement was released after the results from the company's probe into its suppliers' labor practices were published in early 2010. Foxconn was not specifically named in the report, but Apple identified a series of serious labor violations of labor laws, including Apple's own rules, and some child labor existed in a number of factories.
Apple committed to the implementation of changes following the suicides.
Also in 2010, workers in China planned to sue iPhone contractors over poisoning by a cleaner used to clean LCD screens. One worker claimed that he and his coworkers had not been informed of possible occupational illnesses. After a high suicide rate in a Foxconn facility in China making iPads and iPhones, albeit a lower rate than that of China as a whole, workers were forced to sign a legally binding document guaranteeing that they would not kill themselves. Workers in factories producing Apple products have also been exposed to hexane, a neurotoxin that is a cheaper alternative than alcohol for cleaning the products.
A 2014 BBC investigation found excessive hours and other problems persisted, despite Apple's promise to reform factory practice after the 2010 Foxconn suicides. The Pegatron factory was once again the subject of review, as reporters gained access to the working conditions inside through recruitment as employees. While the BBC maintained that the experiences of its reporters showed that labor violations were continuing since 2010, Apple publicly disagreed with the BBC and stated: "We are aware of no other company doing as much as Apple to ensure fair and safe working conditions".
In December 2014, the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights published a report which documented inhumane conditions for the 15,000 workers at a Zhen Ding Technology factory in Shenzhen, China, which serves as a major supplier of circuit boards for Apple's iPhone and iPad. According to the report, workers are pressured into 65-hour work weeks which leaves them so exhausted that they often sleep during lunch breaks. They are also made to reside in "primitive, dark and filthy dorms" where they sleep "on plywood, with six to ten workers in each crowded room." Omnipresent security personnel also routinely harass and beat the workers.
In 2019, there were reports stating that some of Foxconn's managers had used rejected parts to build iPhones and that Apple was investigating the issue.
Market power
The United States Department of Justice also began a review of Big Tech firms to establish whether they could be unlawfully stifling competition in a broad antitrust probe in 2019.
On March 16, 2020, France fined Apple €1.1 billion for colluding with two wholesalers to stifle competition and keep prices high by handicapping independent resellers. The arrangement created aligned prices for Apple products such as iPads and personal computers for about half the French retail market. According to the French regulators, the abuses occurred between 2005 and 2017 but were first discovered after a complaint by an independent reseller, eBizcuss, in 2012.
On August 13, 2020, Epic Games, the maker of the popular game Fortnite, Epic Games v. Apple, sued Apple and Google after its hugely popular video game was removed from Apple and Google's App Store. The suits come after both Apple and Google blocked the game after it introduced a direct payment system, effectively shutting out the tech titans from collecting fees. In September 2020 Epic Games founded the Coalition for App Fairness together with other thirteen companies, which aims for better conditions for the inclusion of apps in the app stores. Later in December 2020, Meta Platforms, Facebook agreed to assist Epic in their legal game against Apple, planning to support the company by providing materials and documents to Epic. Facebook had, however, stated that the company will not participate directly with the lawsuit, although did commit to helping with the discovery of evidence relating to the trial of 2021. In the months prior to their agreement, Facebook had been dealing with feuds against Apple relating to the prices of paid apps as well as privacy rule changes. Head of ad products for Facebook Dan Levy commented, saying that "this is not really about privacy for them, this is about an attack on personalized ads and the consequences it's going to have on small-business owners," commenting on the full-page ads placed by Facebook in various newspapers in December 2020.
Product-related practices
Apple's issues regarding music over the years include those with the European Union regarding iTunes, trouble over updating the Spotify app on Apple devices and collusion with record labels.
In 2018–19, Apple faced criticism for its failure to approve Nvidia Device driver, web drivers for Graphics processing unit, GPUs installed on legacy Mac Pro machines (up to Mac Pro#1st generation (Tower), mid 2012 5,1 running macOS Mojave 10.14). Without access to Apple-approved Nvidia web drivers, Apple users faced replacing their Nvidia cards with graphic cards produced by supported brands (such as the AMD Radeon), from a list of recommendations provided by Apple to its consumers.
In June 2019, Apple issued a recall for its 2015 MacBook Pro Retina 15" following reports of batteries catching fire. The recall affected 432,000 units, and Apple was criticized for the long waiting periods consumers experienced, sometimes extending up to 3 weeks for replacements to arrive; the company also did not provide alternative replacements or repair options.
In July 2019, following a campaign by the "Electronics right to repair, right to repair" movement, challenging Apple's tech repair restrictions on devices, the Federal Trade Commission, FTC held a workshop to establish the framework of a future nationwide Right to Repair rule. The movement argues Apple is preventing consumers from legitimately fixing their devices at local repair shops which is having a negative impact on consumers.
On November 19, 2020, it was announced that Apple will be paying out $113 million related to lawsuits stemming from their iPhone's battery problems and subsequent performance slow-downs. Apple continues to face litigation related to the performance throttling of iPhone 6 and 7 devices, an action that Apple argued was done in order to balance the functionality of the software with the impacts of a chemically aged battery. On January 25, 2021, Apple was hit with another lawsuit from an Italian consumer group, with more groups to follow, despite the rationale for the throttling.
On November 30, 2020, the Italian antitrust authority Italian Competition Authority, AGCM fined Apple $12 million for misleading trade practices. AGCM stated that Apple's claims of the iPhone's water resistance weren't true as the phones could only resist water up to 4 meters deep in ideal laboratory conditions and not in regular circumstances. The authority added that Apple provided no assistance to customers with water-damaged phones, which it said constituted an aggressive trade practice.
On September 8, 2022, Brazil announced the ban on the sale of iPhones without power adapters. It has also fined Apple 12.275million Brazilian real, reais ($ million). Apple announced it will appeal this decision.
See also
* List of Apple Inc. media events
* Pixar
References
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