August 23, 2002: Apple ships Mac OS X Jaguar, the third major release of OS X and the first to publicly adopt the cat-themed code name it had been known by inside the company.
The $129 operating system is well-received by Mac users, who correctly view it as the most stable version of OS X yet — and with a few neat features, to boot.
August 17, 1944: Larry Ellison, billionaire co-founder and former CEO of Oracle, and Steve Jobs’ best friend, is born.
A later member of the Apple board of directors and the closest thing Jobs had to a confidante, in the 1990s Ellison even considered staging a hostile takeover of Apple to reinstall Jobs as CEO during his time away from the company.
Jobs’ son, Reed, reportedly referred to Ellison as, “our rich friend.”
August 16, 2013: JOBS, the Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher, lands in theaters.
The first of two competing Jobs movies (the second one was the Aaron Sorkin version, based on Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography), the movie receives polarizing reviews from critics, but fails to make an impact at the box office — where it earns just $6.7 million in its first weekend.
August 10, 2004: The iTunes Music Store catalog grows to 1 million songs in the United States, a first for an online music service.
Stocking music from all five major record labels and another 600 indies, and with more than 100 million songs downloaded, the iTunes Music Store is officially established as the world’s No. 1 online music service.
“The iTunes Music Store offers the world’s most extensive collection of downloadable music with over one million tracks available,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of applications, in a press release. “With more than one million songs, over 600 independent labels and dozens of innovative features, iTunes is the ultimate destination for discovering and downloading music.”
August 9, 1995: The Netscape Communications IPO floats shares of the company behind Netscape Navigator, the Macintosh’s default browser, on the stock market.
While not totally an Apple-centric moment, this was big news for Mac fans in 1995. The success of Nestcape’s $2.9 billion IPO also sweetened Wall Street on technology companies. Plus, the experience of using Netscape Navigator to surf the internet on a Macintosh is something many older Apple users will still remember fondly.
August 4, 2010: Apple fires the first shot in its apparently never-ending war against Samsung, when a team of Apple executives visit Samsung’s HQ in Seoul, South Korea, and give a presentation with the title, “Samsung’s Use of Apple Patents in Smartphones.”
It marks the official start of a multi-billion dollar battle between the two rivals (and, weirdly, collaborators) which has continued to rage ever since.
August 3, 1977: The Tandy TRS-80 personal computer makes its debut. The first affordable, mass-market computer gives the Apple 1 some serious competition.
Although the TRS-80 arrived the year after the Apple 1 and a few months after the Apple II, it proved to be the first “Apple killer” on the market, predating later rivals like the IBM Personal Computer as Apple’s first big tech industry opponent. And, for the longest time, Tandy’s computer seemed to be on course to win.
July 20, 1978: Apple DOS makes its debut on the Apple II, giving Apple its first official operating system.
A command line interface with green text prompts on a black background, Apple DOS looks incredibly primitive next to today’s graphical user interfaces. Nonetheless, for Apple users, this was the macOS Sierra of its day.
July 19, 2000: Apple launches its futuristic-looking Power Mac G4 Cube. The clear computer is one of the company’s most jaw-droppingly gorgeous machines, but ultimately becomes one of its biggest disappointments.
Technologically, the G4 Cube was a game-changer. Financially, it was one of Steve Jobs‘ most notable failures.
July 18, 1994: Apple ships its PowerBook 150 laptop, the company’s first truly affordable PowerBook — and the last to feature the original case design, which included a built-in trackball mouse.
While it’s a normal sight to see students using Apple laptops today, there was a time when Mac notebooks were out of the reach of your average learner. That all changed in the 1990s — and the PowerBook 150 played an important role.
July 14, 2008: Apple crows that its newly opened App Store hit a massive 10 million downloads in its first 72 hours.
“The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days,” Steve Jobs said in a statement issued eight years ago today. “Developers have created some extraordinary applications, and the App Store can wirelessly deliver them to every iPhone and iPod touch user instantly.”
July 12, 2004: Apple boasts that the iTunes Music Store has sold its 100,000,000th song, and marks the occasion with a generous gift for the lucky downloader.
The song in question is Zero 7’s “Somersault (Dangermouse remix),” purchased by Kevin Britten from Hays, Kansas. The 20-year-old receives a personal phone call from Apple CEO Steve Jobs congratulating him. Britten also gets a 17-inch PowerBook, a 40GB iPod and a gift certificate for a massive 10,000 (!) iTunes songs.
July 11, 2008: The iPhone 3G goes on sale, becoming the first Apple product in history to sell more than 1 million units in its first weekend.
Building on the original iPhone by adding GPS, 3G data and a higher-quality build, the iPhone 3G also coincided with the launch of iOS 2, which introduced push email, turn-by-turn navigation and, most importantly, the App Store.
July 8, 1991: The first QuickTime beta arrives, making it possible for people to play movies on their Macs for the first time, with no extra hardware needed.
The innovative software showcased Apple’s commitment to pushing technological boundaries and set the stage for the seamless integration of video into everyday computing.
July 7, 1997: Apple CEO Gil Amelio officially steps down from his role, turning the company over to the returning Steve Jobs, who immediately begins making his presence felt.
If you’re looking to pinpoint a turning point when Apple began the transition from the ailing company it was in the first half of the 1990s to the powerhouse it is today, this is it!
July 6, 2011: Amazon wins a landmark verdict against Apple over its proprietary use of the term “App Store” — opening up the possibility of other rival services calling their own app stores by the phrase Apple had helped popularize.
The case highlights just how central the concept of downloadable apps had become to the mobile experience, only three years after Apple launched its iOS App Store.
July 1, 1976: The Apple 1 goes on sale, becoming the first computer ever sold by the Apple Computer Company.
Arriving the same month Jimmy Carter was nominated for U.S. president, Family Feud debuted on TV, and the United States celebrated the 200th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, the Apple 1 is only produced in small numbers, and sells for the unusual price of $666.66.
Given its position as the company’s earliest arch-nemesis, Apple’s partnership with IBM was massive news when it was announced a couple of years ago. But it wasn’t the first time the two companies had agreed to help one another.
On 30 June 1993, Apple and IBM shipped their first collaborative product: the catchily-named “SNA.ps 5250” emulation software package, which for the first time let Mac users run software available previously only for IBM PCs. It was the first step in allowing Macs and PCs to talk to each other in a way that didn’t trap their respective users in proprietary ecosystem hell.
Arriving on this day in 1993, the Macintosh LC 520 was among the first of Apple’s LC 500 series of medium-price Macs.
Selling for $2,000, it was particularly popular in educational institutions, a market Apple continues to pursue today. If you went to school in the decade of Nirvana, Bill Clinton and Pulp Fiction, this could well have been the Mac you used!
June 27, 1997: The worst financial year in Apple history comes to an end. During the quarter, Apple lost $56 million — effectively bringing an end to then-CEO Gil Amelio‘s 500 days running the company.
The $56 million loss contributes to an overall Apple loss of $1.6 billion during Amelio’s reign. It effectively wipes out every cent of profit Cupertino had earned since fiscal 1991. In other words — ouch!
On June 24, 2013, an Apple I — the first ever computer built by Apple Computer, Inc. — was listed for auction by international auction house Christie’s.
Thought to be one of the first 25 units to be built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the late 1970s, the unit featured no Apple logo, but rather a signature from Woz, who designed the machine. It sold for an impressive $390,000, ranking it among the most expensive computers ever sold.
June 23, 2003: The Power Mac G5 goes on sale. Affectionately nicknamed the “cheese grater” due to its distinctive perforated exterior, it’s Apple’s fastest-ever machine — and the world’s first 64-bit personal computer.
“The 64-bit revolution has begun and the personal computer will never be the same again,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release describing the beastly machine. “The new Power Mac G5 combines the world’s first 64-bit desktop processor, the industry’s first 1 GHz front-side bus, and up to 8GB of memory to beat the fastest Pentium 4 and dual Xeon-based systems in industry-standard benchmarks and real-world professional applications.”
On June 22, 2015, Apple backed down following a brief standoff with Taylor Swift over royalty payments from the soon-to-launch Apple Music service. The company reversed a policy that would have denied royalties to artists during the streaming music platform’s initial three months of operation.
In doing so, Cupertino signaled that this was a kinder, gentler Apple than may have existed previously. Provided the whole thing wasn’t one big publicity stunt, that is.
iOS 4 was not only the last version of Apple’s mobile operating system released during Steve Jobs’ life, it was also a significant step up in terms of the software’s productivity features.
Watch Jobs introduce it in the video below, which was recorded on June 21, 2010.
On June 20, 1994, Apple launched its short-lived eWorld service. Why is eWorld so significant? Because it represented Apple’s first deep dive into being a provider of internet services — several years before Steve Jobs returned to the company and embraced the importance of going online.
Part messaging service, part news aggregator — and all with Apple’s customary premium prices — eWorld was ahead of its time.