While Steve was away, Apple continued to introduce a number of PCs, and the company’s first notebook — the Macintosh Portable.
Steve returned to Apple in 1996 when Apple purchased NeXT, and he was made CEO in 1997. He terminated a number of the company’s products upon his return, including the Newton, but helped the company launch the iMac — the machine that would save Apple from failure.
In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X — the operating system many of us are using today — based on the NeXTstep technology built by NeXT.
In May of 2001, Steve introduced us to the first Apple retail store. The stores have been so successful that as of July 2011, there are 330 Apple retail stores all over the world.
Later that year, Steve introduced us to the iPod — now the most popular digital music player in the world, which still lives on 10 years later.
