July 15, 1998: Apple reports its third profitable quarter after the return of Steve Jobs, continuing the company’s remarkable turnaround.
Cupertino earns $101 million for the quarter, largely thanks to the success of the Power Mac G3. In the same quarter a year earlier, Apple lost $56 million. This marks the first time in three years that the company managed three straight profitable quarters.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: This could be the year Apple Watch goes large … and rugged … and maybe long. Like, long enough to track the kind of intense, multi-hour workouts that “extreme sports athletes” engage in.
So the question is, what will this beefier (and pricier) Apple Watch look like? We can’t help letting our imaginations run a little wild.
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The White House said Friday it would award late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his world-changing contributions to society.
That’s the highest civilian honor in the U.S.
Editor’s note: We originally published this illustrated history of the iPod to celebrate the device’s 10th anniversary on Oct. 22, 2011 (and updated it a decade later). We republished it on May 10, 2022, when Apple finally pulled the plug on the iPod.
The iPod grew out of Steve Jobs’ digital hub strategy. Life was going digital. People were plugging all kinds of devices into their computers: digital cameras, camcorders, MP3 players.
The computer was the central device, the “digital hub,” that could be used to edit photos and movies or manage a large music library. Jobs tasked Apple’s programmers with making software for editing photos, movies and managing digital music. While they were doing this, they discovered that all the early MP3 players were horrible. Jobs asked his top hardware guy, Jon Rubinstein, to see if Apple could do better.
Unveiled at a special event way back in 2014, the first Apple Watch looked similar to the wearable we know and love today. But looks can be deceiving. Take the Digital Crown and Side Button, for example. Their design may not have changed, but their functionality is now very different.
Apple Watch went through a radical evolution over the past eight years. What started out as an “intimate way to connect and communicate,” has become primarily a health and fitness device.
This pivot is uncharacteristic of Apple. Products like iPod, iPhone and iPad launched with a clear vision and remained true to it. The Apple Watch’s evolution suggests a shift in Cupertino’s approach to new products, and provides tantalizing clues to the future of the company’s rumored next platform launch: realityOS.
The first computer built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak is the Apple-1, right? Not quite. Turns out before that was the “Apple Computer A.”
Unfortunately, the actual Apple prototype with that name was not found. But pictures of it from 1976 were. And they show details of this handmade Apple prototype.
From time to time you hear about Apple’s first computer, the Apple 1, selling to collectors at auction for big bucks. But did you know some of those surviving antiques carry an enduring mystery? For decades, no one could figure out who wrote the serial numbers on their circuit boards. Until now.
In the very early days of Apple, co-founder Steve Jobs was VP Operations. And Alfred DiBlasi has one of Jobs’ business cards to prove it.
The card will soon go up for auction. You can own this bit of Apple history if you’re willing to put down enough cash.
December 14, 1999: Apple acquires the domain name www.iphone.org, prompting years of speculation that Cupertino is considering building a cellphone. While the news generates interest, some take it as a warning sign.
Apple only recently abandoned the kind of non-computer projects like games consoles, PDAs and digital cameras that proved to be dead ends earlier in the decade. An Apple phone could never be a thing, right?
Lots of Apple fans know the company’s first product was the Apple-1 personal computer. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs initially put the machines together in a garage in 1976. Now one unit in their early run of 200, known as the “Chaffey College Apple-1” because its first owner taught there, has sold at auction for $500,000.
An incredibly rare Apple VideoPad 2 prototype is headed to auction after it was purchased from an Apple engineer back in 1999. It comes with a black leather carrying case that features the Newton logo, and is expected to fetch $12,000.
The VideoPad, which was scrapped by Steve Jobs upon his return to Apple in 1997, was a personal digital assistant (PDA) similar to the Newton that would have allowed users to carry out video calls. But it never made it to market.
As many Apple fans knows, the company’s first products was the Apple-1 personal computer, initially put together in a garage by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in 1976. Now one unit in their early run of 200, known as the “Chaffey College Apple-1” because its first owner taught there, is going up for auction November 9 with a starting bid of $200,000.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: We reminisce about Steve Jobs and his lasting impact on Apple, a decade after his death. Plus, M1X MacBook Pros might be coming soon. And the Apple Watch Series 7 launch looks quite weird indeed.
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 livestream, embedded below.
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011. Ten years later, Apple’s current CEO Tim Cook sent a memo to all employees about his former boss and friend. In it, he says that Jobs’ passion to change the world for the better lives on in the company.
While Steve Jobs died 10 years ago today, he lives on as a way to criticize Apple’s current management.
In some people’s misguided memories, Jobs did no wrong. Ever. And members of this reality-challenged group — let’s call it the Church of Steve Jobs — frequently post comments on social media like, “Apple would be so much better if Steve Jobs were still in charge.”
But in reality, Jobs made plenty of mistakes. Here are some of his worst foul-ups.
Ten years after Steve Jobs’ death on this day in 2011, Apple is thriving when many predicted it wouldn’t.
Go back and look at articles published in the wake of his death, and it’s all gloom, gloom, gloom. But a decade on, the company is worth more than $2 trillion, revenues have nearly tripled, the stock is up more than 1,000%, and there’s no end in sight.
Apple’s success has many fathers of course, but one big one is that Jobs’ personality has been deeply embedded into the company and how it does things. It’s called “the routinization of charisma,” and it helps explains why Apple continues to prosper.
Apple today commemorates its co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs ten years after he passed away from pancreatic cancer. The company’s homepage has been adorned with images of Jobs throughout his years at Apple, as well as an official film and a statement from the Jobs family.
“We miss him profoundly,” the statement reads. “We were blessed to have him as a husband and father.”
An old, spiral-bound, somewhat stained Apple II computer manual from 1980 went under the hammer at auction the other day. When all was said and done, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay had the winning bid for the thing — $787,484.
Rumors circulating way back in 2011 said Apple was planning an iPhone nano, its first budget iOS device. The handset didn’t come out for years and it used a different name, but new evidence proves the early leaks were 100% accurate.
A job application filled out by 18-year-old Steve Jobs in 1973 has sold for $343,000 — and, based on its history, that may actually be a pretty good deal.
The rare paper document, possibly the only job application Apple’s late co-founder and CEO filled in in his life, has proven to be a pretty great investment over the years. This time, it was accompanied by an NFT sale for the same document, which pulled in around $23,000.
Long before there was the iPhone, users in France had another connected device with which they could do everything from check movie listings or the weather to chatting with other users or booking vacations: The Minitel.
Pre-dating the World Wide Web by several years, the Minitel was a French videotex online service that could be accessed through the phone line. It was used by tens of millions of people in France. Among those who gave it a go? None other than Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — who once got a unit sent to the U.S. so he could put it through its paces.
We’ll soon find out how the ongoing fascination with Steve Jobs will combine with the new fascination for NFTs. A handwritten job application the Apple cofounder filled out in 1973 is going up for auction both as a physical document and as a Non-Fungible Token.
Rapper Soulja Boy, best known for his 2007 viral hit “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” has another claim to fame as well: According to the 30-year-old rapper, Steve Jobs visited him on the set of his first music video and brought him the first iPhone.
At least, that’s the story Soulja Boy shared in a clip from an upcoming podcast interview for Million Dollaz Worth of Game. “I was the first rapper with the iPhone,” Soulja Boy says. “It was ‘Crank That’ video shoot 2007. Steve Jobs and the Apple team came. I was in the swimming pool, doing the instructional dance. Showing the people how to do the dance … They came, they brought me the iPhone.”
Designer Antonio De Rosa has released another set of conceptual renderings for a possible Apple product. This time he’s picturing a retro-cool take on the much-anticipated Apple Glass augmented reality eyeglasses many expect to see come out this year.
As CEOs of Apple, both Tim Cook and his predecessor Steve Jobs pride or, in Jobs’ case, prided themselves on the ability to say “no” to ideas. For obvious reasons, most of the time the world never gets to hear what those shot-down ideas actually were.
However, emails disclosed as part of the discovery for the Epic vs. Apple trial, now adjourned, shows one of the ideas that was talked about internally — but ultimately abandoned. That ideas was for a 15-inch MacBook Air, discussed as far back as 2007, the year before Apple debuted its ultra-thin notebook.