Apple Alumni Page — Mac 30th Celebration Hide Info Page Dividers - disables the horizontal lines between info page content. DOCUMENT 1 of 3: Full Press Release: December 18, 2013 Cupertino, CA For Immediate Release In honor of the original Macintosh Development Team, All Planet Studios, the Computer History Museum and Macworld/iWorld announce a celebration of the 30 year anniversary of the Macintosh. On January 24, 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh personal computer. The event, immortalized by Steve Jobs’ presentation and Ridley Scott’s legendary “1984” television commercial, propelled this insanely great little machine into the limelight and forever changed the world. On January 25, 2014 event organizers Gabreal Franklin and Daniel Kottke invite the public to join them in acknowledging the extended team whose efforts popularized the graphical user interface and WYSIWYG software and defined computing for the rest of us. The event will be held at the beautifully appointed Flint Center in Cupertino, CA, a few miles from the Apple campus, in the since renovated 2,300 seat auditorium where Steve Jobs introduced the Mac.

In a series of panel discussions, members of the original team will share memories about the conception, birth and coming of age of the Apple Macintosh. Previously unreleased video will recreate those early days, and Ridley Scott will discuss production of the “1984” commercial. Stage events, testimonials and surprise guests will offer a treasure trove of recollections about the era. In one of the evening’s highlights, Mike Markkula will present People’s Choice Lifetime Technical Awards to the unsung heroes of the computer revolution—the original Mac team. The event will be capped by a musical performance by Cirque d’Mac, featuring Chris Breen, Bryan Chaffin, Dave Hamilton, Paul Kent and Bob LeVitus. Profits from the event will be donated to charities dedicated to promoting computer and Internet literacy. For further information, including interviews, contact Daniel at mac30th@gmail.com . What Happened in 1984 inc. Pop Culture, Prices and Events 1984 Calendar 1984 The Aids Virus is identified it is not the worldwide problem it is today. Following on from the PC Apple releases the Macintosh computer.

Following the Widespread Famine in Ethiopia many of the top British and Irish USSR pop musicians join together under the Name Band Aid and record the song "Do They Know It's Christmas". Following the boycott by the US of the Moscow Olympics the soviet block boycotts the Los Angeles Olympic games. Recession continues to be a problem in the US and 70 US Banks fail in just one year Cost of Living 1984 Indian Prime minister Indira Gandhi assassinated More Information and Timeline for Indira Gandhi 1. Indira Gandhi was born on November 19, 1917, the daughter of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. 2. Indira Gandhi was first appointed prime minister in 1966 after the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, becoming India's first female prime minister. 3. Gandhi was a very popular leader during the beginning of her time as prime minister, partially due to a series of successful reforms. 4. In 1971, she showed support for the separation of east and west Pakistan by offering military support to east Pakistan. This lead to the defeat of Pakistan in 1972 and the creation of Bangladesh.

This success also increased her popularity. 5. Gandhi was accused of electoral corruption during the 1972 election and was convicted in 1975. While she had been expected to resign, she did not. Instead, she declared a state of emergency, censoring and suspending the civil liberties of political rivals and dissidents. 6. She called for a general election to take place in 1977 and was hoping her popularity would help her win again after she eased off restrictions. She did not win the election. 7. In 1980, Indira Gandhi ran for her fourth term as prime minister, now a part of a new political party, and won the election. 8. In June of 1984, the holy Golden Temple in Amritsar was taken over by a Sikh separatist movement and Gandhi sent in Indian troops to remove them. As a result, hundreds were killed and the incident inspired a Sikh uprising within the country. 9. On October 31st, 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two trusted Sikh body guards outside of her house. They were seeking revenge for the events at Amritsar. 10.

After her death, there were several incidents of violent retaliation against the Sikh population by ordinary Indian citizens. Ethiopia Widespread Famine in Ethiopia after political conflict with charities believing as many as 10 million people are facing starvation India Hundreds die on December 3rd from the effects of toxic gases which leak from the Bhopal Union Carbide Factory Hong Kong -- The UK and China agree Hong Kong will revert to China in 1997 More Information and Timeline for the Sino-British Joint Declaration. On December 19th of 1984 China and the United Kingdom agreed to transfer power in Hong Kong from the UK to China in 1997. Hong Kong had been given to Great Britain in 1842 as a result of the First Opium War and had been under some form of British colonial rule since then. In 1982 China and the UK began discussing what to do with Hong Kong and in 1984 UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang agreed to a transfer of power to take place in 1997.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration stated that Hong Kong would become “one country with two systems.” This meant that upon the transfer of power it would become a part of Communist-run China but would be allowed to keep its capitalist and partially democratic systems in place for fifty years. In July of 1997, the handover was considered a success and 156 years of British Rule officially came to an end in Hong Kong. U.S.A. Beauty Queen Killer Captured and dies during the arrest Beauty Queen Killer .( Christopher Bernard Wilder ) Dies during the arrest More Information for Beauty Queen Killer The serial killer Christopher Bernard Wilder ( Beauty Queen Killer ) who went on a six-week cross-country crime spree starting in Florida on February 26, 1984 abducted and murdering his first victim Rosario Gonzalez he continued across the country through Georgia Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nevada, Utah California and New York before he was killed during a struggle with police in New Hampshire on April 13, 1984. There were 8 confirmed Murders and 12 Rapes , he is known as the Beauty Queen Killer because all the women were attractive.

This one of the first confirmed serial killers and was studied to provide insight into the minds of serial killers. U.S. A Man shoots 20 dead and wounds 16 in McDonalds Restaurant on July 18th in San Ysidro California Mexico A giant gas works explosion on the outskirts of Mexico City left 500 dead Lebanon Truck containing 500 kg of high explosives destroys the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon killing 12 people. Australia Gang warfare in Sydney, Australia during the "Milperra Massacre" leaves seven dead. U.S. The Olympic Games are held in Los Angeles Russia USSR And soviet block boycotts the Olympic games in retaliation for Western Boycott in 1980 India A Union Carbide Pesticide plant in Bhopal India leaks the lethal gas killing more than 3,500 UK Twelve month long strike by coal miners begins in British coal industry, during the strike pickets and police clash multiple times at pits and collieries around the country.

UK WPC Yvonne Fletcher a London police officer is shot and killed by Libyan Diplomat UK English pound notes are to be taken out of circulation UK 700 year old wing of York Minster destroyed by fire U.S. By the year end more than 70 US Banks fail UK IRA Bomb goes off in Grand Hotel Brighton during Conservative Conference UK Virgin Atlantic Inaugural flight . India Indian army troops sent on June 6th into the Sikh rebel held Golden Temple compound in Amritsar Mexico PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City explosions ignites a major fire and kills more than 500 Ethiopia Ethiopian famine begins U.S.A. -- First solo transatlantic flight in a helium balloon Colonel Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to complete a solo transatlantic flight in a helium balloon More Information and Timeline for the Transatlantic Balloon Flight Joe Kittinger, a former Air Force pilot and human flight record breaker, traveled by helium balloon across the Atlantic ocean from September 14 to 18 in 1984. He left from Caribou.

Maine in the United States and landed in Montenotte, Italy after eighty-six hours of flight, traveling nearly 3,500 miles. This was the first successful solo flight in a helium balloon across the Atlantic ocean. Kittinger had previously set records for the highest parachute jump and the longest free fall in 1960 during Project Excelsior. He had also served during the Vietnam war and had been taken as a prisoner of war. Since his retirement from the military he had assisted others in their attempts to break flying and parachuting records as well as competing in feats and races himself. One other notable accomplishment of Kittinger's was assisting Felix Baumgartner in his 2012 record-breaking free fall. Philippines Typhoon Ike strikes Philippines leaving over 3,000 fatalities. U.S. ( Subway Vigilante )Bernhard Goetz shoots four black youths on a Manhattan subway Brunei Brunei Gains Independence From Great Britain UK The UK replaces GCE O-Level's and CSE's and replaces them with GCSE's U.S.

The Summer Olympics are held in Los Angeles, United States Yugoslavia The Winter Olympic Games are held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia Technology “1984″ – The famous Super Bowl Spot » Mac History “1984″ – The famous Super Bowl Spot The most famous Super Bowl ad “1984” is an American television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer for the first time. It was conceived by Steve Hayden, Brent Thomas and Lee Clow at Chiat/Day, Venice, produced by New York production company Fairbanks Films, and directed by Ridley Scott. Anya Major performed as the unnamed heroine and David Graham as Big Brother. Its only U.S. daytime televised broadcast was on January 22, 1984 during and as part of the telecast of the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII . Chiat/Day also ran the ad one other time on television, in December 1983 right before the 1:00 am sign-off on KMVT in Twin Falls, Idaho, so that the advertisement could be submitted to award ceremonies for that year.

In addition, starting on January 17, 1984 it was screened prior to previews in movie theaters for a few weeks. It has since been seen on television commercial compilation specials, as well as in “Retro-mercials” on TV Land. The estate of George Orwell and the television rightsholder to the novel 1984 considered the commercial to be a flagrant copyright infringement, and sent a cease-and-desist letter to Apple and Chiat/Day in April 1984. The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that. In one interpretation of the commercial, “1984” used the unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top with a cubist picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from “conformity” (Big Brother). These images were an allusion to George Orwell’s noted novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised “Big Brother”. The rows of marching minions have direct cinematic parallels with those in the opening scenes of the classic dystopian film Metropolis.

Originally a subject of contention within Apple, it has nevertheless consistently been lauded as a classic, winning critical acclaim over time. It is now considered a watershed event and a masterpiece in advertising, and is widely regarded as one of the most memorable and successful American television commercials of all time. The commercial was rebroadcast in an updated version in 2004 on its 20th anniversary, with the heroine modified to be listening to an iPod. Viewers generally saw the Big Brother target of the Apple advertisement as being Microsoft, with the original villain, IBM, being all but forgotten. Making of the Apple Ad 1984 Plot The commercial opens with a dystopic, industrial setting in blue and gray tones, showing a line of people (of ambiguous gender) marching in unison through a long tunnel monitored by a string of telescreens. This is in sharp contrast to the full-color shots of the nameless runner (Anya Major).

She looks like an Olympic track and field athlete, as she is carrying a large brass-headed hammer and is wearing an athletic “uniform” (bright orange athletic shorts, running shoes, a white tank top with a cubist picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer, a white sweat band on her left wrist, and a red one on her right). As she is chased by four police officers (presumably agents of the Thought Police) wearing black uniforms, protected by riot gear, helmets with visors covering their faces, and armed with large night sticks, she races towards a large screen with the image of a Big Brother-like figure (David Graham, also seen on the telescreens earlier) giving a speech: My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today we celebrate the first, glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology.

Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail! The runner, now close to the screen, hurls the hammer towards it, right at the moment Big Brother announces, “we shall prevail!” In a flurry of light and smoke, the screen is destroyed, shocking the people watching the screen. The commercial concludes with a portentous voiceover, accompanied by scrolling black text (in Apple’s early signature “Garamond” font); the hazy, whitish-blue aftermath of the cataclysmic event serves as the background. It reads: On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984. The screen fades to black as the voiceover ends, and the rainbow Apple logo appears.

Production Development The commercial was created by the advertising agency Chiat/Day, Venice, with copy by Steve Hayden, art direction by Brent Thomas and creative direction by Lee Clow. Ridley Scott (whose dystopian sci-fi film, Blade Runner was released two years prior) was hired by agency producer Richard O’Neill to direct it, with a then-“unheard-of production budget of $900,000.” The actors who appeared in the commercial were paid $25 per day . The copywriter of the ad was Steve Hayden. At the time he worked for Chiat/Day, the company that produced the spot. He’s now vice-chairman at Ogilvy and Mather. NPR’s Liane Hansen spoke with Hayden about the ad’s impact: [jwplayer mediaid=”2265″] Steve Jobs and John Sculley were so enthusiastic about the final product that they “…purchased one and a half minutes of ad time for the Super Bowl, annually the most-watched television program in America. In December 1983 they screened the commercial for the Apple Board of Directors.

To Jobs’ and Sculley’s surprise, the entire board hated the commercial.” However, Scully himself got “cold feet” and asked Chiat/Day to sell off the two commercial spots. Despite the board’s dislike of the film, Steve Jobs continued to support it. Steve Wozniak watched it and offered to pay for half of the spot personally if the board refused to air it. Of the original ninety seconds booked, Chiat/Day managed to resell thirty seconds to another advertiser, leaving the other sixty second slot. Intended message Film History Milestones - 1984 Event and Significance 1984 In the case of Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that home videotaping or recording (for home use) did not violate copyright laws. It upheld the rights of VCR owners to tape programs off TV. Originally in 1976, Sony was charged with copyright infringement by Universal Studios and the Walt Disney Company, seeking to halt the manufacture of Sony's Betamax magnetic videotape recording system.

1984 The Adventures of Andre and Wally B (1984) was the first fully-computer-generated animated 3-D short film, worked on by future key Pixar player John Lasseter. It was produced by the Graphics Group, a subsidiary of LucasFilm, that was later split off and renamed Pixar. 1984 Splash (1984), a romantic comedy with Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah, was Disney's first film released under its new film label "Touchstone Pictures (or Films) " - its first entry into more mature themes (and content) in films. 1984 The fish-out-of-water action comedy Beverly Hills Cop (1984) was the biggest box-office (domestic) hit of the year with box-office gross receipts of $234.7 million (domestic), barely edging out Ghostbusters (1984) at $229 million (domestic). Unknown Brooklyn comic, initially on TV's Saturday Night Live, found his greatest stardom with this series (ultimately with two sequels), after appearing in two earlier movies: 48 HRS.

(1982) and then Trading Places (1983), although neither of them broke the $100 million level. Murphy became one of the first black movie stars to be widely accepted by white America, with his character of displaced, rule-breaking Detroit cop Axel Foley, investigating a murder in Beverly Hills. The soundtrack (Harold Faltermeyer's synthesizer) won a Grammy Award for Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture. The very recognizable "Axel F" theme song played throughout the film. 1984 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) , the third film of the original series, marked the feature-film directing debut of Leonard Nimoy (the movie's character Spock). The success of the film led to Nimoy also directing the next film in the franchise, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) - the highest grossing film of the original series at $109.7 million (domestic). 1984 The writing/directing team of Joel and Ethan Coen released their debut film, a modern-day film noir titled Blood Simple (1984).

1984 The PG-13 film rating was introduced, in response to parental protest about the sexualized torture scene (a beating heart was ripped from a victim's chest) in influential producer/director Steven Spielberg's PG-rated Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) (his follow-up film to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) ), and also for violence in Gremlins (1984). The PG category was split into two by the Motion Picture Association of America: PG and PG-13 (for a film having a higher level of intensity). Children under the age of 17 could be admitted, but with parental guidance strongly suggested. Criticisms of this second Indiana Jones film in the franchise were numerous: a weak lead actress (Spielberg's future wife Kate Capshaw), its dark mood, charges of racism, insensitivity and misrepresentation of Indian culture and the Hindu religion, the inaccurate depiction of the Goddess Kali, and the eating of Indian cuisine delicacies including snakes, eyeballs, beetles and chilled monkey brains.

1984 Joe Dante's commercially-successful Gremlins (1984) was one of two films (along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)) directly responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating by the MPAA. A more comedic sequel followed, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). 1984 The first movie to be released in the US with a PG-13 rating was John Milius' Red Dawn (1984). 1984 The Apple Macintosh computer went on sale to the public on January 24, 1984, introduced by Apple chairman Steve Jobs. It was the first commercially-successful personal computer - with a mouse and graphical-user interface for ease of use, to compete with IBM's and Microsoft DOS computer systems. The computer was introduced by Ridley Scott's TV commercial "1984," costing $1.5 million, which first aired during the third quarter of the year's Super Bowl game - on January 22, 1984.

The ad referenced George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and the "Big Brother" conformist society, to be saved by the coming of the Macintosh 128K. 1984 Tri-Star Pictures, formed in 1982 as a joint venture by CBS Television, HBO (Home Box Office) and Columbia Pictures, released its first film in May, The Natural (1984). 1984 The Kenny Loggins' title hit on the soundtrack for the romantic drama Footloose (1984) made it one of the most recognizable dance films of all time. Its story was loosely based on events that took place in the small, rural, and extremely religious farming town of Elmore City, Oklahoma in 1978, when the town's elders banned dancing and rock music. A remake starred Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough, Footloose (2011). 1984 Sophisticated leading man/actor William Powell died at the age of 91.

He had starred in many noteworthy films during his long career, including The Thin Man series (six films from 1934 to 1947, all opposite Myrna Loy as the crime fighting duo of Nick and Nora Charles). He was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award three times: The Thin Man (1934) , My Man Godfrey (1936) , and Life With Father (1947), but never won. Other starring film roles included Reckless (1935), Best Picture-winning The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Libeled Lady (1936), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), and Mister Roberts (1955). 1984 The two Conan films (Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984)) had brought some notoriety and fame to body-builder-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but his career didn't take off until his archetypal role as an indestructible cyborg assassin, The Terminator in James Cameron's The Terminator (1984) .

The film took the 21st spot of highest-grossing (domestic) films of 1984, at $38.4 million. 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) , a notorious slasher film from director Wes Craven, came out late in the year 1984, after both other competing franchises Halloween and Friday the 13th had been launched. This one featured a "dream world," sexually-deviant, sadistic, hideously-grotesque child killer (one of the most popular horror movie icons of all time) - very different from the hulking, mask-wearing Jason Voorhees, and the lunatic homicidal escapee Michael Myers. Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a vengeance-crazed dream demon terrorizing teens in the town of Springwood was noted for his blood red/green sweater, horribly disfigured/scarred face, wicked sense of humor, brown fedora hat, and right-hand razor-fingered glove.

Craven's film was rejected by all the major studios - and ultimately became one of the earliest films of neophyte New Line Cinema, which went on to major studio status later in the decade. New Line became known as "The House That Freddy Built." There would be many more sequels (seven) and a remake, stretching from 1985 to 2010. 1984 Wolfgang Petersen's The NeverEnding Story (1984), an expensive film shot mostly in Germany, was a fanciful family adventure which did fair box-office (domestic) business, at $20.2 million. It told about a boy named Bastian Bux (Barret Oliver) who ventured to a fantasy world called Fantasia, its Childlike Empress (Tami Stronach), and a young hero named Atreyu (Noah Hathaway) (later the name of a rock band). There were two sequels: The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), and The Neverending Story III (1994). There was also a spin-off TV series in 1995.

1984 Director David Lynch's big-budget adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 science-fiction work Dune (1984), with a production budget of $40 million, was both a critical and box-office disaster. Its total domestic gross was $30.9 million, and all plans for sequels were cancelled as a result. 1984 The Voyager Company debuted its Criterion Collection line of special-edition video laserdiscs, with additional revolutionary features such as language options, original aspect ratio widescreen and letterboxed formats (rather than pan-and-scan), supplementary materials, commentaries by directors on audio tracks, interviews, making-of documentaries, photo galleries (stills, posters, artwork, storyboards, shooting scripts), state-of-the-art mastering, and other extras. Their contributions solidified the laserdisc as the choice of cinephiles for over 15 years. These features later became commonplace on releases of DVDs. 1984 Rocky's director John G. Avildsen also helmed The Karate Kid (1984), with another 'underdog-triumphs' theme - a very influential dramatic martial arts film.

It has been ranked as one of the best high school films of all time. It starred 22 year-old Ralph Macchio as the title character, high school senior Daniel LaRusso. To combat bullies, Daniel sought the tutelage of Kesuke Miyagi (Noriyuki "Pat" Morita) for lessons on life and the skills of karate ("Wax on, wax off" was one of his most famous, oft-repeated quotes). It resulted in three sequels: The Karate Kid, Part II (1986) and The Karate Kid, Part III (1989) both with Ralph Macchio, and a third The Next Karate Kid (1994) with Hilary Swank as new karate student Julie Pierce. There was also the remake The Karate Kid (2010) starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, and an animated TV series in 1989. 1984 The soundtrack of cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth's and director Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense (1984), featuring the rock band Talking Heads, was recorded on a 24-track Sony digital recorder.

It was notable for being the first all-digital film sound in history. Its documentation of the singing group during three nights in December, 1983 at Hollywood's Pantages Theater has often been considered to be the best rock concert film of all-time. 1984 The comedy Police Academy (1984) was the 6th highest-grossing (domestic) film of 1984, with $81.2 million. There were six inferior sequels within ten years from 1985 to 1994, including Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985), Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986), Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987), Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988), Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989), and Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994). There was also a short-lived TV series in 1997.

1984 Director John Hughes, the future master of comedic, "teen"-oriented coming-of-age or 'rites of passage' films directed toward a youth audience, released his debut film Sixteen Candles (1984), starring promising red-headed star Molly Ringwald, one of the Brat Packers of the time. The quintessential teenager in John Hughes' youth comedies of the eighties was influential in establishing the female teen archetype, in the next few films: The Breakfast Club (1985) and Pretty in Pink (1986). 1984 The Razzies presented the 'Worst Actor' award to Christopher Atkins for his role in A Night in Heaven (1983), and 'Worst Actress' (and 'Worst Picture') awards to Pia Zadora for The Lonely Lady (1983). In 1990, Zadora's film also received a 'Worst Picture of the Decade' nomination and in 2005 the 'Worst 'Drama' of the First 25 Years' nomination.

1984 A raunchy comic derivative of Animal House (1978) was Revenge of the Nerds (1984) that told about a group of outcast, misfit and bullied nerds in the Adams College chapter of Lamba Lamda Lamda (Tri-Lams), who feuded with the Alpha Beta jocks during a major tournament called the Greek Games. Surprisingly, it was the 16th highest-grossing (domestic) film of 1984, at $40.9 million. Its popularity led to three sequels (the last two were made-for-TV movies): Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation (1992), and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love (1994). An unsuccessful TV pilot was also released in 1991 based almost entirely on the movie.

1984 Actor Rob Reiner made his directorial debut with This Is Spinal Tap (1984) - it set the standard for a mockumentary (or "rockumentary") in its depiction of a fictional heavy-metal rock band named Spinal Tap on tour in the US during the fall of 1982. It has been rated one of the best cult movies and comedy films of all-time. Its most memorable scene was the one in which a band member described how the amplifier had an "11" on its dial: "These go to eleven." Actors Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest (all former Saturday Night Live cast members, appearing as David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls, and Nigel Tufnel) subsequently released three official albums as Spinal Tap, and appeared on several shows in character, including The Simpsons. 1984 Nick Castle's space-opera The Last Starfighter (1984) was about a trailer-park dwelling teenage boy (Lance Guest) with video-game prowess getting involved in an interstellar war between the Rylan Star League and wicked Ko-Dan forces.

It was a groundbreaking film - the first film to feature the extensive use of CGI -- most importantly, the integrated use of photo-realistic, computer-generated (CGI) models for all Gunstar vehicles or spaceships, or planet shots, rather than more traditional miniature models (as in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or Star Wars (1977) ). The technique was called digital scene simulation or 'integrated CGI' - the special effects were actually representing real-world objects, and the CG was fully integrated with the live-action. Although the film never had a sequel, there were several other offshoots: non-filmic adaptations of the storyline (including a novelization and comic book series), an off-Broadway musical, and videogames (arcade and home computer versions, both with and without the Last Starfighter title). 1984 French film-maker Francois Truffaut died at the age of 52 of a brain tumor. He was famed as one of the founders of the French New Wave movement, as well as being a director, actor, and screenwriter.

His most notable films as director were The 400 Blows (1959), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1962), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Day for Night (1973) - Academy Award winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and The Story of Adele H. (1975). 1984 The Godzilla franchise film, The Return of Godzilla (1984), (aka Godzilla 1985, or Gojira) was a reboot and direct sequel to the original film Godzilla (1954) (aka Gojira). It returned to the original horror elements without schlocky, goofy, or campy scenes. 1984 Director Sam Peckinpah died at the age of 59 in Inglewood, CA.

His most notable contributions to cinema were the revisionistic Western The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971) - both controversial for their violence (he was nicknamed "Bloody Sam"), and two others: the western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and the cult film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). History of AppleApple Lisa and Macintosh Computer - History of Apple Apple Lisa and Macintosh Computer (1981 - 1985) Apple Lisa vs. Macintosh Steve Jobs began working on the Apple Lisa in 1978 but in 1982 he was pushed from the Lisa team due to infighting, and took over Jef Raskin’s low-cost-computer project, the Macintosh. A turf war broke out between Lisa’s “corporate shirts” and Jobs’ “pirates” over which product would ship first and save Apple. Lisa won the race in 1983 and became the first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI, but was a commercial failure due to its high price tag and limited software titles.

The Debut and Success of the Macintosh In 1984, Apple next launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by the now famous $1.5 million television commercial “1984”. It was directed by Ridley Scott, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, and is now considered a watershed event for Apple’s success and a “masterpiece”. The Macintosh initially sold well, but follow-up sales were not strong due to its high price and limited range of software titles. The machine’s fortunes changed with the introduction of the LaserWriter, the first PostScript laser printer to be offered at a reasonable price, and PageMaker, an early desktop publishing package. The Mac was particularly powerful in this market due to its advanced graphics capabilities, which had necessarily been built in to create the intuitive Macintosh GUI. It has been suggested that the combination of these three products was responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market. Steve Jobs vs. John Sculley In 1985 a power struggle developed between Jobs and CEO John Sculley, who had been hired two years earlier.

The Apple board of directors instructed Sculley to “contain” Jobs and limit his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley’s direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from his leadership role at Apple. Sculley found out that Jobs had been attempting to organize a putsch and called a board meeting at which Apple’s board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties. Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc. the same year. About History Of Apple This website is a private project by a few former employees of Apple Inc. This website is not sponsored, affiliated or endorsed by Apple Inc. All Apple Inc. logos, designs, trademarks or other content and associated material belong to Apple Inc. or the appropriate owner. No infringement is intended by any usage on this site. Recent Posts Apple Macintosh » Mac History Timeline Steve Jobs Apple Macintosh Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc.

The Macintosh 128K was released on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI) rather than a command line interface. Through the second half of the 1980s, the company built market share only to see it dissipate in the 1990s as the personal computer market shifted towards IBM PC Compatible machines running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. Apple consolidated multiple consumer-level desktop models into the 1998 iMac all-in-one, which sold extremely well and saw the Macintosh brand revitalized. Current Mac systems are mainly targeted at the home, education, and creative professional markets. They are: the aforementioned (though upgraded) iMac and the entry-level Mac mini desktop models, the workstation-level Mac Pro tower, the MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, and the Xserve server. Production of the Mac is based on a vertical integration model in that Apple facilitates all aspects of its hardware and creates its own operating system that is pre-installed on all Macs. This is in contrast to most IBM compatible PCs, where multiple vendors create hardware intended to run another company’s software.

Apple exclusively produces Mac hardware, choosing internal systems, designs, and prices. Apple does use third party components, however; current Macintosh CPUs use Intel’s x86 architecture. Previous models used the AIM alliance’s PowerPC and early models used Motorola’s 68k. Apple also develops the operating system for Macs, currently Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”. The modern Mac, like other personal computers, is capable of running alternative operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, and Microsoft Windows, the latter of which is considered to be the Mac’s biggest competitor Apple Macintosh The Macintosh project started in the late 1970s with Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, who envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. In September 1979, Raskin was authorized to start hiring for the project, and he began to look for an engineer who could put together a prototype.

Bright engineers: Andy Hertzfeld, Chris Espinosa, Joanna Hoffman, George Crow, Bill Atkinson, Burrell Smith and Jerry Mannock Bill Atkinson, a member of Apple’s Lisa team (which was developing a similar but higher-end computer), introduced him to Burrell Smith, a service technician who had been hired earlier that year. Over the years, Raskin assembled a large development team that designed and built the original Macintosh hardware and software; besides Raskin, Atkinson and Smith, the team included Chris Espinosa, Joanna Hoffman, George Crow, Jerry Manock, Susan Kare, Andy Hertzfeld, and Daniel Kottke. httpv:// Smith’s first Macintosh board was built to Raskin’s design specifications: it had 64 kilobytes (KB) of RAM, used the Motorola 6809E microprocessor, and was capable of supporting a 256×256 pixel black-and-white bitmap display.

Bud Tribble, a Macintosh programmer, was interested in running the Lisa’s graphical programs on the Macintosh, and asked Smith whether he could incorporate the Lisa’s Motorola 68000 microprocessor into the Mac while still keeping the production cost down. By December 1980, Smith had succeeded in designing a board that not only used the 68000, but bumped its speed from 5 to 8 megahertz (MHz); this board also had the capacity to support a 384×256 pixel display. Smith’s design used fewer RAM chips than the Lisa, which made production of the board significantly more cost-efficient. The final Mac design was self-contained and had the complete QuickDraw picture language and interpreter in 64 Kb of ROM – far than most other computers; it had 128 KB of RAM, in the form of sixteen 64 kilobit (Kb) RAM chips soldered to the logicboard. Though there were no memory slots, its RAM was expandable to 512 KB by means of soldering sixteen chip sockets to accept 256 Kb RAM chips in place of the factory-installed chips.

The final product’s screen was a 9-inch, 512×342 pixel monochrome display, exceeding the prototypes. The original 1984 Mac OS desktop featured a radically new graphical user interface. Users communicated with the computer not through abstract lines of code but rather using a metaphorical desktop that included items that the user was already familiar with. The design caught the attention of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. Realizing that the Macintosh was more marketable than the Lisa, he began to focus his attention on the project. Raskin finally left the Macintosh project in 1981 over a personality conflict with Jobs, and the final Macintosh design is said to be closer to Jobs’ ideas than Raskin’s. After hearing of the pioneering GUI technology being developed at Xerox PARC, Jobs had negotiated a visit to see the Xerox Alto computer and Smalltalk development tools in exchange for Apple stock options. The Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces were partially influenced by technology seen at Xerox PARC and were combined with the Macintosh group’s own ideas.

Jobs also commissioned industrial designer Hartmut Esslinger to work on the Macintosh line, resulting in the “Snow White” design language; although it came too late for the earliest Macs, it was implemented in most other mid- to late-1980s Apple computers.[4] However, Jobs’ leadership at the Macintosh project was short-lived; after an internal power struggle with new CEO John Sculley, Jobs angrily resigned from Apple in 1985, went on to found NeXT, another computer company, and did not return until 1997. 1984: Introduction This television commercial, which aired during the Super Bowl, launched the original Macintosh. The Macintosh 128k was announced to the press in October 1983, followed by an 18-page brochure included with various magazines in December. The Macintosh was introduced by the now famous US$1.5 million Ridley Scott television commercial, “1984”.

The commercial most notably aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on 22 January 1984 and is now considered a “watershed event” and a “masterpiece.” 1984 used an unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from “conformity” (Big Brother). These images were an allusion to George Orwell’s noted novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised “Big Brother.” For a special post-election edition of Newsweek in November 1984, Apple spent more than US$2.5 million to buy all 39 of the advertising pages in the issue. Apple also ran a “Test Drive a Macintosh” promotion, in which potential buyers with a credit card could take home a Macintosh for 24 hours and return it to a dealer afterwards. While 200,000 people participated, dealers disliked the promotion, the supply of computers was insufficient for demand, and many were returned in such a bad shape that they could no longer be sold.

This marketing campaign caused CEO John Sculley to raise the price from US$1,995 to US$2,495 (adjusting for inflation, about $5,000 in 2007). Two days after the 1984 ad aired, the Macintosh went on sale. It came bundled with two applications designed to show off its interface: MacWrite and MacPaint. Although the Mac garnered an immediate, enthusiastic following, it was too radical for some, who labeled it a mere “toy.” Because the machine was entirely designed around the GUI, existing text-mode and command-driven applications had to be redesigned and the programming code rewritten; this was a challenging undertaking that many software developers shied away from, and resulted in an initial lack of software for the new system. In April 1984 Microsoft’s MultiPlan migrated over from MS-DOS, followed by Microsoft Word in January 1985. In 1985, Lotus Software introduced Lotus Jazz after the success of Lotus 1-2-3 for the IBM PC, although it was largely a flop. Apple introduced Macintosh Office the same year with the lemmings ad.

Infamous for insulting its own potential customers, it was not successful. Feature stories about the Apple Macintosh on this web site: Steve Jobs: From Garage to World’s Most Valuable Company | Computer History Museum Steve Jobs: From Garage to World’s Most Valuable Company Dag Spicer December 02, 2011 Remarkable People 0 First So we’re sitting in the payphone trying to make a blue box call. And the operator comes back on the line. And we’re all scared and we’d try it again. … And she comes back on the line; we’re all scared so we put in money. And then a cop car pulls up. And Steve was shaking, you know, and he got the blue box back into my pocket. I got it– he got it to me because the cop turned to look in the bushes for drugs or something, you know? So I put the box in my pocket. The cop pats me down and says, “What’s this?” I said, “It’s an electronic music synthesizer.” Wasn’t too musical. Second cop says, “What’s the orange button for?” “It’s for calibration,” says Steve.

Steve Wozniak, lecture at Computer History Museum, 2002 So begins one of the earliest chapters in the life of two remarkable young men whose youth, energy and enthusiasm transformed the world. The “Blue Box” was a simple electronic gizmo that bypassed telephone company billing computers, allowing anyone to make free telephone calls anywhere in the world. The Blue Box was illegal, but the specifications for hacking into the telephone network were published in a telephone company journal and many youngsters with a flair for electronics built them. The “two Steves” had a great deal of fun building and using them for “ethical hacking,” with Wozniak building the kits and Jobs selling them—a pattern which would emerge again and again in the lives of these two innovators. (Wozniak once telephoned the Vatican, pretended to be Henry Kissinger and asked to speak to the Pope—just to see if he could. When someone answered, Woz got scared and hung up.) Wozniak and Jobs Blue Box, ca. 1972. The Blue Box allowed electronics hobbyists to make free telephone calls.

CHM #X727.86 These early playful roots are what Wozniak remembers most fondly of Jobs. As columnist Mike Cassidy recalled in a San Jose Mercury News interview, what these two friends most remembered was “not bringing computers to the masses … or the many ‘aha’ moments designing computers. Instead, it’s the time the two tried to unfurl a banner depicting a middle finger salute from the roof of Homestead High School…” or their many Blue Box exploits. Walter Isaacson, Jobs’s official biographer, cites Jobs reflecting on the Blue Box: If it hadn’t been for the Blue Boxes, there would have been no Apple. I’m 100% sure of that. Woz and I learned how to work together, and we gained the confidence that we could solve technical problems and actually put something into production. (Isaacson, p. 30) Steve Jobs (circled) at Homestead High School Electronics Club, Cupertino, California ca. 1969 Jobs, like Wozniak before him, attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, a solidly middle-class school in the suburbs of Silicon Valley.

Homestead was progressive, with an innovative electronics program that shaped Wozniak’s life. Jobs and Wozniak had been friends for some time. They met in 1971 when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced then 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. After hours, the two Steves would often meet at Hewlett-Packard lectures in Palo Alto, and both were hired by HP for a summer. Jobs graduated high school in 1972 and attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon for a semester, during which he collected Coke bottles for money and ate free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. After drifting from class to class, Jobs left for India on a spiritual quest with Reed College friend Dan Kottke (who later became Apple employee #12). Jobs returned as a Buddhist and in 1974 began working at the legendary gaming company Atari as a technician. The Homebrew Computer Club newsletter was a forum for hobbyists to exchange information and ideas. The next year, Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of electronics and computer hobbyists in Silicon Valley who got together to explore the latest in a new technology, the microcomputer.

Wozniak, who had no formal engineering training, designed the Apple-1 computer as a way of “showing off” to the people at the Homebrew Club. Based on an inexpensive 6502 microprocessor, the Apple-1 came as a kit and was aimed squarely at hobbyists who wanted to own their own computer, even if they weren’t quite sure what they could do with it. The Apple-1 was a masterpiece of circuit design and its elegance impressed all who could appreciate its simple but powerful conception. Ever the salesman, Jobs quickly appreciated that there might be a demand for the Apple-1 beyond the geeky members of the Homebrew Club. Jobs showed an Apple-1 to Paul Terrell, owner of the local Byte Shop computer store, who placed an order for 50 of the machines—so long as they came pre-assembled. To obtain funds to purchase parts for the Apple-1, Jobs had obtained 30 days’ credit from suppliers—just long enough to enable Wozniak and Jobs to build the computers (mostly in Jobs’s parents’ garage) and get paid for them.

To fund the circuit board layout of the Apple-1, Wozniak sold his beloved HP-65 calculator and Jobs his Volkswagen van. The Byte Shop order brought in $50,000, a “total shock” to Wozniak, who was earning one-tenth of that as an engineer at HP. The sale spurred Jobs into thinking about a new computer that anyone—not just those handy with a soldering iron—could afford and use. Homebrew Computer Club meeting, 1978 Courtesy of Lee Felsenstein Steve Jobs and Wozniak using Apple-1 system, ca. 1976 ©Apple, Inc. / Joe Melena The Apple-1 kit computer introduced in 1976 Photo: ©Mark Richards Early ad for the Apple-1 computer system, ca. 1976 Funding this vision presented some challenges: the idea of people having their own computers was viewed as absurd at the time. Banks were unwilling to loan the two Steves money. After several unsuccessful visits with venture capitalists, Jobs met Mike Markkula, who, at 32, was already retired from Intel.

Markkula was an electrical engineer with solid management skills who would provide “adult supervision” to the young company as well as something else: he personally invested $250,000. The three founded Apple Computer in January, 1977. Steve and I get a lot of credit, but Mike Markkula was probably more responsible for our early success, and you never hear about him. Steve Wozniak, Failure Magazine, July 2000 The original Apple II personal computer, the machine that propelled Apple into a global company (1977) Photo: ©Mark Richards Jobs and Wozniak immediately moved forward with their new machine, the Apple II. It was a big improvement over the Apple-1. It had an integrated keyboard and case, could plug into a TV set for display, and was ready to run right out of the box. It also had color graphics, which made it unique among similar computers at the time such as the Radio Shack TRS-80 and the Commodore PET. It was a consumer item, not a kit for hobbyists. If the Apple II featured typically brilliant Wozniak design, the marketing was vintage Jobs.

This was Apple’s first mass-produced product, and Jobs sold it as a computer for everyone, from students to business professionals. The Apple II’s success was unprecedented, in part because, under Markkula’s urging, Apple donated or gave huge discounts to schools—ensuring that a new generation of students would learn about computers on an Apple. But the Apple II also enjoyed a business windfall with the arrival of the spreadsheet program VisiCalc in 1979. Powered by demand from both the education and business markets, Apple II sales soared. The Apple II would live on in various models until 1993—an astonishing 16 years. Early chants of “Apple II Forever” among the Apple faithful rang long and clear. Apple Macintosh, 1984. The Mac revolutionized personal computing by introducing the graphical user interface (GUI), allowing anyone to use a computer CHM# 102633564 Photo: ©Mark Richards Jobs’s greatest triumph, however, was the 1984 Macintosh, “the computer for the rest of us.” Macintosh offered users an entirely new way of interacting: the graphical user interface (GUI).

No longer would people have to learn special commands or have specialized training to use a computer. Now everyone who could point and click a mouse (even children) could run a computer. The Macintosh kicked off a new personal computer revolution, one that stressed intuition and use of a common graphical look and feel over memorization of computer codes. Apple launched the Macintosh with a revolutionary television commercial produced by science fiction filmmaker Ridley Scott. The commercial aired only once—during the 1984 Super Bowl broadcast. Even with its splashy introduction and its breakthroughs in usability and design, however, the Mac started slowly in the marketplace and sales were modest in the first year. Moreover, Jobs’s intense personality, drive for perfection and difficult management style frequently clashed with others at Apple. In 1985, he suffered the same fortune as many Silicon Valley founders: he was fired by the board of directors. Jobs’s departure marked the end of an era and the beginning of a period of massive hits and equally big misses for him. That period would last for a decade. Explore further Watch vintage Steve Jobs footage on Apple Next Two years ago we made a decision. We saw some new technology and we made a decision to risk our company.

Steve Jobs’s NeXT presentation, October 12, 1988, San Francisco Symphony Hall Pixar Image Computer, 1986. This computer was used for generating images from complex data sets such as CAT scans, oil exploration or scenes from a virtual world. Disney purchased several dozen for use in animation. CHM# 102621974 Photo: ©Mark Richards Jobs spent the next ten years away from Apple but was by no means taking time off. In 1986, he bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, renaming it Pixar. Pixar had started as a manufacturer of high-performance graphics hardware. Its main product was the Pixar Image Computer, a rendering engine for animation. While the computer was technically sophisticated, its high cost (about $130,000) made it appealing only to well-funded customers such as advanced medical research institutions and government laboratories. There was one exception: Disney. The legendary studio bought several dozen of the systems for use in animation. Scene from Pixar’s computer-generated feature-length film Toy Story ©Pixar Disney’s interest in Pixar’s hardware, however, was not enough to save the company from lackluster sales.

Pixar finally sold its hardware division in 1990. Jobs shifted Pixar’s focus and concentrated it on producing short film sequences and commercials. The next year, partly due to the success of Pixar’s Oscar-winning “Tin Toy” short film, Pixar and Disney agreed to produce a computer generated film called “A Tin Toy Christmas.” Hollywood had met computing, and together Pixar and Disney would move computer-generated graphics from the niche of special effects to the heart of filmmaking itself. Pixar brain trust: Ed Catmull, Steve Jobs, John Lasseter ©Pixar Using groundbreaking computer technology and some of the most skilled animators and storytellers in the world, Pixar produced the blockbuster film Toy Story, released in 1995. Toy Story proved that a feature-length motion picture could be entirely animated by computer and also made wildly entertaining. Pixar exploded as a Hollywood powerhouse, and its partnership with Disney produced some of the biggest box office hits of the decade. Jobs sold Pixar to Disney in 2006, earning more than $7 billion from his initial $10 million investment and becoming Disney’s largest single shareholder. The NeXT Cube (1990) was a masterpiece of engineering… but was too expensive.

NeXT evolved into a software company after the Cube and several other NeXt hardware products failed in the marketplace. NeXT’s greatest innovation was the NeXTSTEP operating environment CHM# 102626734 While Pixar was beginning to work its magic, Jobs was working in parallel on another computer startup. His new company, NeXT, set out to build high-performance UNIX workstations for the educational and scientific market. The machines, introduced in 1990, were prototypically Jobs: elegant, well-engineered and easy to use, but the NeXT “Cube” was too expensive for mass appeal. Although it had high-performance hardware, the NeXT delivered its greatest innovation in the form of its “object-oriented” operating system, NeXTStep. Yet despite its originality and power, the NeXT system struggled to find its place in the market. It did, however, have a significant claim to fame: a British scientist named Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web on a NeXT. In 1996, Apple bought NeXT, mainly for its software and operating system, and Jobs returned to Apple as a consultant.

Jobs with the original iMac, 1998 ©Apple Inc. / Moshe Brakha Jobs joined an Apple that was in no better shape than the company from which he had been unceremoniously fired. It was losing money at a catastrophic rate. Its product line was bloated and confusing. Its marketing was ineffective. Its innovations in user interfaces and software had long since been eclipsed by Microsoft’s Windows and applications for the Windows system, which had become the de facto standard for personal computing worldwide. And Apple seemingly had no strategy for capitalizing on the internet, which was exploding as a force in home and business computing. A year after returning to Apple, Jobs was named interim CEO, replacing Gil Amelio in July 1997. Apple had lost more than $700 million the preceding quarter. It was running out of money and it looked as if it might not survive. Jobs quickly sought new financing, terminated languishing projects, fired hundreds of people and focused the company on just a desktop computer and a laptop for professionals and for consumers. The first desktop computer from the new Jobs era was the iMac (1998).

Ultimately available in several colors of the rainbow, the iMac emphasized connection to the Internet and—Jobs’s mantra—simplicity. Out of the box, the iMac could be on the Internet in just two easy steps. “There is no Step 3,” Apple claimed. The iMac and its distinctive design also marked the first tangible collaboration between Jobs and Jonathan Ive, the British-born designer with whom he would form a legendary partnership. Explore further The return of Elvis would not have provoked a bigger sensation Jim Carlton, January 1997, The Wall Street Journal, from “Steve Jobs,” by Walter Isaacson In 2000, the Apple board removed the term “interim” from Jobs’s CEO title, cementing his permanent return to the company he had co-founded. It must have seemed a glorious triumph for Jobs personally. For the Apple faithful, it represented a glimmer of hope that the resurgent company they loved might have a chance. Perhaps no one within or outside Apple—with the possible exception of Jobs himself—could foresee that the company was embarking on one of the most remarkable decades any company in any industry had ever experienced. iPod Evaluation and Test Prototype (2001).

The original iPod had a miniaturized 5GB hard disk drive and could “store 1,000 songs in your pocket.” CHM# 102633636 Photo: ©Mark Richards Innovations came in rapid-fire succession. In 2001, Apple introduced OS X, the new operating system for the Mac platform. OS X marked the total redesign of the Mac operating system from the ground up. It was a direct result of Apple’s NeXT acquisition and was based on NeXT’s OPENSTEP environment and the BSD Unix system developed at UC Berkeley. That same year Apple opened its first retail store, in Tysons Corner, Virginia. It was a daring step at a time when computer companies had long since abandoned their own branded retail outlets in favor of “big box” electronic superstores and internet shopping. Like Apple products themselves, the stores reflected an austere simplicity and were organized not by product category but by how Jobs believed people wanted to use them. Products were stylishly arranged for direct use by customers in a minimalist, almost laboratory-like zone of utilitarian consumerism.

As usual, Jobs sweated the details, ensuring the marble floors were the right color and the washroom signs were not too obtrusive. A “Genius Bar” staffed by Apple experts answered customer problems on-site. The stores were hailed as a perfect blend of the products Apple made and the brand itself. The most momentous event of 2001, however, was the introduction of the iPod digital music player. Although not a new idea, Apple’s take on the device featured an easy-to-use interface and, thanks to new miniaturized hard drive technology, a prodigious amount of music storage. Jobs announced the iPod with the slogan “1,000 songs in your pocket.” Music was sync’d to the iPod through the iTunes software application, another Apple innovation. As of October 2011, more than 300 million iPods had been sold worldwide. In 2003, Jobs introduced an even more radical innovation: the iTunes store and music management system. The iTunes platform represented the successful integration of retail music, portable player, e-commerce, digital rights management and a simple desktop environment where users could manage their music libraries.

Jobs convinced powerful and deeply skeptical music company executives that, together, the iPod and iTunes system represented a legitimate and profitable alternative to music piracy, which was then rampant through bootleg services such as Napster and LimeWire. In exchange, Jobs won a revolutionary concession from the music industry: flat-rate pricing of 99 cents per downloaded song. The iTunes concept revolutionized the retail music industry, and sounded the death knell for brick-and-mortar record stores. As of October 2011, the iTunes music store had sold more than 16 billion songs. The iPod marked a turning point in Apple’s strategy. Jobs sought to move Apple beyond computers and into Apple-powered consumer devices. It was a very bold gamble, and the success of the iPod and iTunes showed that the strategy could win on two levels: it eroded traditional industry structures, and it catapulted Apple into a widely recognized global consumer brand.

iPhone, 2007 CHM# 102716304 Photo: ©Mark Richards At the 2007 Macworld trade show, Jobs announced that Apple would drop the word “Computer” from its name and become simply “Apple Inc.” The move solidified the profound shift in the company’s direction and signaled its seemingly unlimited ambition in the multi-billion dollar market for switched-on consumer products. At the Macworld show, Jobs also saved his customary “one more thing” portion of his presentation for another blockbuster announcement: the iPhone. He described it as nothing less than the re-invention of the telephone: a combination “widescreen iPod with touch controls,” a “revolutionary mobile phone,” and a “breakthrough Internet communicator.” Steve Jobs unveiling iPhone to the world When the iPhone went on-sale, thousands of people worldwide waited patiently outside Apple stores, sometimes for days, to be first to purchase one. This remarkable show of brand loyalty reflected how deeply Apple products had connected with their users on a personal level. Like the iPod before it, the iPhone sold briskly and transformed another industry (telephones) by making the smartphone an established category of “must-have” device, for everyone from teenagers to business executives.

The iPhone was a computer at its core: it ran Apple’s iOS operating system, which was based on Mac OS X, its desktop operating system. To add extra capabilities, the user downloaded ‘apps’ (applications) from the iTunes App Store, launched in July 2008. By October 2011, more than 18 billion apps had been downloaded. iPad (2010) Jobs’s last major product launch was the iPad, a tablet computer optimized for media consumption, quick emails, and web browsing. Like the previous iPod and iPhone iOS devices, the iPad pioneered an entirely new set of experiences and possibilities for users. Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, and within a year software developers had introduced more than 100,000 apps for the device, ranging from navigation aids to cameras to wildly popular games and ways both to create and consume every type of media. Yet unlike the iPod and the iPhone, the iPad did not simply improve upon a major segment of consumer electronics: it invented a largely new category. The iPad was another triumph of Apple engineering and marketing, one deeply shaped by Jobs at every step. Certain qualities persisted throughout Jobs’s career, from the Apple-1 to the iPad.

One was an unshakable determination to create something of beauty, in the aesthetic and engineering senses of that word. Another was enormously successful risk-taking, from selling his van to finance the Apple-1 to perfecting the music player, telephone and tablet computer. Another was Jobs’s uncanny ability to focus on a larger vision—and, in the case of consumers, to anticipate whole categories of needs that few of his rivals saw. Finally, especially in the iOS devices, Jobs engaged in “ecosystem thinking,” a drive to integrate radical new hardware advances with bold new software and services. iTunes and the App Stores were as critical to the success of iOS devices as the hardware itself, and established Apple not simply as an unparalleled product company but also as a global content distribution company. Jobs once said his goal in life was “to make a dent in the universe.” Isaacson asserts that Jobs changed seven industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, telephones, tablet computing, digital publishing and retail stores. At the end of this life, Jobs saw Apple surpass Exxon as the most valuable company in the world as measured in market capitalization. Ultimately, Jobs made his dent, and more.

A fitting tribute, borrowed from the tomb of English architect Sir Christopher Wren, might be: Si monumentum requires circumspice. “If you seek his monument, look around you.” Outpouring of remembrances and ‘thanks’ to Steve Jobs, Apple store, Palo Alto, California, Oct 8, 2011 © All rights reserved by troialynn Steven Paul Jobs was born February 24, 1955, and died October 5, 2011, of pancreatic cancer. Explore further

Question: What is the title of the landmark television commercial that launched the Apple Macintosh in the US in January 1984?
Answer: 1984