January 3, 1977: Apple Computer Co. is officially incorporated, with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak listed as co-founders. The Apple incorporation leaves out third founder Ron Wayne — who initially invested in the company — because he sold back his stake in Apple for $800.
The funding and expertise needed to turn Apple into a corporation is provided by a man named Mike Markkula, who becomes an important figure in the company’s history.
January 2, 1979: Entrepreneurs Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston incorporate their company Software Arts to publish a program called VisiCalc. The first spreadsheet software for the Apple II, VisiCalc ultimately becomes personal computing’s first “killer app.”
The software, which sells for $100, helps transform personal computers from “cool to have” toys into “must have” business accessories.
January 1, 1983: Apple launches the Apple IIe, the third model in the Apple II series — and the last before the Macintosh will arrive a year later.
It proves a big seller, and proof positive of the Apple II brand’s sustained value.
December 31, 2012: App piracy hub Hackulous shuts down, bringing an end to two of its most popular apps, Installous and AppSync.
The iPhone jailbreak tool Installous allowed users to install “cracked” or pirated apps on their iOS devices, thereby avoiding paying purchase fees to Apple or developers. AppSync let users sync their cracked apps with iTunes.
December 30, 1999: Microsoft hits the height of its 1990s dominance and begins its early-2000s decline, clearing a gap at the top for Apple.
After hitting an all-time high of $53.60, Microsoft stock starts to fall. Less than a year later, MSFT shares will fall more than 60% in value to $20.
December 29, 1999: Apple starts shipping its unfathomably large 22-inch Cinema Display, the biggest LCD computer display available anywhere,
Apple’s all-digital flat panel is a far cry from the bulky cathode ray tube monitor of the popular iMac G3, which took the world by storm the previous year. The Cinema Display is also Apple’s first widescreen display — and the first to sport a digital video interface.
December 28, 2006: As the rest of the country enjoys a much-deserved holiday, Apple gets embroiled in a stock option “backdating” scandal.
The news, centered on the dubious awarding of stock options to CEO Steve Jobs, prompts Apple share prices to fall. Some people even suggest Jobs might need to step down as Apple’s leader. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen.
December 27, 2010: Almost four months after the second-gen Apple TV’s debut, Cupertino says it has sold 1 million of the streaming video devices.
The news shows that Apple’s set-top box is gaining momentum. However, Apple’s PR move — which included a preemptive press release issued on December 21 that said Apple “expects sales of its new Apple TV to top one million units later this week” — is also a low-blow shot at competitor Roku, which recently said it planned to hit the 1 million unit mark by the end of 2010.
December 26, 1982: Time magazine names the personal computer its “Man of the Year.”
It’s the first time a nonhuman entity wins the award, which was created in 1927. And the award devastates Steve Jobs — because he thought the accolade would go to him.
December 25, 1977: Steve Wozniak spends the holidays building a prototype of the Disk II, the Apple II computer’s revolutionary floppy disk drive.
“I worked all day, all night, through Christmas and New Year’s trying to get it done,” Wozniak would later recall in his autobiography, iWoz. “[Early Apple employee] Randy Wiggington, who was actually attending Homestead High, the school Steve and I had graduated from, helped me a lot on that project.”
Wiggington takes December 25 off. Woz does not.
December 24, 2009: As rumors of a possible Apple tablet reach the boiling point, word spreads online that the new device will be called the iSlate.
The news is based on the fact that Apple quietly acquired the domain name iSlate.com a few years earlier. Since Apple did the same thing for the iPhone back in the late 1990s, years before the iPhone actually debuted, it makes total sense that the company would follow suit with the naming of its tablet.
Of course, that didn’t end up happening.
December 23, 2005: Apple files a patent application for its iconic “slide to unlock” gesture for the iPhone.
At this point, the iPhone remains a secret research project. However, the ability to unlock the device by sliding your finger across it signifies Apple’s big ambitions for its smartphone. Cupertino wants the iPhone it’s racing to develop to be easy to use, intuitive and miles ahead of the competition technologically.
December 22, 2013: After months of false starts, Apple finally secures a deal with China Mobile to bring the iPhone to the world’s largest telecom company.
With 760 million potential iPhone customers in the offing, the deal shapes up as Apple’s most important yet for growing its brand in China. In fact, Apple CEO Tim Cook says the country soon will become the company’s biggest market.
December 21, 1994: Mac gamers get their hands on Marathon, a sci-fi first-person shooter designed as an answer to the massive success of PC title Doom.
Created by Bungie, the team that would later make the Halo games, Marathon introduces important features to the FPS genre. Just as importantly, it isn’t available on PC. Marathon quickly becomes a favorite among Mac gamers.
December 20, 1996: Apple Computer buys NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after leaving Cupertino a decade earlier.
The deal costs Apple $429 million. It’s a massive price to pay for the failing NeXT, a computer company that already saw its hardware division crash and burn. But the price is worth it when you consider what Apple gets as part of the deal: the return of Steve Jobs.
December 19, 2007: Apple settles a lawsuit with reporter Nick Ciarelli, resulting in the shuttering of Think Secret, his masssively popular Apple rumors website. Writing under the screen name Nick de Plume, the Harvard University student broke a number of Apple stories on the site, raising Cupertino’s ire.
The terms of Ciarelli’s settlement with Apple remain secret. In a statement, he says he will “be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits.”
December 18, 2006: Apple fans mourn the death of the iPhone before it even launches. Linksys begins selling a new handset called “iPhone,” Cupertino watchers must come to grips with the fact that Apple’s rumored smartphone probably won’t bear that name after all. How did this happen? Linksys’ parent company, Cisco Systems, owns the iPhone trademark.
While Apple previously released the iMac, iBook, iPod and iTunes, Cupertino didn’t own the name “iPhone.”
December 17, 2009: Apple finally triumphs over longtime rival Microsoft … on mobile operating systems market share. New data shows that iPhone OS surpasses Windows Mobile in the United States for the first time.
With roughly 36 million Americans owning smartphones, a quarter of them run Apple’s mobile operating system, according to figures released by research firm Comscore.
December 16, 1994: Apple Computer inks a licensing deal with Power Computing, allowing the company to produce Macintosh-compatible computers, aka “Mac clones.”
With falling market share, and longtime rival Microsoft steaming ahead thanks to its software-licensing strategy, Apple executives think the only way to compete is for the company to hand over its operating system for third-party Macs. Of course, it doesn’t turn out exactly like that…
December 15, 2003: Almost eight months after launching the iTunes Music Store, Apple celebrates its 25 millionth download.
The song in question? Appropriately enough for this time of year, a Frank Sinatra cover* of the Christmas classic “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”
December 12, 1980: Apple goes public, floating 4.6 million shares on the stock market at $22 per share. The Apple IPO becomes the biggest tech public offering of its day. And more than 40 out of 1,000 Apple employees become instant millionaires.
As Apple’s biggest shareholder, 25-year-old Steve Jobs ends the day with a net worth of $217 million. However, the big payday triggers internal tensions as it highlights Cupertino’s class divide.
December 11, 2013: A Chinese labor rights group calls on Apple to investigate the deaths of several workers at a Shanghai factory run by iPhone manufacturer Pegatron.
Most controversially, one of the dead workers is just 15 years old. The underage worker reportedly succumbed to pneumonia after working extremely long hours on the iPhone 5c production line.
December 10, 2012: Apple fixes an Apple Maps error that caused several motorists in Victoria, Australia, to become stranded in the remote Murray-Sunset National Park.
The early Apple Maps glitch showed the town of Mildura nearly 45 miles from its actual location. In the aftermath, Victoria police describe Apple’s navigation app as “potentially life-threatening.” That’s pretty much the opposite of “it just works.”
December 9, 2011: Apple opens a store in New York’s fabled Grand Central Terminal, the company’s fifth Manhattan retail outlet.
Overlooking the terminal’s Main Concourse, the enormous Apple Grand Central makes a stunning addition to the 140-year-old train station, which is one of New York’s busiest transportation hubs.
December 8, 1975: San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneur Paul Terrell opens the Byte Shop, one of the world’s first computer stores — and the first to sell an Apple computer.
Years before Apple would open its own retail outlets, the Byte Shop stocks the first 50 Apple-1 computers built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.