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| Photo by Derek Xing |
It was extraordinary circumstances that led to Apple's birth. Founding fathers Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak might never have met if it hadn't been for Bill Fernandez, who intervened. Fernandez was a school friend of Jobs and also Wozniak's neighbor. Wozniak was already deep into electronics—building circuits, hacking gadgets, and living for the joy of creation. Jobs shared a budding passion for technology too, though his interest leaned toward design, vision, and the possibilities of turning ideas into real products or businesses.
Almost ended up in jail with the "Blue Box"
Their first joint project almost landed the two Steves in jail. They had built "Blue Boxes" that could manipulate the US telephone system to make free calls around the world. For "Woz," as his friends called him, it was all just a hobby. Steve Jobs, however, recognized the commercial potential even then. But after they were nearly caught by the police, they abandoned their illegal activities.Both Steves dreamed of owning their own computer. Back then, computers were the size of refrigerators and unattainable for ordinary people. The ingenious tinkerer Wozniak, however, wasn't deterred by these obstacles and built himself a computer using the first available chips – the Apple I, the world's first personal computer. Jobs knew immediately that the Apple I could not only impress his friends at the computer club, but also be a lucrative business opportunity.
"I never tried to start a business or an industry," the now 75-year-old Wozniak recently said at an anniversary celebration. "I just wanted other engineers to look at my designs and say, 'Wow, he thinks differently.'" Jobs, on the other hand, saw the business potential – partly because he was constantly broke, Wozniak chuckled. "We had no money, we had no resources, we had no business experience." Wozniak first offered the computer design to his then-employer, Hewlett-Packard – and they were a good fit.
The Teddy Bear and the Businessman
The initial spark was an order placed by Jobs with the Mountain View computer store "Byte Shop": owner Paul Terrell agreed to buy 50 computers for $500 each. "I remember a teddy bear named Steve Wozniak and a businessman named Steve Jobs," Terrell says today. The written commitment of $25,000 allowed the two Steves to purchase the necessary components on credit. Soldering took place in the garage of Jobs' parents' house.To get the business on the right track, Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976. "Apple's particular strength certainly lay in the combination of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who complemented each other almost perfectly," says Michael Mikolajczak, curator at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum. "Wozniak was the technical brains. Jobs, on the other hand, was the aesthete and the marketing genius."
The forgotten third founder
The founding agreement was not only signed by the two Steves, but also by Ron Wayne (then 41), who was meant to represent the adult in the room. However, the now almost forgotten third founder got cold feet just a few days after the signing and balked at the liability risk. Wayne left the company and, a few weeks later, received a check for $800 from Steve Jobs without any explanation. "To be honest, I thought it was a tip. A pretty meager one at that. I had contributed quite a lot," Wayne said at an event hosted by the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley to mark Apple's 50th anniversary. His shares would be worth many billions of dollars today.
The Macintosh's sales problems also led to Steve Jobs leaving Apple in 1985. In a dramatic showdown, he was unable to prevail against then-Apple CEO John Sculley. Jobs wanted to drastically reduce the price of a Mac from $2,500, even at the expense of the Apple II. Sculley, in turn, was against prematurely slaughtering the cash cow that was the Apple II.
After Steve Jobs left Apple, the company quickly went off course. Everything seemed to be going wrong: the products, the distribution channels, the marketing, and the production. Unsold goods piled up in the warehouses. And when a product did prove to be a bestseller, Apple often couldn't deliver.
John Sculley, the former Pepsi executive at the helm of Apple, attempted to turn things around with the Apple Newton, but these efforts also proved unsuccessful. The "Personal Digital Assistant" (PDA) failed to meet expectations. The project was far ahead of its time.
On June 19, 1993, Sculley resigned as Apple CEO. His successor was the Berlin-born Michael Spindler. However, "The Diesel" also failed to turn things around, partly because the outdated Macintosh software couldn't halt the rise of Windows 95. In the Christmas quarter of 1995, Spindler had to report a catastrophic loss of $69 million. Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy.
From near-bankruptcy to the top of the world
That this seemingly hopeless turnaround case became the world's most valuable company is thanks to the return of Steve Jobs. After being brought back to the company by restructuring expert Gil Amelio, Jobs first radically streamlined Apple's overly complex product range. At the same time, he discovered a frustrated and highly talented designer in Apple's design department: Jony Ive. The British designer no longer had to work for the trash but was now allowed to contribute his ideas to product development almost without restraint, and he played a key role in Apple's success.Jobs poached logistics expert Tim Cook from Compaq, then the world's leading PC manufacturer, to eliminate the operational chaos in Apple's supply chain and inventory management. The numbers fanatic quickly succeeded in reducing inventory turnover from two months to a remarkable two days.
Simultaneously, Jobs, Ive, and the new team were able to score points with innovative products. In 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks, Jobs introduced the iPod. Despite the difficult starting conditions, the MP3 player would establish itself as Apple's most successful product in the coming years.
Iphone Revolution- How Apple Won Against All Odds
The first iPhone from 2007 was revolutionary: it combined a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod, and a usable internet device in one. Instead of a fixed plastic keyboard, it had a large touchscreen display, a flexible software keyboard, and the new "slide to unlock" gesture.In the third fiscal quarter of 2009, the iPhone finally became the company's top-selling product category. Since then, Apple has been the iPhone company. Steve Jobs did not live to see the full extent of the iPhone's success. He died on October 5, 2011, at the age of 56 in Palo Alto, succumbing to a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
After the death of the charismatic co-founder, skeptics predicted a bleak future for Apple. However, his successor, Tim Cook, led Apple to a historic market capitalization of $4 trillion. Under his leadership, the company emancipated itself technologically from partners like Intel with its own chip technology (Apple Silicon), created new product categories with the Apple Watch and AirPods in which it dominates, and developed its services business into a highly profitable second pillar.
Today, Apple continues to evolve,
proving that its foundation was never just about technology, but about thinking
differently. Fifty years later, the lesson remains clear: even the greatest
empires can begin in the smallest places, as long as there is passion,
creativity, and the courage to see possibilities where others see limits.
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