•March: Woz finishes work on the Apple I. He first asks his employer, Hewlett Packard, if they are interested in an $800 machine that runs BASIC. All the departments in HP turns down his offer.
•April 1: Apple Computer Company is founded by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Ron Wayne.
•May: $666.66 Apple I introduced at the Home Brew Computer Club meeting. Paul Terell, president of Byte Shop chain, makes 50 orders.
•June: Byte Shop order finished 1 day before deadline. Ron Wayne leaves company.
•Fall: Woz shows an Apple II prototype to Commodore representatives. Commodore turns him down.
•August: Jobs asks his former boss, Nolan Bushnell, for information on investors. Bushnell recommends Don Valentine, who in turn recommends Mike Markkula, who becomes a key person in Apple's history for over twenty years.
•October: Commodore buys MOS Technology, the company who makes the processors powered by the Apple I and II.
1977
•January 3: Apple Computer, Inc. is officially created after the company is incorporated. Mike Markkula invests $92,000 in Apple, with intent to invest $250,000.
•April: The Apple II is publicly introduced for $1295.
1978
•January 3: 34-year-old Jef Raskin joins Apple Computer exactly one year after becoming incorporated. Becomes employee #31.
•June 17: Jobs' daughter, Lisa Nicole, is born out of wedlock. He initially denies the possibility of being the father, but came to accept her.
1979
•January: Daniel Fylstra writes CalcuLedger (later to become VisiCalc). Offers it to Apple and Microsoft for $1 million. Both turn him down.
•Spring: Raskin refuses proposal to work on Annie Project, a $500 game machine. Suggests a GUI project instead.
•May: Raskin writes proposal for the PITS (Person In The Street's) Computer. It would supposedly to solve the complexities of the Apple II.
•June: Apple II+ introduced for $1195.
•July 30: The Lisa Project, a $2000 Apple III-like computer, begins under Ken Rothmuller. Expected release was March 1981.
•August: Apple liscenses AppleSoft BASIC from Microsoft for $21,000. Written by Randy Wigginton, who also created MacWrite.
•September: Raskin gets approval to begin work on Macintosh Project, a $500 portable computer smilar to his PITS proposal.
•October: Fylstra releases VisiCalc. It becomes one of the most successful programs ever, being the first "killer app".
•November: Jobs takes his first visit to PARC in exchange for allowing Xerox to invest $1 million in Apple.
•December: Jobs returns to PARC with several vice presidents and management heads.
1980
•March: Lisa project revamped to include all the features of the Alto, with several more. Rothmuller complains the specs are too much to be accomplished if they want to retain the current release schedule and keep the final price reasonable. Jobs fires Rothmuller for "not cooperating", later replaced by John Couch.
•Summer: Jobs hires 15 Xerox employees to work on the Lisa Project.
•May 19: The Apple III is released at the National Computer Conference (NCC) for $4340 to $7800 depending on configuration.
•December 12: Apple goes public. Apple's share rises 32% that day, making 40 employees instant millionares. Jobs, the largest shareholder, makes $217 million dollars alone. Markkula makes $203 million that day, an incomprehensible 220,700% return on investment . Neither Jef Raskin, nor Daniel Kottke (one of the original Apple employees) were allowed to buy stock and so made no money during this time.
1981
•January: Jobs forces himself into the Macintosh Project, after earlier dismissing and often trying to cancel it.
•March: Mike Markkula becomes president of Apple. The original ship date for the Lisa is missed, coming out 3 years later.
•June: An improved variation of the Alto, the $16,595 Xerox Star is introduced at NCC. It included dragging and double clicking of icons.
•August 12: IBM introduces the IBM PC for $1565. With 16k RAM, a 5.25" floppy drive, running the first version of MS-DOS, it is a rather pitiful computer that rarely reached the efficiency of the Apple II released 4 years earlier. Nevertheless, it becomes an instant success.
1982
•January 22: Jobs convinces Bill to write a BASIC interpreter for the Mac. This will become the failed MS BASIC.
•February: The Mac case-design is finished and finally approved. All the signatures of the members of the project are placed inside the mold.
•March 1: After Jobs forces Raskin out of the Macintosh project, he officially resigns.
•July 30: The applications bundled with the Lisa finally work together under the OS for the first time.
•September 1: Lisa is declared ready for market.
•Late in the year: Chiat/Day writes "1984" ad, originally for the Apple II. It is never run.
1983
•January 19: The Lisa is introduced for $9998. The Apple IIe is introduced for $1395, later aguably becoming the most successful and most popular Apple computer. It will be produced for 10 and a half more years.
•Spring: Chiat/Day rewrites "1984" for use in the now famous commercial advertising the Macintosh during Super Bowl XVIII.
•May: Apple enters Fortune 500 at #411 after only five years of existence. It becomes the fastest growing company in history.
•April 8: JObs convinces John Sculley, tehn president of PepsiCo, to become president and CEO of Apple.
•May 16: The original ship date for the Macintosh at the NCC is missed.
•September: Lisa released without bundled software for $6995.
•October 7: The Macintosh Introduction Plan, a list of popular developers and celebrities that are invited to beta-test the Mac, is written.
•November: The Lisa and Macintosh divisions are combined to form the Apple 32 SuperMicro Division.
•December: The Apple III+ is introduced for $2995. It replaced the defective Apple III models.
•December 15: Chiat/Day airs "1984" for the first time. It was aired in the sign-off slot of KMVT Channel 11, at 1:00 AM (coincidentally, on my third birthday). This is customary for the company, so it can be elligible for the advertising awards issued that year.
•Late 1983: IBM sells 1 million IBM PCs, and introduces the big flop IBM PC/Jr.
•Bill Gates first announces Windows, and how the GUI will revolutionize the PC. Microsoft will not release it for 4 more years.
1984
•January 17: The 30-second version of "1984" appears in theater previews across the country. It was so admired, it was often replayed for free.
•January 22: Apple airs "1984" during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII to a crowd of
•January 24: $2495 Macintosh and $3495 Lisa 2 introduced.
•April 24: Apple IIc introduced at the Apple Forever Conference in San Diego. The Apple III+ is finally discontinued.
•September: Apple IIc wins Industrial Design Excellence Award.
•Microsoft announces and released Word, Multiplan, File, Chart, BASIC, and other programs.
1985
•January: Apple renames the Lisa 2/10 the Macintosh XL, and discontinues all other Lisa configurations.
•January 20: "Lemmings" commercial bombs at Super Bowl XIX.
•March: Apple IIe enchanced introduced.
•April 29: Macintosh XL discontinued.
•May 15: The last Lisa/Mac XL is produced at a Carrollton, Texas factory. Sun Remarketing buys thousands of the last Lisas, and is able to sell most of them at fair prices after upgrading them with current Macintosh technology.
•May 24: Jobs tries to force Sculley out of Apple by forming a coup against him.
•May 31: Jobs is stripped of all his duties. He job description becomes "global thinker", and his remote office dubbed "Siberia".
•July 29: Gates sends Scully a memo suggesting licensing of the Mac OS and prospective companies who might create Mac clones.
•September: Apple sells 500,000 Macintosh models.
•September 12: Jobs announces intent to create new company with other "lower-level" employees.
•September 17: Jobs distributes his resignation letter to Apple and several other news media figures.
•September 23: Apples files suit against Jobs. Apple claims Jobs knows sensitive technology secrets that he might use in his new company.
•November 22: Sculley signs agreement to let Bill Gates use Mac technology in Windows, if Microsoft continues to produce products for the Mac.
•Microsoft releases Excel for Macintosh.
1986
•January: Apple settles law suit against Jobs out of court. Jobs agrees not to hire any Apple employees for 6 months, and to always make computers that are more powerful than anything Apple has to offer...yes, you read right.
•February: Jobs finishes selling all but one of his 6.5 million shares of stock to begin NeXT, Inc.
•June: Paul Rand, responsible for the IBM logo, designs the NeXT logo and suggests the use of the small "e".
•September: The Apple IIGS is introduced for $999.
•Aldus introduces the TIFF format, later to become the desktop publishing standard. Compaq introduces the first Intel 386 PC, replacing IBM as the PC technology leader.
1987
•January: Apple renames the Lisa 2/10 the Macintosh XL, and discontinues all other Lisa configurations.
•January 3: Apple celebrates its tenth birthday. A coffee table book, So Far, later chronicles the experiences of the last ten years.
•Early in the year: Ross Perot invests $20 million in NeXT, Inc.
•Spring: Projected release of first NeXT machine. The NeXT Computer would be a year and a half late.
•March 17: Apple declares 6 different Mac Pluses the 1 milionth Mac. Raskin is presented with one of them, which he still uses.
•August 11: Microsoft releases the first version of its GUI OS, Windows 1.01. It's arcane user interface is almost unsuable, a large disapointment.
•The IIe extended is introduced. Raskin releases the Canon Cat, a computer that was much more like his PITS proposal several years back. Though it fails to become popular due to lack of production by Canon, it wins several design awards.
1988
•January: Microsoft releases the second version of Windows, version 2.03. S