Founded in 1976, in a rusty garage somewhere in the state of California, by three broke men — Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne — with one big idea. Yes! A trillion-dollar company was started in an old garage. College dropouts Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, along with their friend Ronald Wayne, started a company named Apple Computers. They presented their first computer — named Apple I — by 1976 and introduced it to the Homebrew Computer Club. The device was basically a case with several buttons and switches and was devoid of any such thing as a monitor or a keyboard. No matter how amazing the enterprises felt the device was, nobody was ready to invest in a product as dicey as the Apple I computer. After HP and Atari showed less than little interest in investing, the three started their very own company in the family garage of Steve Jobs.

Launch of the first computer — Apple I

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After establishing their start-up enterprise, Apple I received its first order from the Byte Shop. Just when things seemed to get better, Wayne decided to let things go. He soon left the start-up which now is worth a trillion dollars! One after another offer knocked on the Jobs’ garage and soon Apple got its logo designed in 1977, the same year Apple II went on floors. The computer had its own plastic case, standard keyboard, power supply and even colour graphics. But what really made the decision for people was an application called VisiCalc. It performed calculations for people. Soon enough, one after another product was launched by Apple Computer, with its respective successes and downfalls.

READ | Apple first US company to hit $1 trillion-mark

The Macintosh

The game changer, however, for Apple was the Macintosh. The PC, priced at $2, 495, sold over 70, 000 units within the first four months of its launch. The machine is often associated with the ‘1984’ ad. The ad was aired during the third quarter of the 1984 Superbowl XVIII championship football game and was directed at the International Business Machines (IBM). The ad, not to mention Apple Computer, topped many charts and is still considered to be one of the most entertaining and sarcastic ads. Unfortunately, a year later, Wozniak also left the enterprise.    

Fired from own company

Can a person get fired from a company he/she started? Well, Steve Jobs was. Jobs and Apple’s new CEO, John Sculley, had already experienced a truck load of arguments regarding the handling of the Macintosh. One of the areas of disagreement was the price of the machine. Macintosh, priced initially at $1,995, was hiked to $2,495 after Scully decided to interfere. Jobs arranged a sort of resistance coup against Scully, which resulted in him being placed in the chair of the chairman. Left in a position he no longer liked, and with no control or say in what happened, Jobs was forced to resign from the company he founded along with his two best friends in his parents’ garage.

New beginnings and a delightful return

Jobs was jobless and yet filled with ideas, so he decided to attend to both the issues by establishing NeXT, an enterprise that developed high-performance computers. NeXT was constantly rising up the charts whilst Apple was having one downfall after another. This scenario resulted in Gil Amelio, the then CEO, buying both NeXT and NeXTSTEP operating systems. This major step led to Steve Jobs’ rather dramatic return into his very own company. The same year, the company introduced Apple Online Store and the next year, in 1997, the first iMac was launched. It was with this product that Apple returned to profitability.

What then?

Apple Computer soon changed its name to Apple. Why? Because it was no longer just created and manufactured computers. Apple launched its own iPod, iTunes Store, MacBook Pro — the company’s second d PC after iMac — and what not. Over the years, Apple’s stock price increased manifolds. In 2007, Apple launched its first smartphone — the iPhone. That year, Apple became the world’s third-largest mobile handset supplier. And rest is history. One model after another, one device after another, and now Apple stands unbeatable at the pinnacle of success very few ever get a taste of.