The Birth of Apple – Rob Stoll Paper 1

Abstract

This first paper will cover the birth of one of the most impressive computer companies of all time. I will cover the starting of Apple as it pertains to its founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Job’s Palo Alto garage. From here we will delve into the people who were involved in the creation of the company as well as their philosophies.  I will talk about it’s two founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak from the time they met each other in 1971 and founded Apple up until Steve Jobs leaving the company after a very personal conflict with the President of the company at the time John Sculley in 1985. The present will cover from where Steve Jobs comes back to the company he founded in 1997 at the Cupertino Campus and his implementation of the “iLine” of products. The future will cover from the death of Steve Jobs to his legacy on into the future of what Apple will be. The concept of cloud computing will be covered.

The Apple 1

It began in the early 70s when Steve Jobs was introduced to Steve Wozniak by a mutual friend. Wozniak, at the time, was working on a computer that would be called the Apple 1. He invited Jobs to the Homebrew Computing Club, where he displayed the device. Jobs, amazed by what Wozniak had created, saw a business opportunity. All the members and friends of Job’s at the time wanted to build Wozniack’s design, but they lacked the building skills to do so. Jobs thought they would make it and sell it, so in 1976, they started selling it in Jobs’ garage and buyers had to add their own casing. Ultimately, Jobs masterminded the birth of Apple. “They started Apple because they wanted the computer for themselves and their immediate friends wanted one once they saw the prototype so gradually they were pulled into business. They didn’t start off to build a large company they started off to build a few dozen computers for their friends.”  Ron Wayne was the third member of Apple. Older than both Steve’s, he was like “adult supervision.” He dealt with the finances. Wayne also drew the Apple logo, which was replaced in 1977 by Rob Janoff’s logo of an apple, which the company has kept up to date. Janoff also wrote the original partnership agreement between Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne. Wayne withdrew from the company shortly after.

The Apple 2

The Apple 2 was released in 1977. It was the first computer to have colored graphics. Jerry Manock designed the case for the Apple 2, which consisted of foam-molded plastic that was “uncluttered and exhumed friendliness.”  It was a huge success as sales grew rapidly to 150 million in the next three years. It took Apple from a suburban garage to the industry of personal computing. In 1980, Apple went public and had their own campus headquarters. The company was worth two billion dollars. Jobs was the chairman, but wasn’t seen as someone to run Apple and be the President of the company.

John Sculley

Apple went through several Presidents early on. Mike Markula was the first. He was like a father figure to Jobs. After several years, he wanted to resign. Apple’s board including Jobs went on a search for the new President of their company. John Scully of Pepsi-Cola was a top candidate for the position. He was very intrigued by Jobs. They traveled back and forth from California to New York several times to see each other. Jobs famous line that got Sculley to take the position was, “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?” At the beginning, Jobs loved Sculley (and then a few years later their relationship fell apart). They would call each other at 2 a.m. to discuss new ideas and such. They could even complete each others’ sentences.

The Lisa

The Lisa launched in January of 1983, one year before the Mac. Jobs didn’t care much for it. The computer was named after his daughter that he had abandoned. The computer cost $9,995 and didn’t sell well compared to the Apple 2. After only two years, Apple stopped selling the Lisa.

Xerox PARC’s

In 1977, Jobs, Sculley, and Bill Atkinson, a programmer at Apple went to visit a company called Xerox PARC’s. Initially, Xerox didn’t want to reveal too much to Apple, but due to Jobs’ persistence, they put on a special presentation for him. The whole idea of a Graphic User Interface (GUI) and a mouse came from Xerox. Before the GUI was created, in order to interact with your computer, you had to type several line of code for it to complete the desired task. It was usually green characters on a black screen. What Xerox showed Jobs was a bitmap system, where each pixel on the screen was controlled by the computer’s memory. Bitmapping is currently how the GUI is presented today. Jobs was blown away by this. The idea of bitmapping amazed him, but he knew there was one more thing that Xerox was hiding, so he made another visit to the company to figure it out.

The major piece that came out of the Xerox presentation was this thing called a mouse. Previously, in order to interact with your computer, you typed code into a keyboard. What Xerox had produced was a better way to interact with your computer, called a mouse. The Xerox mouse had three buttons and two wheels on the bottom of it to move the mouse up and down. It was very bulky and expensive. Jobs saw a goldmine and went back to Apple to have them produce their own version of the mouse. He wanted it to have four things. First, he wanted to build it for less then fifteen dollars. It was to be a low-cost consumer product. Second, he wanted it to last for two years. Third, he wanted it to work on a desktop. Instead of having two wheels on the bottom, it would have a ball that enabled the mouse to be moved around all over the place. Finally, it had to work on Jobs’ Levi’s jeans.

Steve Wozniack

Steve Wozniack came up with the designs for the Apple 1 and 2, but he never wanted to be an authoritative figure at Apple like Jobs. Wozniack wanted to stay at the bottom of the organization chart as an engineer. He eventually left Apple to make the world’s first universal remote control. He showed his designs to Jobs, who was not interested building it, so Wozniack started his own company.

The Macintosh

Jobs was in charge of the Macintosh project and chose his own team to design the Mac. He chose many people who worked on the Apple 2, such as programmer Bill Atkinson. When he interviewed candidates, Jobs asked obscene questions about their virginity status and their drug use like if they ever tried LSD (which he had done many times in the past). He thought it would take one year to produce the Macintosh when it wound actually end up up taking three years.

Jobs embraced minimalism and thought that simplicity provided the ultimate satisfaction. He wanted a clean high tech and friendly look, so the computer was designed to look like a face with the disk slot as a mouth. Each detail was essential in making the Mac, even the design of the box. Jobs was a perfectionist. He also wanted to control the user experience from the software made for the Mac to the operating system and the hardware. When he designed the Mac Jobs made it so that you needed special tools to open it up. Therefore, only Apple employees could do so and hackers could not mess around with it. This is where Wozniack differed. Wozniack wanted people to be able to customize the Mac, basically hacking into it.

When designing the GUI for the Mac, Jobs was so much of a perfectionist that he wanted rectangles with rounded corners everywhere. His fellow coworker, Atkinson, didn’t like that so Jobs took him for a walk outside and pointed out seventeen examples of items that had rounded corners. Atkinson gave in. Jobs wanted the Mac to be easy to use with the mouse and icons on the screen. He also eliminated the cursor keys because he thought that the mouse should navigate around the screen. He made it so that the Lisa nor the Apple 2 were compatible to the Mac.

When the Mac was finally released, Jobs had all the designers on the team put their signatures on drafting paper. They were then engraved inside of each Mac that was shipped, so that customers wouldn’t see them, but they design team knew they were there. Jobs made people believe the impossible could be done. One example of this is when the Mac was set to ship, his team told him they needed an additional two weeks to finish writing the code. Jobs told them, “There’s no way we are slipping,” and somehow the Mac team was able to get it done by launch day.

In January 1984, the Mac was released. For advertising purposes, Jobs had Director Ridley Scott make a ninety second commercial to air during the Superbowl. It cost Apple $900,000 to make.

Steve Jobs gave his first keynote address in 1984, where he wanted the Mac to introduce itself.

A power struggle began in 1985 between Sculley and Jobs over the initial price of the Mac. It was selling for $1,995. Sculley wanted to raise the price by $500 to use the money for advertising campaigns. Jobs didn’t like that at all. Sculley also wanted to focus on the Apple 2, which was doing really well at the time. The board of directors at Apple thought that Sculley should be controlling Jobs. They wanted Jobs to be removed from the Mac team, but Sculley was not successful with that task. At one point, Jobs tried to get Sculley ousted in May of 1985 when Sculley was supposed to be on a business trip to China. Sculley was informed by a fellow Apple employee that this was going to happen, so he cancelled the trip. During a board meeting, the board voted as to who should stay at the company. The board sided with Sculley and Steve Jobs resigned from the company he created.

The Present 

After Steve Jobs left Apple, he formed his own computer company in 1985 called NeXT. In 1986, Jobs bought a company called The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division. Both companies did well. NeXT was purchased by Apple in 1997 for the software Jobs had created. When NeXT was bought by Apple, Jobs came back to the company he founded and was named iCEO (interim CEO), and later CEO of Apple. During his time, Jobs created the  “i” division of products, which included: the iMac, iBook, iPod, iPhone and iPad. Apple became more of a consumer company and went from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc.

The Future

In 2011, Jobs passed away, leaving the company he had founded forever. His legacy will move on through the delivery of content over hardware with the creation of iCloud, where all content is pushed to “the cloud.” Boxed software no longer exists. Any software you wish to purchase is through the Mac App Store. Apple has also changed education, getting rid of the physical textbooks due to their creation of iBooks and putting interactive textbooks onto the iPad.

My relationship with Apple

My first experience with an Apple product was when I was in 11th grade back in 2004. I was taking my first Graphic Design class and had never used a Mac prior to that. The first Mac I ever used was an eMac. It was such a new and exciting experience and it changed my life. A year later, in 2005, I bought my first computer which was the newly introduced Mac Mini. I loved it. Later that year I went with my mom to go to the Walt Whitman Mall Apple Store to buy my first iPod, which was the iPod Mini. This was also my first time walking into an Apple Store and I’ll never forget it. It was so futuristic and high tech, it was like no store I had ever been in. I immediately fell in love with Apple. Since then I’ve owned just about every product Apple introduced. After the Mac Mini I bought a white MacBook, then another iPod, a MacBook Pro along with the original iPhone (I’ve owned every iPhone Model since) then in the end of my college years I bought the first 27inch iMac (which I currently own to this day) and an iPad. Just yesterday March 16th, 2012 I bought my latest Apple Product “the New iPad.”

You many be asking yourself “why do you love Apple this much?”  I love them for their products which are designed to be simple and easy to use. I love them for their retail stores and the employees that work in them. The employees are so friendly and aren’t their to push you into buying their products because the products sell themselves. They are there to inform you about them and answer any questions you may have. I also love Apple because of their advertising and marketing campaigns. Lastly and most importantly I love Apple because of one of  it’s founders Steve Jobs who recently past away. He was such an extraordinary person who had a love for design and his company. He changed the world. If it weren’t for him Apple wouldn’t have existed. He has impacted everyones life. If you own any Apple product it’s because of him.  If it weren’t for Jobs and the products he created most of the jobs today wouldn’t have existed. I wouldn’t be a Graphic Designer if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs because I wouldn’t have the tools necessary to do my work. Steve Jobs was an amazing person and he will be greatly missed but his legacy and the company he founded will move on.

Sources:

“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs- Billion Dollar Hippy- Special (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC3qFtgeogE)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.