Apple Computers past and present
On April Fool's Day, 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs released the Apple I computer and started Apple Computers. The Apple I was the first with a single circuit board used in a computer.
* The History of the Apple I & Apple II Computers
The first home computer with a GUI or graphical user interface was the Apple Lisa. The very first graphical user interface was developed by the Xerox Corporation at their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the 1970s. Steve Jobs, visited PARC in 1979 (after buying Xerox stock) and was impressed and influenced by the Xerox Alto, the first computer ever with a graphical user interface. Jobs designed the new Apple Lisa based on the technology he saw at Xerox.
* The History of the Apple Lisa
With the 1984 Apple Macintosh Steve Jobs made sure developers created software for the new Macintosh Computer.
The Apple Museum is dedicated to the history of Apple Computer, Inc. and with more than 350 Apple products listed, the most comprehensive Apple history source on the internet.
There are only few companies that have an as interesting past as Apple Computer, a company founded by two young college-drop-outs that grew extremely fast in the early years of the computer age, lost nearly its entire market share with the uprising of the Wintel generation but came back by reinventing the computer! A company that invented many products that revolutionized the entire computer industry, but also a company that struggled from mismanagement for many years. History, thrilling like fiction!Notice: In its 7th year since founding, The Apple Museum has had a rather hard year. Offline since January due to problems with an antique database system, promised re-release dates being pushed back continuously, and then in September, the worst case scenario happened: The database with all data for version 7 of the museum was lost!
What you see here is the first small step of rebuilding the largest Apple history database on the internet. Considering that the museum used to list almost 400 Apple products, this process will take a long time. For now, The Apple Museum will be focused on the history, the anecdotes and background information and not on specifications, which will be provided by Apple History and MacTracker instead. Step by step the product specifications will be replaced with our own entries.
We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvinience. Many thanks to those who offered help over the past months!
pple Products
The specifications of the Apple products is unavailable at the moment. I will try to put the products descriptions back online as quickly as possible. For the time being, please visit Apple-History or download MacTracker for the product specifications.
The name "Apple Computer"
A lot of people wonder where the name "Apple Computer" came from, as it is a rather unusal name for a computer company.
Steve Jobs came up with the name in early 1976. At the time, he was often visiting and working on a small farm friends of his owned. It was a hippie commune where Steve spent a few months of the year.
When he returned from one of those stays, he told Steve Wozniak about his idea. Jobs probably was working on apple plantages. Or he just wanted their startup to be in front of Atari in the phone book. Or it was a tribute to Apple Records, the music label of the Beatles.
Whatever the true origin of the name was, Woz knew instantly that they were going to be in trouble with Apple Records sooner or later. But as they were unable find a name that sounded better than Apple Computer, the name was chosen.
Woz's worries turned out to be justified. Apple Computer, Inc. was sued by Apple Records over trademark violations in 1989. (for more on this see below)
The Apple logo
The first Apple logo was designed by Ron Wayne, co-founder of Apple Computer. It was rather a picture than a logo. It showed Sir Isaac Newton sitting beneath the famous Apple tree thinking about gravity.
It was only used for the Apple I. Steve Jobs felt that it was too intellectual and it was almost impossible to put on computers as one could only recognize the details of the drawing when it was large enough.
Therefore, in 1977 Jobs asked the art designer Rob Janoff to design the new Apple logo. The new logo had a simple shape of an Apple, bitten into, with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. The bite symbolized knowlegde (in the bible the apple was the fruit of the tree of knowledge) and the bite could also be pronounced "byte", a reference to computer technology.
When Jean Louis Gassée was asked about his thoughts to the Apple logo he answered: "One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn't dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy."
In 1997, Steve Jobs decided to drop the multi-colored Apple logo and replace it by a solid-colored logo. The first Apple computers to feature the new logo were the new PowerBook G3s in 1998 (although they still featured both types of logos).
The Mac Logo
Probably the most popular logo is the Picasso-inspired Mac logo. It was designed by Tom Hughes and John Casado, art directors on the Macintosh developement team. Originally, the logo for Macintosh looked completely different and was designed by the artist Jean-Michel Folon who was payed with a royalty of $1 for every Macintosh sold (overall over 30 million). But before the release of Macintosh, Steve Jobs changed his mind and had it replaced by the simple and colorful drawing of Hughes and Casado.
The "Picasso"-logo was used as welcoming message on all versions of the Mac system software until System 7.6.1, where for the first time the Mac Face logo was used instead. With the release of MacOS X 10.2 (Jaguar) the happy Mac and Mac Face logo at startup were replaced by a grey Apple on a white background.
Today Apple features the latest iMac...Apple has created its own own revolution.
* The History of the Apple I & Apple II Computers
The first home computer with a GUI or graphical user interface was the Apple Lisa. The very first graphical user interface was developed by the Xerox Corporation at their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the 1970s. Steve Jobs, visited PARC in 1979 (after buying Xerox stock) and was impressed and influenced by the Xerox Alto, the first computer ever with a graphical user interface. Jobs designed the new Apple Lisa based on the technology he saw at Xerox.
* The History of the Apple Lisa
With the 1984 Apple Macintosh Steve Jobs made sure developers created software for the new Macintosh Computer.
The Apple Museum is dedicated to the history of Apple Computer, Inc. and with more than 350 Apple products listed, the most comprehensive Apple history source on the internet.
There are only few companies that have an as interesting past as Apple Computer, a company founded by two young college-drop-outs that grew extremely fast in the early years of the computer age, lost nearly its entire market share with the uprising of the Wintel generation but came back by reinventing the computer! A company that invented many products that revolutionized the entire computer industry, but also a company that struggled from mismanagement for many years. History, thrilling like fiction!Notice: In its 7th year since founding, The Apple Museum has had a rather hard year. Offline since January due to problems with an antique database system, promised re-release dates being pushed back continuously, and then in September, the worst case scenario happened: The database with all data for version 7 of the museum was lost!
What you see here is the first small step of rebuilding the largest Apple history database on the internet. Considering that the museum used to list almost 400 Apple products, this process will take a long time. For now, The Apple Museum will be focused on the history, the anecdotes and background information and not on specifications, which will be provided by Apple History and MacTracker instead. Step by step the product specifications will be replaced with our own entries.
We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvinience. Many thanks to those who offered help over the past months!
pple Products
The specifications of the Apple products is unavailable at the moment. I will try to put the products descriptions back online as quickly as possible. For the time being, please visit Apple-History or download MacTracker for the product specifications.
The name "Apple Computer"
A lot of people wonder where the name "Apple Computer" came from, as it is a rather unusal name for a computer company.
Steve Jobs came up with the name in early 1976. At the time, he was often visiting and working on a small farm friends of his owned. It was a hippie commune where Steve spent a few months of the year.
When he returned from one of those stays, he told Steve Wozniak about his idea. Jobs probably was working on apple plantages. Or he just wanted their startup to be in front of Atari in the phone book. Or it was a tribute to Apple Records, the music label of the Beatles.
Whatever the true origin of the name was, Woz knew instantly that they were going to be in trouble with Apple Records sooner or later. But as they were unable find a name that sounded better than Apple Computer, the name was chosen.
Woz's worries turned out to be justified. Apple Computer, Inc. was sued by Apple Records over trademark violations in 1989. (for more on this see below)
The Apple logo
The first Apple logo was designed by Ron Wayne, co-founder of Apple Computer. It was rather a picture than a logo. It showed Sir Isaac Newton sitting beneath the famous Apple tree thinking about gravity.
It was only used for the Apple I. Steve Jobs felt that it was too intellectual and it was almost impossible to put on computers as one could only recognize the details of the drawing when it was large enough.
Therefore, in 1977 Jobs asked the art designer Rob Janoff to design the new Apple logo. The new logo had a simple shape of an Apple, bitten into, with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. The bite symbolized knowlegde (in the bible the apple was the fruit of the tree of knowledge) and the bite could also be pronounced "byte", a reference to computer technology.
When Jean Louis Gassée was asked about his thoughts to the Apple logo he answered: "One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn't dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy."
In 1997, Steve Jobs decided to drop the multi-colored Apple logo and replace it by a solid-colored logo. The first Apple computers to feature the new logo were the new PowerBook G3s in 1998 (although they still featured both types of logos).
The Mac Logo
Probably the most popular logo is the Picasso-inspired Mac logo. It was designed by Tom Hughes and John Casado, art directors on the Macintosh developement team. Originally, the logo for Macintosh looked completely different and was designed by the artist Jean-Michel Folon who was payed with a royalty of $1 for every Macintosh sold (overall over 30 million). But before the release of Macintosh, Steve Jobs changed his mind and had it replaced by the simple and colorful drawing of Hughes and Casado.
The "Picasso"-logo was used as welcoming message on all versions of the Mac system software until System 7.6.1, where for the first time the Mac Face logo was used instead. With the release of MacOS X 10.2 (Jaguar) the happy Mac and Mac Face logo at startup were replaced by a grey Apple on a white background.
Today Apple features the latest iMac...Apple has created its own own revolution.
