History of the Mac - Apple Macintosh

Apple ignited the personel computer revolution in the 1970's with the apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980's with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award- winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone - positioning that used to appear at the end of all Apple marketing and press literature.

was founded in California on 1 April 1976. Though it's never been confirmed, many believe it was named after Apple Corps, the Beatles' publisher; a poor choice of name that led to much legal wranglings over the years. Apple Corps dragged Apple Computer through the courts, made expensive financial settlements, and was assured by Apple Computer that it would keep out of the music business - a promise that was called into question with the arrival of iPod, iTunes and online music store.

In retrospect, in a world where you can barely ride a bus or a train without seeing a pair of distinctive white iPod headphones, it may have seemed a rash move to choose that name, but in 1976 the world was a very different place. Computers were primitive, the internet was non-existent, and music came not on hard drives but flexible vinyl discs. That was the world into which Apple was born.

The two men we must thank for bringing us, over 30 years later, such masterpieces as the iMac, iPod and iPhone are Steve Jobs, the company's CEO, and Steve Wozniak.

They met at the Homebrew Computer Club, a gathering of wannabe geeks in Silicon Valley. Despite the differences in their ages (Wozniak is almost five years older) the two men struck up a friendship, and started working on the projects together. Jobs had spent some time as a programmer for Atari, then leading light in video games production, while Wozniak had written a programming language and designed a circuit board for a brand new computer microprocessor. It was almost inevitable that the two men should found a computer company along with friend Ronald Wayne, who we can thank for drawing the original Apple logo, which depicted Newton sitting beneath his famed apple tree.

The story of how they funded their first product - circuit board Wozniak had designed and which they christened the Apple I - is well-known. Jobs had sold his camper van; Wozniak his programmable calculator. Finally they had start-up funding, but neither of them could have known that those few dollars they raised would be the foundations of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

If you look at the Apple I today, it doesn't look much like what any of us would consider to be a computer. It was quite literally a bare bones system that you had to put together yourself. Many of the photos that you can find of it on the internet show it in a wooden case with word Apple crudely sawn into the top, but this was a mere stopgap, and as such every Apple I would be unique.

The Apple II arrived the following year, and proved to be a revolutionary machine. For starters, it boasted colour graphics, and after initially shipping with a tape recorder for storage that was soon swapped out for a floppy disc drive. Despite this, it wasn't until VisiCalc arrived on the platform, allowing businesses to do their spreadsheeting tasks on a computer rather than squared paper, that it became a must-have machine.

By now, Ronald Wayne had bailed out of Apple Computer and had sold his 10% stake in the company to Steve Jobs for a paltry $800; a move he should now be regretting, with its stock having accelerated to sky-high prices. Jobs had brought in a third partner, Mark Markkula, a one-time employee of intel , who helped the company to secure funding to the tune of $250.000.

Perhaps inevitably, the Apple II was followed by the Apple III at the start of the 1980's, and then the III+.

By then though, Jobs had paid a visit to Xerox' research facilities at Palo Alto, the so-called Parc, where he saw the Alto Computer. This was a radical departure from the accepted norms of computing, as it eschewed screens full of text for a graphical interface, in which the three-button mouse was king. Jobs and colleague Jef Raskin, were impressed by what they saw, and when they returned to Apple they started working on integrating similar interface in to two computers in its labs at that time: the high-end Lisa business machine and the low-end consumer Macintosh, named in honour of Jef Raskin's favourite variety of Apple.

Although the Lisa came out first, and was the firs commercial computer to support a graphical user interface (GUI), it was hugely expensive, and didn't have staying power of the Macintosh, which is the direct predecessor of today's Mac Computers.

The Macintosh was finally sent to the shops in January 1984, and promoted with a memorable advert that aired in a break of the televised Superbowl that year.