Saturday 4 April 2015

APPLE, INC- A company's growth defined & conceptualized by the vision & talent of Steve Jobs...

We all know how popular  the products of Apple, Inc are across the globe. Right from the Ipod shuffle to the latest Iphone , many people are eagerly waiting for a new product to release in the market.  Apple, Inc has established itself as a brand to reckon it in terms of  quality & style where it has successfully overtaken it's competitors and create a niche for itself,

In this post, we will look at the history of Apple, Inc and find out what makes them such a popular & successful brand.  I write this out of sheer curiosity & interest with regards to Steve Jobs visionary skills & also how big a name Apple, Inc has become now. And also from a consumer point of view who owns three Apple products!!

The Beginning

The two people instrumental in creating Apple,Inc were Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak. They met when they were very young. Steve Wozniak was a computer wizard & Steve Jobs had the communication & innovative skills to market & sell the computers designed by Wozniak.

The first product they worked together desigining & developing was the Apple I which was first demonstrated in the year 1976 which was used as a Television, had a cassette interface but many of the Apple 1 devices didn't have a proper display  thus not making a big impact.  But they worked on this flaw, & came up with their next offering Apple II which was launched a year later in 1977, which was termed by many at that time as the  "first computer".

Production of  the Apple II ended in the year 1993, by that time Apple II had sold over 2 million units. Unlike their previous offering this included graphics which helped them in creating a bigger impact & it gained automatic popularity.


Small steps to gigantic success

Post the success of Apple II, in 1984 these two joined  Macintosh computers. The Macintosh was the first truly world class computer, with a user friendly graphical  interface. This computer introduced desktop publishing  with Adobe Page Maker. And the first personal computer , or the first Mac was launched in 1991 called the Powerbook.

Post the humongous success of the Powebook in 1991, Apple Computers, IBM & Motorola joined hands with IBM & Motorola which was called the AIM Alliance. They created the Power PC Processors. In that regard, Apple & IBM created two sided projects called Taligent & Kaleido Labs.

Also through the AIM alliance they launched the Power Macintosh line in the year 1994. This did'not take off as expected & Apple computers were seemingly dissappointed with the quality of the products being designed as of this alliance.  They opted out of the alliance in 1985, when Jobs was unceremoniously removed as a Board Director of Macintosh.  Macintosh str uggled throughout  the mid 1990's as they had many CEO's coming & going.

The Rise of Apple Computers

In the mid 1990's, Steve Jobs decided to work on his own and in that endeavor his company Apple Computers launched the iMac, where the desktop was recreated combining  the CPU & monitor into one. The iMac sold over one million units within a year, thus establishing the base for Apple Computers to achieve bigger things in times to come. Through this, Steve Jobs instilled a launch pad for the dynamic nature & he wanted to drive in to his fellow company members Apple's new emphasis on design & aesthetics.

The below image captures the evolution of Apple Computers really well:




Apple computers went from strength to strength where they created various products introducing various innovations in the designing of their product which always kept them one step ahead of their competitors.

Steve Jobs through his company created an entirely new operating system called Mac OS X, through which he wanted to emphasize the " digital lifestyle". In 2005, Apple entered into the music space by launching their various variants of the IPOD.  The popularity for the IPOD's was tremendous thus establishing Apple's dominance in this space as well.  In 2008, they launched the IPOD Touch with various storage capacities, thus making the consumer experience even more dynamic while listening to music.

In January 2006, Apple Computers was rechristened as Apple, Inc to incorporate the company's future endeavors. Apple, Inc successfully launched itself in the very competitive mobile phone network, through it's Iphones.  Right from it's inception,  it created it's own benchmarks & trends which left big players  in the mobile phone industry think deep & hard in order to outperform Iphone with regards to their designs & features.

Under Steve Jobs, Apple , Inc launched a wide range of products like the IPAD, Macbook, Macbook Pro  etc. Many of us can'not do away with using one of these products in our modern lifestyle. A large portion of the technology users across the world use one product of  Apple, Inc at least.

This was largely possible because of the visionary  thinking process of Steve Jobs, where he was able to successfully implement the products he envisioned with great success. His inspirational leadership skills is the main reason for Apple, Inc being such a big brand nowadays.

Having read a lot about him and seen the film Jobs  which was a biopic of Steve Jobs,  I want to end this post by saluting the great mind &  the corporate genius in Steve Jobs, and say my thanks for making all lives so much more easy, effective & fun.

Steve Jobs was known for his fabulous oratory skills so as a  tribute to this genius, I will showcase a glimpse of his oratory skills:


Steve Jobs was a visionary who had so many innovative ideas & innovations. His legacy has been carried forward as Apple, Inc is still going strong despite Jobs not being at the helm of the company.

And on a personal front, I have been fascinated with Apple,Inc for many years, say around ten years. My brother Varun, is an Apple loyalist as all the important personal gadgets he owns are of Apple like the Apple IPhone to the Apple IPOD touch. Currently he uses a Apple IPhone 6.

For me being a big music buff, I wanted to own a device which could store lot of songs & which could maintain the quality of the songs over a long period of time. And then the Apple IPOD shuffle was launched in various colours and storage capacities.

So, I bought a 4 GB IPOD shuffle in 2005 and it still continues to have the same effectiveness as it had ten years back even now. Which is something really amazing. The battery backup this device offers continues to amaze me till date.

Then, I purchased a IPOD classic as obviously a 4 GB capacity IPOD was not enough for me,  so now I am a proud owner of an IPOD classic 160 GB . Although this product didn't become a craze with the mass audience because of  reasons like it's size and probably the inability of the device to have a touch-screen facility.

But personally being a huge Movie and Cricket buff, this device is very useful for me to store songs and also song videos & movies too. And the option of creating unlimited playlists allows me to segregate my songs in a more organised manner.

And finally after 2-3 trials with Android devices( I owned two Samsung mobiles in the past 4-5 years) I was gifted an Apple IPhone 5S on my last birthday. I was a bit apprehensive at first while using the IPhone 5S at first as it was a new device with new features as compared to the Android devices.

But I can defiantly  tell you all that after using this mobile for almost 6 months now, it has become a part of my life. So many things gets done in this mobile & I wouldn't want to change brands in the upcoming future too soon!! The best features I have noticed so far is the battery backup of the mobile. It gives almost 8-9 hours of battery backup!! Now, Isn't  that amazing?

For all you  readers who are apprehensive to shift to Apple & their products, you should take the plunge I can definitely say. Durability, longevity, quality & full value for money are some of the features which are the hallmarks of  the products offered by Apple!!

For you Tech geeks out there, for a comparative analysis on Apple  vs. other products, please do read the articles you find online about them. I am no expert when it comes to these things. But as a consumer I can vouch for Apple's products & that is what I have done in this blog post!!

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