April 8, 1983: John Sculley, former president of PepsiCo, takes charge as Apple’s third CEO.
Despite a total lack of experience selling tech products, Sculley is lured to Apple by Steve Jobs himself. The Apple co-founder famously pitched the Pepsi exec with the line, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
April 6, 1939: John Sculley is born in New York City. He will grow up to be hailed as a business and marketing genius, eventually overseeing Apple’s transformation into the most profitable personal computer company in the world.
After a remarkable stint as president of Pepsi-Cola, Sculley will take over as Apple’s third CEO in 1983. He will run Apple for a 10-year period, guiding the creation of the revolutionary Newton MessagePad.
During Sculley’s decade at the helm, Apple will sell more personal computers than any other company. But most people still remember him for his role in kicking Apple co-founder Steve Jobs out of Cupertino.
April 4, 1975: Microsoft is founded by childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The software company destined to become a tech behemoth — and a major Apple frenemy.
A few years later, Microsoft will break through to the mainstream with Excel and Word, becoming a key developer of Macintosh software. Then comes the Windows operating system, looking suspiciously Apple-like. After Windows arrives, Microsoft and Apple will embark upon a long-running feud.
April 1, 1976: The Apple Computer Company is founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. The trio sets out to sell the $666 Apple-1 computer.
Apple will not officially become a corporation until January 3 the following year. By that time, Wayne is no longer a part of the business.
March 29, 2012: Apple settles its “Antennagate” controversy by giving affected iPhone 4 owners the chance to claim a whopping $15 payout. The settlement covers customers who experienced problems with the phone dropping calls due to its cutting-edge design, but were unable to return their handsets (or didn’t want a free bumper from Apple to mitigate against the problem).
While it’s arguable whether a $15 payout was worth filing all the paperwork necessary to claim the cash, the Antennagate story — and the resulting class-action lawsuit — generated big headlines at the time.
March 24, 1997: The Newton MessagePad 2000 brings major upgrades to Apple’s PDA line, including a far better display and a much faster processor.
The best MessagePad yet by a wide margin, it quickly becomes a critical and commercial success. But it won’t be enough to save the doomed product line.
March 21, 2007: Apple launches the Apple TV, a gleaming-white set-top box with a remote control, for bringing iTunes media to the living room.
Unfortunately, the device lacks key features needed to make it a killer entertainment system. It’s something of a missed opportunity for Apple.
November 17, 1995: Apple releases the first beta version of its new Mac OS Copland operating system to approximately 50 developers. Not so much a Mac OS update as a totally new operating system, it offers next-gen features designed to help Apple take on the then-mighty Windows 95.
Sadly, Copland OS will never reach the public.
Bill Atkinson, a legendary Apple programmer, let the world know Tuesday he’s in treatment for pancreatic cancer, the same disease that killed his boss, Steve Jobs, in 2011. Atkinson published a post on Facebook asking for prayers.
Recruited by Jobs and Macintosh developer and user interface guru Jef Raskin, Atkinson became employee number 51 at Apple. He’s a primary architect of the original Mac. You can see some of his considerable accomplishments and his Facebook post below.
November 9, 1994: Gil Amelio, a businessman with a reputation as a talented turnaround artist, joins Apple’s board.
Coming off his impressive revitalization of two other tech companies, National Semiconductor and Rockwell International, Amelio’s appointment at Apple sparks widespread celebration. Many Apple watchers think his arrival means the company’s dark days are over. Sadly, Amelio’s turnaround tricks won’t work in Cupertino.
Laurene Powell Jobs’ super-yacht recently crashed into another billionaire’s even bigger yacht off Naples, Italy, according to a report. Steve Jobs originally commissioned the $140 million Venus, collaborating on its design. High winds pushed the boats at anchor into each other.
Damage is estimated to be costly, given the yachts’ combined value of $265 million. For the merely wealthy or well-adjacent, that’s like paying through the nose to get a scratch fixed on your Bentley.
You have the opportunity to wrap yourself in a piece of Apple history: the bomber jacket Steve Jobs was wearing in an iconic photo of the Apple co-founder “flipping the bird” to an IBM sign.
It’s part of Steve Jobs and the Apple Revolution, an auction that just kicked off featuring nearly 300 items.
Steve Jobs’ business card bearing the signature of the Apple cofounder himself sold at auction for an amazing value: over $180,000. This is supposedly the most ever paid for a signed business card.
A collection of other Apple memorabilia brought in big bucks at the same auction, a sign of the popularity of rare items from the iPhone-maker.
Apple is a trillion dollar company today but it started out with very humble origins. There’s no better evidence than company co-founder Steve Jobs hand writing a check to the electronics store RadioShack for $4.01.
And now that check recently up for auction, and bought in 11,500 times its original value. How ‘s that for appreciation?
As legacy studios like Disney face formidable problems, a new report suggests CEO Bob Iger might revisit a “once-unthinkable option” — that Apple might buy the company, or at least a stripped-down version of it.
After all, in a near-future of even greater tech-company dominance over entertainment, Disney may need deep-pocketed protection. And its longstanding connection with Apple could come into play.
A unique bit of Apple history just went up for auction: Apple Computer check “No. 2” signed by company co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Bidding for the $116.97 check is already up to more than $55,000.
A number of other rare Apple items are also up for sale, some signed by Jobs.
Back in 1976, when Apple still operated out of cofounder Steve Jobs’ garage, he signed a $175 check to a consulting firm. And someone just paid $106,985 for it, Boston-based RR Auction said Thursday.
That’s one pricey piece of paper. And another one, a Jobs business card from NeXT, brought in a more affordable $3,076. Both sums far exceeded the auction estimates.
A check that Steve Jobs signed in the earliest days of Apple is up for auction. The Apple co-founder sent the check to a consulting firm way back in 1976, when the upstart computer company still operated out of Jobs’ garage.
Also up for auction: a Steve Jobs business card from when he ran NeXT in the early 1990s.
Steve Jobs is no longer the man who spent the longest time as Apple CEO. Tim Cook, the executive currently in charge, has now surpassed Jobs’ record of 4,249 days with that title, making him officially Apple’s longest-serving CEO.
But it turns out the calculation isn’t that simple. Steve Jobs spent several additional years in charge of Apple. He just wasn’t officially “Apple CEO” at the time.
The Steve Jobs Archive released its first book Tuesday, Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words. It’s a memoir of sorts because almost everything in it comes directly from Jobs, from major speeches and interviews to emails he sent to himself. It covers the Apple co-founder’s life from a young age until he passed away in 2011.
The new book includes never-before-seen content, the archive said, and it’s free from multiple sources.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The M2 Pro-powered Mac mini is a dream machine for creative types, according to our reviewer D. Griffin Jones. He joins us to sing the praises of this pint-size powerhouse. (It’s quite an upgrade from the 2015 MacBook Pro he used before.)
Also on The CultCast:
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
The Steve Jobs Archive’s first major release — a digital book titled Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words — will arrive April 11.
Despite the announcement coming in an email from the archive on April Fools’ Day, the news appears to be genuine. And that includes the part about the e-book, which is filled with Jobs’ emails, conversations, photos and more, being free online for all.
Although Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died more than a decade ago, he’s back as an artificial intelligence. Kind of.
A programmer made a chatbot able to carry on conversations in a voice that sounds like Jobs. The result is authentic enough to be eerie.
An auction that included vintage Apple items that were almost thrown away wrapped up this week with many items bringing in more than their estimates. A Lisa 1 and an original iPhone still in the plastic sold at hefty prices. Some technical notes handwritten by Steve Jobs also brought in more than expected. There were many more.
However, some of the Apple items did not sell, including a fully functional Apple-1, likely because bids didn’t reach their reserve price.
On what would have been Steve Jobs’ 68th birthday, the Steve Jobs Archive shared a favorite photo from 1984 — along with the promise of more content to come.
“We have so much to tell you about, but I want to start by sharing one of my favorite images from our collection,” wrote Leslie Berlin, the archive’s co-founder and executive director, in an email newsletter. “It’s Steve in 1984, spotting a new Macintosh in the wild.”