Apple Computer
From Open Encyclopedia
{{Infobox Company
| company_name = Apple Computer, Inc.
| company_logo = Image:Apple-logo.png
| company_type = Public (NASDAQ: AAPL)
| foundation = California (April 1, 1976)
| location = Cupertino, California
| key_people = Steve Jobs, CEO
Timothy D. Cook, COO
Peter Oppenheimer, CFO
Philip W. Schiller, SVP Marketing
Jonathan Ive, VP Industrial Design
Jon Rubinstein, SVP iPod Division
Avie Tevanian, CTO Software
| num_employees = 14,800 (2005)
| industry = Computer hardware and software
| products = Apple Macintosh, Mac mini, iMac, eMac, Power Mac, MacBook Pro, PowerBook, iBook, iPod, Xserve, AirPort, QuickTime, iLife, iWork, Mighty Mouse
See complete listing.
| revenue = Image:Green up.png $13.93 billion USD (2005)
| homepage = www.apple.com
}}
Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL and LSE: ACP) is a computer technology company with its headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California, part of Silicon Valley. Apple was a major player in the personal computer revolution in the 1970s.
The Apple II microcomputer, introduced in 1977, was an instant hit with home users. Apple further shaped the computing industry with the first commercially sold personal computer to use a graphical user interface, the Lisa and then, in 1984, the revolutionary Macintosh. The Macintosh, (commonly called the "Mac") was the first commercially successful implementation of the graphical user interface, which is now an industry standard. Apple is known for its innovative, well-designed hardware, such as the iPod and iMac, as well as software such as iTunes, part of the iLife suite, and Mac OS X, its current operating system.
Contents |
History
- Main article: History of Apple Computer
1976 to 1980 - The founding of Apple
Apple Computer was founded in Los Gatos, California on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, to sell the Apple I personal computer kit at $666.66. They were hand-built in Jobs' parents' garage, and the Apple I was first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. Jobs and Wozniak, ("the two Steves") had been friends since 1971. Jobs managed to interest Wozniak in assembling a personal computer and selling it. Jobs approached a local computer store, The Byte Shop, which ordered fifty units and paid $500 for each unit. Jobs then ordered components from Cramer Electronics, a national electronic parts distributor. Using a variety of methods, including borrowing space from friends and family and selling various items including a Volkswagen Type 2 bus, Jobs managed to secure the parts needed while Wozniak and another friend, Ronald Wayne, assembled the Apple I. They were delivered in June, and paid for on delivery. Eventually 200 Apple I computers were built.
The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It was popular with home users and was occasionally sold to business users, particularly after the release of the first spreadsheet for any computer called VisiCalc. (See the timeline for dates of Apple II family model releases—the 1977 Apple II and its younger siblings, the II Plus, IIe, IIc and IIGS.)
By now, Jobs and his partners had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The Apple II was succeeded by the Apple III in May 1980 as the company struggled to compete against IBM and Microsoft in the lucrative business and corporate computing market. The designers of the Apple III were forced to comply with Jobs' request to omit the cooling fan, and this ultimately resulted in thousands of recalled units due to overheating. An updated version was introduced in 1983 but it was also a failure due to bad press and discouraged buyers. Nevertheless, the principals of the company persevered with further innovations and marketing.
1981 to 1989 - Lisa and Macintosh
Image:Ad apple 1984.jpg In the early 1980s, IBM and Microsoft continued to gain market share at Apple's expense in the personal computer industry. Using a fundamentally different business model, IBM marketed an open hardware standard created with the IBM PC, which was bundled with Microsoft's MS-DOS (MicroSoft-Disk Operating System). In 1983, Apple introduced the first personal computer to be sold to the public with a graphical user interface (GUI), named the Lisa. Using a GUI, the user communicates with the computer by interacting with icons onscreen that resemble real-world items (folders, documents, images). However, the Lisa was a commercial failure as a result of its high price tag ($9995) and limited software titles.
Jobs and several other Apple employees including Jef Raskin had visited Xerox PARC in December 1979, to see the Alto computer. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for selling them one million dollars in pre-IPO Apple stock (approximately $18 million net). After the Lisa, Apple began work on a similar but less expensive computer to be called the Macintosh. It was launched in 1984 with the now famous Super Bowl advertisement based on George Orwell's novel 1984. It was an immediate success, particularly in the world of graphic and communications design, where its GUI (which was to become the industry standard) and ability to handle large graphic files surpassed anything else on the market. The Macintosh also spawned the concept of Mac evangelism among users, which was pioneered by Apple employee and later Apple Fellow, Guy Kawasaki.
In anticipation of the Macintosh launch, Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft, was given several Macintosh prototypes in 1983 to develop software for the "Mac". In 1985, Microsoft launched Microsoft Windows, with its own GUI for IBM PCs using many of the elements of the Macintosh OS. This led to a long legal battle between Apple Computer and Microsoft, and ended with an out-of-court settlement. In this settlement it was stated that Microsoft would be granted access to, and allowed unlimited use of, the Macintosh GUI.
An internal power struggle developed between Jobs and new CEO John Sculley in 1985. Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley, and Jobs was asked to resign from the company. Jobs then founded NeXT Inc., a computer company that built machines with futuristic designs and ran the UNIX-derived NeXTstep operating system. Although powerful, NeXT computers never caught on with buyers, due in part to their high purchase price.
1990 to 1993 - PowerBook and decline
Having learned several painful lessons after introducing the bulky Macintosh Portable in 1989, Apple turned to industrial designers and adopted a product strategy based in three portable devices. One portable was built by Sony, which had a strong reputation for designing small, durable and functional electronics devices. Sony took the specs of the Mac Portable, put in a smaller two-hour battery, a much smaller (physically) twenty megabyte hard drive and a smaller nine-inch passive matrix screen. Called the PowerBook 100, this landmark product was introduced in 1991 and established the modern form and ergonomic layout of the laptop computer. This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer, both of desktop and now portable machines. The success of the PowerBook and several other Apple products during this period led to increasing revenue. The trade magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 to 1991 the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.
This golden age was not to last. The introduction of Microsoft Windows presented an interface that many people thought was close enough to the Macintosh in terms of ease of use and overall look and feel. Apple thought that Windows was too close, and sued Microsoft for theft of intellectual property.
At about the same time, Apple branched out into consumer electronics. One example of this product diversification was the Apple QuickTake digital camera. A more famous example was the Newton, an early PDA that was introduced in 1993. Though it failed commercially, it defined and launched the new category of computing and was a forerunner and inspiration of devices such as BlackBerry, Palm Pilot and its descendants-PocketPCs.
During the 1990s, Apple greatly expanded its computer lineup as well. It offered a multitude of different models, yet it failed to adequately explain to the public why it should choose one model over another.
The costs involved in making such a wide variety of products, coupled with some highly-publicized product recalls and the growing popularity of Microsoft Windows, all lead to the near-bankruptcy of Apple in the mid-to-late 1990s.
1994 to 1997 - Attempts at reinvention
By the mid-1990s, Apple realized that it had to reinvent the Macintosh in order to stay competitive in the computer world. The needs of both computer users and computer programs were becoming, for a variety of technical reasons, harder for the existing hardware and operating system to address.
In 1994, Apple surprised its loyalists by allying with its long-time competitor IBM in the so-called AIM alliance. This was a high-profile bid to create a revolutionary new computing platform, known as PReP, which would use IBM and Motorola hardware and Apple software. It was expected that PReP's outstanding performance and software would leave the PC far behind and would upset Microsoft, which Apple had identified as its real enemy.
Towards this end, Apple sought to recruit other companies that would build PReP-compliant computers. Apple hoped to the expand the Mac OS market share by licensing the operating system to these other companies, much as Microsoft had promoted DOS and later Windows by licensing them to so-called "PC clone" manufacturers. Only a few companies--notably Power Computing and UMAX--agreed to produce Macintosh clones, and eventually the entire Mac OS licensing program was suspended.
As the first step toward launching the PReP platform, Apple started the Power Macintosh line in 1994, using IBM's PowerPC processor. This processor utilized a RISC architecture, which differed substantially from the Motorola 680X0 series that had been used by all previous Macs. Parts of Apple's new operating system software were rewritten so that most software written for older Macs could also run on the PowerPC series (in emulation).
Also throughout the mid to late 1990s, Apple sought to improve its operating system's multitasking and memory-management. After first attempting to modify its existing code, Apple realized that it would be better to start with an entirely new operating system and then modify it to fit the Macintosh interface. Apple did some preliminary work with IBM towards this goal, then looked at the BeOS operating system, and finally decided to acquire NeXTSTEP as the basis for the new Mac OS.
On February 4, 1997, Apple completed its purchase of NeXT and its NeXTstep operating system, bringing Steve Jobs back to Apple's management. On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted as CEO of Apple by the board of directors after overseeing a 12-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses, despite an outstanding decade of innovation. Jobs stepped in as the interim CEO and began a critical restructuring of the company's product line.
1998 to 2005 - New beginnings
Image:Steve Jobs with iMac.jpg In 1998, a year after Jobs had returned to the company, Apple introduced a new all-in-one Macintosh (echoing the original Macintosh 128K): the iMac, a new design that eliminated most Apple-standard connections like SCSI and ADB in favor of two USB ports. While technically not impressive (it was aimed at a general market), it featured an innovative new design - its translucent plastic case, originally Bondi Blue and white, and later many other colors, is considered an industrial design hallmark of the late-90s. The iMac proved to be phenomenally successful, with 800,000 units sold in 1998, making the company a profit that year of $309 million - Apple's first profitable year since Michael Spindler took the position of CEO of the company in 1993. The Power Macintosh was redesigned along similar lines, and continues to evolve to this day.
In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X, an operating system based on NeXT's NeXTstep and BSD Unix. Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, Apple claims that OS X marries stability, reliability and security of the Unix operating system with the ease of a completely overhauled user interface. To aid users in moving their applications from OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of Mac OS 9 applications through OS X's Classic environment. Apple's Carbon API also allowed developers to adapt their OS 9 software to use Mac OS X's features.
Image:Applecomputerheadquarters.jpg In May 2001, after much speculation, Apple announced the opening of a line of Apple retail stores, to be located in major U.S. computer buying markets. These stores were designed for two primary purposes: to stem the tide of Apple's declining share of the computer market, and to counter a poor record of marketing Apple products by third-party retail outlets.
In late 2001, Apple introduced its first iPod portable digital audio player, a move that has proven to be phenomenally successful with over 42 million units sold.<ref>BBC News story on Apple's first quarter 2006 earnings report</ref> Combined with a scheme to offer downloadable songs at US 99 cents per song through Apple's iTunes Music Store, there had been over 800,000,000 downloads for iPod players by January 2006<ref>Steve Jobs' January 2006 MacWorld keynote address</ref>.
On March 10, 2005 Apple Computer announced its support for Sony's Blu-Ray technology and joined the Blu-ray Disc Association, or BDA. In a keynote address on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs officially announced that Apple would begin producing Intel-based Macintosh computers beginning in 2006.<ref>Apple press release Apple to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006</ref> Jobs confirmed rumors that the company had secretly been producing versions of its current operating system Mac OS X for both PowerPC and Intel processors for the previous five years, and that the transition to Intel processor systems would last until the end of 2007. Jobs surprised the industry at Macworld 2006 however, by announcing the first Intel based Apple computers would begin selling January 2006 and that the transition would be complete by the end of that same year. Mac OS X is based on OPENSTEP, an operating system available for many platforms. Apple's own Darwin, the open source underpinnings of OS X, is also compiled for Intel's x86 architecture.<ref>See articles from news.com, Apple insider, and The New York Times</ref>
With the introduction of the Power Mac G5, Apple has abandoned flashy colors in favor of white polycarbonate for consumer lines such as the iMac and iBook, as well as the educational eMac and anodized aluminum or titanium for professional products like the Power Mac G5, PowerBook G4 and MacBook Pro.
2006 to present - Start of the Intel era
- Main article: Apple Intel transition
On January 10, 2006, Apple announced the release of its first Intel-chip based computers, a new notebook computer known as the MacBook Pro, which will replace the PowerBook G4 line and offer up to a 4X speed improvement (according to Apple); and a new iMac with performance rated as two-three times faster than the previous G5 model. These marked the first models to use Intel's Core Duo chip technology. The current operating system, OS X Tiger 10.4.4, runs natively on the new Intel machines, as do many applications, such as iLife '06 Other applications, such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, compiled for the PowerPC run in emulation mode, using a technology known as Rosetta. The Intel-based machines do not support the Classic mode, so applications that run only on Mac OS 9 and earlier will not run on these machines. All Macintosh product lines are expected to transition to Intel processors by the end of 2006. On February 1, 2006 the 17 inch iMac G5 was no longer available for sale from the online Apple store.
Current products
Image:Ipod 5th Generation white.jpg Apple Computer sells a wide range of products including computer hardware and software as well as other accessories and consumer electronics offerings, including the iPod digital music player.
Hardware
Apple introduced the Apple Macintosh family in 1984 and today makes consumer, professional, and educational computers. The Mac mini is the company's consumer sub-desktop computer, introduced in January 2005 and designed to motivate Windows users to switch to the Macintosh platform. The iMac is a consumer desktop computer that was first introduced by Apple in 1998, and its popularity helped save the company from bankruptcy. Now in its third design iteration, the iMac is similar in concept to the original Macintosh in that the monitor and computer are housed in a single unit. The Power Mac G5, Apple's desktop computer for the professional and creative market, is a member of the Power Macintosh series first introduced in 1994. The eMac is Apple's cheaper alternative to the iMac for the education market. Apple's server range includes the Xserve, a single-processor, dual-processor, and cluster-node server range, and the Xserve RAID for server storage options.
Apple introduced the iBook consumer portable computer as a companion to the iMac; it is Apple's lowest cost portable computer. The MacBook Pro is the professional portable computer alternative to the iBook intended for the professional and creative market and replaced the PowerBook range. PowerBooks are still being manufactured and sold, but is expected that Apple will phase out both the PowerBook and iBook lines upon arrival of the heavily rumoured MacBook, the low end version of the MacBook Pro and Intel-based version of the iBook. The Powerbook range was first introduced in 1991 and helped Apple's profits increase during the 1990s.
In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod digital music player and currently sells the iPod (with video), available in 30 and 60 GB models; the iPod nano, available in 1 GB, 2GB and 4 GB models; and the iPod shuffle, available in 512 MB and 1 GB models.
Image:MacminiWhiteBGSmall.jpg Apple sells a variety of computer accessories for Macintosh computers including the iSight video conferencing camera, the AirPort wirelss networking products; Apple Cinema HD Display and Apple Displays computer displays; Mighty Mouse and Apple Wireless Mouse computer mice; the Apple Wireless Keyboard computer keyboard, and the Apple USB Modem.
Software
Apple independently develops computer software titles for its Mac OS X operating system. Much of the software Apple develops is bundled with its computers. An example of this is the consumer-oriented iLife software package which bundles iDVD, iMovie HD, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, and iWeb. Both iTunes and a feature-limited version of the QuickTime media player are available as free downloads for both Mac OS X and Windows. For presentation and page layout, iWork is available.
Apple also offers a range of professional software titles including the Mac OS X Server operating system, Apple Remote Desktop, a remote desktop control application; WebObjects, Java Web application server; Xsan, a Storage Area Network file system; Aperture for professional RAW photo editing; Final Cut Studio, a video software package; Logic Pro, a comprehensive music toolkit; Shake advanced effects composition software; Final Cut Express HD, SD and HD video editors, and Logic Express, a music editor.
Apple also offers online services with .Mac which bundles .Mac HomePage, .Mac Mail, .Mac Groups social network service, .Mac iDisk, .Mac Backup, .Mac Sync, and Learning Center online tutorials.
- See also:
Corporate affairs
Logo
Image:Originalapplelogo.jpg Image:Striped apple logo.png Image:Apple-Logo-Grey.svg
The original Apple logo was designed by Steve Jobs and Ron Wayne and depicts Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. However this design was soon to be replaced by the now famous rainbow apple with a "bite" taken out of it. It was one of a set of designs Rob Janoff presented Jobs in 1976 <ref>Wired News: Apple Doin' the Logo-Motion</ref>.
In the book Zeroes and Ones, author Sadie Plant speculates that the rainbow Apple logo was a homage to Alan Turing, the homosexual father of modern computer science who committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple in imitation of the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This seems to be an urban legend as the Apple logo was designed two years before Gilbert Baker's rainbow pride flag, and did not follow the same color pattern.
In 1998, the logo became single-colored, though no specific color is prescribed; for example, it is grey on the Power Mac G5 and Apple iMac, blue (by default) in Mac OS X, chrome on the 'About this Mac' panel and the boot screen in OS X 10.3 and 10.4, and white on the iBook, PowerBook G4 and MacBook Pro. The logo's shape is one of the most recognized brand symbols in the world, and is featured quite prominently on all Apple products and retail stores.
Criticism
Apple was criticized for its vertically integrated business model, which runs against the "received wisdom" of some economists, particularly those who study the computer industry. However, the company is profitable. Others criticize the company by suggesting it has been personality-driven, especially during the two eras of Steve Jobs' tenure. Some even regard the company as a cult or at least having cult-like features. Jobs' charisma, infamously referred to as his reality distortion field, has drawn criticism.
From a technical standpoint, Apple was also criticized for having a closed and proprietary architecture with the original Macintosh and refusing to adopt open standards; for many years a "Not Invented Here" (NIH) culture seemed to prevail. The iTunes Music Store continues this trend, utilizing a proprietary Digital Rights Management system called FairPlay that requires burning and re-ripping a CD to place purchased songs on any digital audio player besides the iPod.
That trend was largely reversed with Mac OS X, and the company now has an official policy of adopting relevant open industry standards. Mac OS X is based on a free software / open source software kernel and core operating system called Darwin. Apple also uses an open source framework called WebKit in its Safari web browser.
Apple has used industry-standard hardware technologies for many years. Many Apple technologies have also become industry standards where no former standard existed, for example Bonjour zero-configuration networking, and FireWire. Some non-Apple technologies only gained wide industry acceptance after Apple adopted them, including 3.5-inch floppy disks, SCSI, the Universal Serial Bus (USB), Wi-Fi and, of course, graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Apple has recently adopted an Intel-based architecture. Apple's industry-standard software implementations include iCalendar, as well as a host of other networking protocols.
Open source software advocates are often critical of Apple's attempt to appeal to their particular movements. Such advocates claim that such a marketing scheme is not taken seriously enough by Apple because Mac OS X has many proprietary technologies in essential areas. Other open source advocates make a counter-argument that Apple has done much more for open source software than many other major commercial software developers by releasing large portions of source code to the public through the Apple Public Source License (APSL). Some third-party developers are also critical of the competing factions within Apple itself, noting an apparent rivalry between the developers of Cocoa, which came from NeXT, and those of Carbon, which came from Apple. This rivalry is seen as counterproductive and unnecessary by many developers.
Apple's retail initiative has had a mixed reception despite its success promoting the Apple brand. Retailers have suggested that Apple-owned retail stores receive preference when receiving Apple hardware, obtaining limited stock product earlier and at lower prices. This accusation is denied by Apple.
Apple CEOs, 1977-present
- 1977 - 1981: Michael "Scotty" Scott
- 1981 - 1983: Mike Markkula
- 1983 - 1993: John Sculley
- 1993 - 1996: Michael Spindler
- 1996 - 1997: Gil Amelio
- 1997 - present: Steve Jobs
Current Apple Board of Directors
- Fred D. Anderson, managing director of Elevation Partners
- Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit, Inc.
- Millard Drexler, chairman and CEO of J.Crew
- Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States
- Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and Pixar
- Arthur D. Levinson, chairman and CEO of Genentech
- Jerry York, chairman, president and CEO of Harwinton Capital
Current Apple executives
- Steve Jobs, CEO
- Timothy D. Cook, chief operating officer
- Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president of iPod division
- Philip W. Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing
- Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president of software engineering
- Nancy R. Heinen, senior vice president and general counsel
- Ron Johnson, senior vice president of retail
- Sina Tamaddon, senior vice president of applications
- Peter Oppenheimer, senior vice president and CFO
- Avie Tevanian, chief software technology officer
User culture
- See Also: Cult of Mac
Some Apple customers are devoted to their brand. Some refuse to buy from competitors and stridently uphold their belief in the perceived superiority of Apple products; according to surveys by J. D. Power, Apple has the highest brand and repurchase loyalty of any computer manufacturer. While this brand loyalty is considered unusual for any product, Apple appears not to have gone out of its way to create it. At one time, Apple evangelists were actively engaged by the company, but this was after the phenomenon was already firmly established. As Guy Kawasaki has said, "[the brand fanaticism was] something that was stumbled upon".<ref>The father of evangelism marketing by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba</ref>
Macintosh users meet at the Apple Expo and MacWorld Expo trade shows where Apple introduces new products each year to the industry and public. Many users show their loyalty and devotion by wearing Apple t-shirts. Another example of Apple's user culture is the Apple Store openings where many wait and sleep outside of stores for days prior to their openings.
John Sculley, former Apple CEO, told the Guardian newspaper in 1997: "People talk about technology, but Apple was a marketing company, It was the marketing company of the decade.".<ref>Wired News: Apple: It's All About the Brand</ref>
Notable litigation
- Main article: Notable litigation of Apple Computer
- See also: Notable litigation of the Apple Macintosh
Apple's earliest court action dates to 1978 when Apple Corps, The Beatles-founded record label, filed suit against Apple Computer for trademark infringement. The suit settled in 1981 with an amount of $80,000 being paid to Apple Corps. As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business. The case arose in 1989 again when Apple Corps sued, claiming violation of the 1981 settlement agreement. In 1991 another settlement of around $26.5 million was reached. <ref>news.com: Apple vs. Apple: Perfect harmony?</ref> In September 2003 Apple Computer was sued by Apple Corps again, this time for introducing iTunes and the iPod which Apple Corps believed was a violation of the previous agreement by Apple not to distribute music. <ref>legalzoom.com: Apple v Apple: What is at the core of The Beatles’ Apple Records vs. Apple Ipod…</ref> The date for this trial has been set for March 27, 2006 in the UK. Obviously, this litigation is a major reason why the Beatles' songs are not available for download from the iTunes Music Store.
In 1982 Apple filed a lawsuit against Franklin Computer Corp., alleging that Franklin's ACE 100 personal computer used illegal copies of Apple's operating system and ROM. Apple v. Franklin established the fundamental basis of copyright of computer software. As a result, Apple began embedding an encrypted image in ROM. This icon displays "Stolen from Apple Computer".
In 1988 Apple sued Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard on the grounds that they infringed Apple's copyright on a GUI. The Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. trial lasted for four years. The ruling was decided against Apple, and the concept of a GUI was no longer the domain of Apple alone.
In July 1998 Abdul Traya and Stan Berg registered the domain name appleimac.com, two months after Apple announced the iMac, in an attempt to draw attention to a web-hosting business. <ref>news.com: Teen in dispute with Apple over domain</ref> After a legal dispute that lasted until April 1999, Traya and Apple settled out of court with Apple paying legal fees and giving Traya a "token payment" in exchange for the domain name. <ref>macobserver.com: Battle For Domain Name Between Apple And Teen Resolved</ref>
In 1994 Apple was sued by the astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan for using his name as the internal code-name for the Power Macintosh 7100. Sagan lost the suit twice. See the Carl Sagan article for details.
In November 2000, Benjamin Cohen of CyberBritain registered the domain name "itunes.co.uk" for an MP3 search engine. Apple was granted a UK restricted (non music) trademark for ITUNES on March 23, 2001, and launched its popular iTunes music store service in the UK in 2004. In 2005, Apple took the matter to the Dispute Resolution Service operated by .uk domain name registry Nominet UK, stating that they had rights in the name "iTunes". An expert decided in Apple's favor in the dispute. Cohen launched a media offensive stating that the DRS was biased towards large businesses and made frequent threats of lawsuits against Nominet.
In November 2004, two popular weblog sites that feature Apple rumors publicly revealed information about an unreleased Apple product code-named "Asteroid", also known as "Project Q97". The sites, "AppleInsider" and "PowerPage", were subpoenaed for information about their sources in the Apple v. Does case. In February 2005 it was decided by a court official in California that the bloggers do not have the same shield law protection as do journalists. In a related case, the websites went on to fight the journalistic status decision. In a separate matter, Apple filed a lawsuit against website Think Secret in January 2005, claiming that the site's reports about forthcoming Apple products violated trade secret law.
In May 2005 Apple entered into a class action settlement <ref>http://www.appleipodsettlement.com</ref>, upheld on December 20, 2005 following an appeal, regarding the battery life of iPod music players sold prior to May 2004. Eligible members of the class are entitled to extended warranties, store credit, cash compensation, or battery replacement.
See also
- Apple Computer financial history
- Apple Developer Connection — Developer relations program
- Apple Intel transition
- Apple typography — Apple's type related endeavors, technological and artistic
- Inside Macintosh
- List of Apple Computer slogans
- Macintosh clones — Discussion of Apple's licensing of the Macintosh platform
- Mac rumors community — in recent years, a subculture has developed around rumored products
- Pirates of Silicon Valley - A movie based on the rise of Apple and Microsoft.
References
<references />
Further reading
- Gil Amelio, William L. Simon (1999) In the Firing Line: My 500 days at Apple ISBN 0887309194
- Jim Carlton, Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania and Business Blunders ISBN 0887309658
- Owen Linzmayer (2004), Apple Confidential 2.0, No Starch Press ISBN 1593270100
- Michael Malone (1999), Infinite Loop ISBN 0385486847
- Steven Levy, Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything ISBN 0140291776
- Andy Hertzfeld (2004), Revolution in the Valley, O'Reilly Books ISBN 0596007191
- Folklore.org: Macintosh stories, retrieved November 25, 2005
External links
- Apple Computer Official Website
- Apple Matters - Apple news and opinion site
- MacNN - Apple news site
- MacUser's Apple news site
- Macworld's Apple news site
- MacInTouch - Apple and Mac news site
- MacDailyNews - Apple and Mac news site
- The Apple Museum
- Apple-History.com
- ApplePedia.com - An Apple-centric wiki
- The Branding of Apple
- Apple Computer Inc Profile at BuyBlue.org
- Mac Guides - MacRumors.com Guide pages (wiki)
- Spymac - the world's largest Mac community
| Apple Computer, Inc. |
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Corporate Directors: Steve Jobs | Bill Campbell | Jerry York | Millard Drexler | Al Gore | Arthur D. Levinson |
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Hardware Products: Macintosh | eMac | iMac | iPod | iBook | Mac mini | MacBook Pro | PowerBook | PowerMac | Xserve | Xserve RAID | iSight |
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