The History of Apple Computer Inc.
In the early 1970a€™s two friends from high school, Steven Wozniak and Steven Jobs, changed the world for the better. Jobs prior to working for Apple, worked for Atari, and Wozniak worked for Hewlett-Packard. Both men dropped out of college in hopes of making a fortune (in then) a small computer company.
Apple Computer Inc. started with the introduction of the Apple I computer on April 1, 1976. Even thought the computer wasna€™t a big success, it made a good profit. A year after, the Apple II debuted at a local computer show. It was the first personal computer to come in a plastic case and include color graphics. Orders kept coming in for the new machine.
With the increase in orders and company size, Apple had a several thousand employees, and was beginning to sell computers very well. In 1980 with the introduction of the Apple III, Apple decided to hire new managers in order to find new funding for newer technology, to make Apple a a€œreal companya€?.
By 1981 the competition soon made selling computers very difficult. The company was soon forced to lay off 40 workers. In March of that year, Wozniak was injured in an airplane crash, at which point Jobs took over the position of chairman of Apple.
At the same time Jobs and some other employees began work on the Lisa project, but he was taken off the project by Mike Markkula (president at the time) for being a poor project manager. After, Jobs decide to take over the Macintosh project, and he made sure it was much more than a $500 personal computer.
In 1981 a€œBig Bluea€?, IBM introduced their first personal computer. Soon it began to dominate the personal computer market. Jobs began to realize that Apple would have to become a a€œgrown-upa€? company, and he knew he wasna€™t the person for that job.
Jobs began to approach John Sculley, president of Pepsi Cola at the time. In April 1983, Sculley became the president and CEO