March 28, 1996: In a dire message to Wall Street, Apple warns that it will report a $700 million after-tax loss for its most recent quarter.
Apple’s biggest quarterly loss in history, the shocking news reveals a company in far more financial trouble than previously thought. More than half the loss comes from $1 billion of unsold products.
March 15, 2004: The iTunes Music Store hits a musical milestone, having sold an astonishing 50 million songs in less than a year. The achievement cements Apple’s place at the center of the rapidly changing music business — at least for the moment.
“Crossing 50 million songs is a major milestone for iTunes and the emerging digital music era,” Steve Jobs said in a statement. “With over 50 million songs already downloaded and an additional 2.5 million songs being downloaded every week, it’s increasingly difficult to imagine others ever catching up with iTunes.”
March 8, 1997: Apple renames the forthcoming Mac OS 7.7 update, calling it “Mac OS 8.” It’s more than just a name change, though: It’s a sneaky sucker punch that ultimately knocks out Mac clones.
Unfortunately for Mac users, the updated operating system does not deliver the total top-to-bottom rewrite promised by Apple’s Project Copland. However, the renaming strategy turns out to be a brilliant (if underhanded) way of getting Apple out of terrible licensing deals.
March 4, 2014: Peter Oppenheimer, the Apple chief financial officer who presided over a decade of skyrocketing growth, steps down from the company.
After becoming Apple CFO in 2004, Oppenheimer saw the company’s valuation soar from $8.8 billion to $471 billion. Luca Maestri, current Apple senior vice president and chief financial officer, replaced Oppenheimer in this crucial position.
February 28, 2006: Apple introduces an upgraded Mac mini, an affordable computer powered by an Intel processor.
A “headless” Mac for entry-level users, it’s the third Apple computer to switch to Intel chips. Oh, and it makes one heckuva media player when plugged into a television set.
February 26, 2008: Less than five years after launching, the iTunes Music Store becomes the No. 2 music retailer in the United States, second only to Wal-Mart.
In that relatively short period, iTunes sells more than 4 billion songs to more than 50 million customers. The rapid rise to prominence stands as a massive achievement for Apple — and for the revolutionary digital distribution model Cupertino helped pioneer.
Apple is ramping up production of the new iPhone SE 2, which likely will retail for just $399, according to Fast Company. Shockingly, that’s the same price the original iPhone SE sold for in 2016.
Apple TV+ will have almost 26 million paying subscribers by 2025, a new report claims. That’s just a fraction of the 126 million subs that rival streaming service Disney+ is likely to have at that point in time.
Both services launched within two weeks of each other in November 2019. While Apple hasn’t revealed any TV+ subscription numbers, Disney CEO Bob Iger says Disney+ already has 28.6 million subs. That’s more than Digital TV Research thinks Apple TV+ will have five years from now.
Apple just can’t stop touting its surging revenue from subscription services. But when it comes to Apple TV+ subscriber numbers, Cupertino is keeping suspiciously quiet.
“2019 was a historic year” for Apple’s services business, CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday during the company’s latest record-smashing earnings call. He then went on to drop specific numbers about services like the App Store and Apple Pay. But when it came to new services like Apple TV+, Cook kept things decidedly vague.
Cook loves to reiterate that Apple TV+ serves as a creative place for the world’s best storytellers. And the story he’s masterfully spinning about the streaming video service is a great big mystery.
January 4, 1995: Apple signs a deal with third-party Mac accessory maker Radius, allowing the company to build Macintosh clones.
Radius is the second company to license the Macintosh operating system (Power Computing did the same thing a month earlier). However, Radius will become the first licensee to bring a clone to market when its System 100 ships in March 1995.
