Today in Apple history - page 18

There was, to put it mildly, a lot that was insanely great about Steve Jobs’ return to Apple. But one thing that always struck me as less than good from an Apple fan’s perspective was that he stopped giving revealing in-depth interviews.

As his ability to command the narrative increased, Apple’s CEO understandably shifted away from playing the media hound he’d been for the first part of his career, where he’d speak with often painful honesty to seemingly any magazine that would have him. One of his last such interviews? The one that appeared in the June 16, 1994, edition of Rolling Stone.

While Apple originally introduced the diminutive Mac mini in 2005, it was on June 15, 2010, that it launched the sleek, unibody aluminum Mac mini redesign that persists to this day.

Starting at $699, the mid-2010 era Mac mini gave users a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2 GB of RAM, and a 320 GB hard drive. It also boasted an HDMI-out port for the first time, an SD card reader, a dazzling new NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics chip and — very excitingly — no power brick, since all the power circuitry was housed inside the minimalist device, which stood at a not-so-imposing 1.4 inches tall.

Under Tim Cook’s leadership, Apple has been upping its focus on teaching kids to program — thanks to events such as its free “Hour of Code” classes at Apple Stores around the world.

But Apple’s been helping introduce young people to coding for far longer than that. In fact, years before Apple ushered in its Swift Playgrounds app as it did this week at WWDC, it helped popularize home programming thanks to Apple Logo, a basic coding language which found success on the Apple II.

June 13, 1989: Canon Inc. invests $100 million in NeXT Inc., the computer company founded by Steve Jobs after he left Apple.

The massive cash infusion gives Canon a 16.67% stake in NeXT. It also helps the money-losing company find a direction that ultimately leads Jobs back to Cupertino.

June 9, 2008: In the music industry, they talk about the “difficult second album.” Fortunately, that doesn’t hold true when Apple unveils the highly successful second-gen iPhone.

Adding GPS, 3G data and a higher-quality build than its predecessor, the iPhone 3G is arguably just as revolutionary for what it does on the software side. iOS 2 introduces push email, turn-by-turn navigation and, most significantly of all, an App Store — something Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said the company wouldn’t allow.

Check out the debut of the iPhone 3G below.