VOL 44: Apple Inc. History; IPO, Macintosh Launch-6
Macintosh was the First Personal Computer in History
Hey Friends 🤓,
Trust you all had a great week 🤗?
This is the 6th post in a blog series on Apple Inc. History. Our comprehensive history of Apple will take you from its humble beginnings in the 1970s to Jobs' departure and subsequent return to Apple. Join us in following the Apple story!
Today at a Glance:
Quote of the Week
Apple IPO
The Lisa
Macintosh
Macintosh Launch
Past Greats 👴
Business & Startups
Random Facts
Tweet of the Week
Quote of The Week
“We hire smart people to tell us what to do, not hire them to tell them what to do”
— — —
Steve Jobs
Apple IPO
Apple went public on December 12, 1980, four years after the company was established, selling 4.6 million shares for $22 each. This raised more money than any other IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956, raising over $100 million.
Many VCs cashed out, reaping billions in long-term capital gains. By the end of the day, the stock rose to $29 per share and 300 millionaires were created. At the end of its first trading day, Apple had a market capitalization of $1.778 billion.
By August 1981, Apple was one of the top three microcomputer companies. Revenue in the first half of the year had already surpassed the $118 million mark set in 1980, and InfoWorld (a Tech media organization) reported that a lack of production capacity was limiting Apple's growth because businesses that use VisiCalc (a spreadsheet software) purchased 90% of Apple IIs, also their large customer base, in particular, preferred Apple.
The Lisa
The official story at the time claimed that Lisa stood for "Local Integrated System Architecture" and the fact it was Jobs’ daughter’s name was purely coincidental.
The Apple Lisa was the first desktop computer with a mouse and on-screen graphics. Before the Lisa, all computers were text-based, so you had to type commands using a keyboard. When it was first released, Lisa cost almost $10,000, which would be $27,200 in 2021. As a result of the high price, Lisa was unable to penetrate the business market.
Macintosh
The Apple I and II were huge successes, but even though the Apple III and Lisa were impressive devices, they weren't as well-received by the general public as their forerunners. In order to secure its future and reach the lower end of the market, which it had so far largely ignored, Apple needed another success.
That hit, we all now know, was the Macintosh: the machine that largely guaranteed the company’s future. The machine was a success, and Apple’s current computer line-up – with the exception of iOS devices – descends directly from that first consumer machine.
The Macintosh had been in the works since 1979, named after Raskin's (project team lead) favourite edible apple (the McIntosh). Jobs joined the team after being ousted from the Lisa project.
The Macintosh introduced users to the now-familiar icon-rich interface, which could be navigated using a computer mouse. Since then, nearly every consumer operating system maker in the world has used this interface as a model.
Lisa cannot be said to be the same. It cost four times as much as the Macintosh and, despite having a higher resolution display and the ability to address more memory, it was not nearly as successful. Apple released seven applications for the Lisa, covering all of the standard business functions, but third-party support was poor.
Macintosh Launch
On January 24, 1984, at Apple's annual shareholders’ meeting in the Flint Auditorium, an emotional Jobs introduced the computer to a wildly enthusiastic audience; Macintosh engineer Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as "pandemonium."
The Macintosh went on sale in January 1984, priced at $2,495. It wasn’t cheap, but it was good value for what you got, and its sales reflected that. By the beginning of May of that year, Apple had passed the 70,000-unit mark, which was likely aided in no small part by a remarkable piece of advertising directed by Ridley Scott.
There is no way anyone could ever doubt that the original Macintosh was a work of genius. It was portable, reasonably priced (for its time), and friendly. It gave us all the tools we could need to produce graphics-rich work that would have cost many times as much on any other platform and introduced the GUI, or graphical user interface, to a large audience.
Besides that, Apple ran a promotion called "Test Drive a Macintosh" where prospective customers with a credit card could take a Macintosh home for a day and then return it to a retailer. Although 200,000 people took part, the promotion was disliked by the dealers, there weren't enough computers to meet demand, and many computers were returned in such poor condition that they couldn't be sold.
Here is a video below of the Launch;
The reason behind this historical perspective is that I want to educate people who have no computer background about the history and development of what has gone before and where we are today.
We’ll continue from here next week.
PAST GREATS
THOMAS MELLON (1813–1908)
Probably best known for founding Mellon Bank and serving as the head of the Pittsburgh-based Mellon family. He was a renowned and extremely prosperous Pittsburgh businessman, judge, and banker, and his descendants would play significant roles in American commerce, arts, and philanthropy.
Andrew William and Richard Beatty, two of his sons, would eventually join Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller as the four richest men in the country.
When he was fourteen, he read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and was moved by the author's account of rising from rags to riches. Having decided that he would not become a farmer like his parent, he enrolled at the Western University of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh), where he eventually earned a law degree in 1837.
While working, he invested his savings in real estate in the Pittsburg area, which was undergoing rapid industrialization at the time. When he retired in 1869, he founded a bank called T. Mellon & Sons, which has since evolved into "The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation." The bank nearly failed in the ensuing
Panic of 1873, but was saved by his vast land holdings.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the Mellon Bank had grown to become the largest bank in the United States outside of New York. The bank was largely responsible for transforming southwest Pennsylvania into one of the world's great industrial powerhouses.
When the economy recovered, T. Mellon & Sons was among the few that benefited from Pittsburgh's growing popularity as the site of many large factories such as steel and its allied industries, coal, oil, and locomotives. He socialized with industry titans like Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller.
Thomas Mellon died in 1908 at the age of 95. He had eight children with his wife Sarah. In comparison to his father, Andrew, his eldest son, proved to be a more astute empire builder.
Business & Startups
Moove is a Nigerian automobile financing startup and Uber’s exclusive vehicle supply partner in Africa.
Moove provides mobility entrepreneurs with access to revenue-based financing in markets where there’s low access to credit. Its customers, who are typically ride-hailing drivers, can use a percentage of their weekly revenue to purchase brand new vehicles.
Moove is now present in six African cities, including Lagos, Ibadan, Accra, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Nairobi, and claims that its financed vehicles have completed over 3 million rides totalling over 25 million kilometres.
After raising $105 million in its most recent round of funding, Moove intends to "meet the needs of mobility entrepreneurs in other emerging markets" by bringing its vehicle financing model to 7 additional markets in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and Europe over the following six months.
Random Tech Facts
Bill Clinton was the first President to use email, he sent two emails while in office.
Tweet of The Week
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