История развития компьютеров (Silicon Valley, its history the best companies)

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During this time, the mid-1970s, the first computer shops came into existence. Pioneering in this field was Paul Terrell who came to the idea of running such a shop, after the Altair had been put onto the market. His first Byte Shop opened in Mountain View (located in the heart of Silicon
Valley) by the end of 1975.
Initially, Terrell sold the Altair and accessory products such as additional memory boards and other devices, which came onto the market.
With the arising microcomputer industry, he could offer his customers - mainly hobbyists and engineers - more and more products, and his shop became a success. Other Byte Shops were opened and Terrell's computer shop chain expanded beyond the Silicon Valley. The computer shops provided its customers with a variety of devices around the computer and also with service and help.
The Altair was shipped as a kit computer and was to be assembled first, and then it was still not difficult to work with it. The hobbyists helped each other with advice. It was this spirit of sharing solutions and the common interest in microcomputers that led to the foundation of the first computer club.

Homebrew Computer Club

The legendary Homebrew Computer Club was the first of its kind, and provided an early impetus for the development of the microcomputer industry in Silicon Valley. Its first meeting in March 1975 was held in one of its members' garage in Menlo Park in Santa Clara County. The Homebrew members were engineers and computer enthusiasts who discussed about the Altair and other technical topics. The club attracted many hobbyists and was attended by nearly 750 people one year after its foundation. The Homebrew Computer
Club had its own philosophy. People meet, because they were interested in computers and liked tinkering with them, but not for commercial reasons - at least in its early times. Its members "exchanged information about all aspects of micro computing technology") and talked about devices they had designed. From its ranks came the founders of many microcomputer companies
- for example Bob Marsh, Adam Osborne, or Steve Jobs and Steven Wozniak - the famous Apple founders.
The Homebrew Computer Club is the place where the roots of many Silicon
Valley microcomputer companies are located. It has "spawned a revolution in micro processing") and represents an "important step in the development of a multi-billion dollar industry.

The Apple Story

Apple provides one of Silicon Valley's most famous stories. It shows features that are typical for most start-up firms in the valley, however, it is unique and its early success and its contribution to the personal computer are unmatched.

"Woz" and Jobs - the two "Steves"

Apple's history starts with the story of two young and exceptional people who began building a computer in their garage and "launched the microcomputer revolution,") changing our daily life in many respects.
The Apple story is the story of the two "Steves". Stephen G. Wozniak was a typical Silicon Valley child. Born in 1950, he had grown up with the electronics industry in Silicon Valley, and had been intrigued by electronics from the start, since his father w as an electronics engineer.
Wozniak, known to his friends as "Woz", was bright and was an electronics genius. At the age of 13, he won the highest award at a local science fair for his addition-subtraction machine. His electronics teacher at Homestead
High School recognized Woz's outstanding talent and arranged a job for him at a local company, where Steve could work with computers once a week. It was there that Wozniak saw the capabilities of a computer (it was the DEC
PDP-8 minicomputer) and studying the manual, it became his dream to have a computer of his own one-day. He designed computers on paper. Many other students who grew up in Silicon Valley shared this dream.
In 1971, Wozniak built his first computer with his high-school friend Bill
Fernandez. This computer (they called it Cream Soda Computer) was developed in his friend's garage and had "switches and lights just as the Altair would have more than three years later.")
Bill introduced Woz to a friend of his named Steven P. Jobs. Jobs was born in 1955, and his foster parents were - unlike most other people in Silicon
Valley - blue-collar workers. However, growing up in an environment full of electronics, Steve came in con tact with this fascinating technology and was caught by it.
Jobs was a loner and his character can be described as brash, very ambitious and unshakably self-confident. With his directness and his persistency he persuaded most people. He had the ability to convey his notions and vision to other people quite well. An d he was not afraid to talk to famous people and did never stop talking to them until they gave in and did what he wanted. His traits could already be observed in his adolescence, for instance when he - at the age of thirteen - called famous
Bill Hewlett, president of HP, and asked him for spare parts he needed for his frequency counter.
Although Steve Jobs was five years younger than Wozniak, "the two got along at once." Apart from their common fascination with electronics, they
"shared a certain intensity." Whereas Woz was intense in digging "deeper into an intellectual problem than anyone else," Jobs's intensity was in ambition. Moreover, both were genuine pranksters, and often they fooled others with their technical knowledge.)
When they heard of "phone-phreaking" - making free long-distance telephone calls with a device called "blue box" - the two started their first business venture, building those blue boxes.
In 1972, Steve Jobs went to Reed College in Oregon; however, there he became more interested in Eastern religions, dropped out a year later and returned to Silicon Valley, where he took a job with Atari (a young video game company) until he had saved enough money to go on a trip to India for some months. Then he went back to California and to his work at Atari.
After attending three different colleges, Wozniak had begun work for
Hewlett-Packard in summer 1973. When Atari planned to develop a new game called "Breakout," Jobs boasted he could design it in only four days - quicker and better than anyone else. Jobs t old his friend Woz about it, and the two designed the game in record time, working four nights and days, and were paid the promised $700 for it. This experience showed them that they could work together on a tough project and succeed.

The first Apple

When the Homebrew Computer Club came into existence, Wozniak began attending its meetings. As he later would recall, Homebrew was a revelation for him and changed his life. He met people who "shared his love for computers") and learned from them as well a s he encouraged them with his technical expertise. Others brought along their Altairs, which Wozniak was interested in but could not afford. He realized this computer resembled the
Cream Soda Computer he had built some time ago.
Soon after, Chuck Peddle at MOS Tech released his new 6502 microprocessor chip for only $20, which was a sensation compared to the usual price of
$400 for those chips then. Suddenly, Woz saw his chance and decided to write the first BASIC for it, which was the most spread programming language. After finishing with the BASIC, he made a computer for it to run on. The other hobbyists at Homebrew were impressed by Wozniak's kit, which actually was a board with chips and interfaces for a keyboard and a video monitor.
Steve Jobs saw the opportunity of this machine, which they named Apple, and finally persuaded Wozniak to start a company in April 1976. The two raised the money for the prototype model with a printed circuit board by selling
Jobs' VW microbus and Wozniak's HP calculators. With the Apple I, Steve
Wozniak had designed a "technological wonder") and made his dream of owning a computer come true. His friend Steve Jobs played the role of a salesman and his ambitious promotion made the Apple I "a star in the tight world of computer freaks.")
The breakthrough for the two Steves came in July, when Paul Terrell ordered
50 Apples for his Byte Shop, however on condition the computers were fully assembled in a case and equipped with a cassette interface to enable external data storage.
Jobs could "obtain net 30 days credit") for the parts they needed for their computer. Working hard in Jobs parents' garage, they managed to construct the 50 Apples within those 30 days.
The Apple I was continuously refined by Wozniak, and its sales made the young company known, partly because the company's name appeared on top of computer lists, which were published by electronics magazines in alphabetical order.

Building up the company

While the first Apple was being sold, Steve Wozniak had already begun work on another computer, the Apple II. This machine would have several special features which had not appeared in any microcomputer before and would make it "the milestone product that would usher in the age of the personal computer.")
Jobs and Wozniak sensed the market potential their new computer would have, but realized they did not have the necessary capital for constructing the machines. So they tried to sell their computer to several established companies such as Atari, HP and MOS Tech, which, however, rejected. Looking out for some venture capital to produce the new computers by themselves,
Steve Jobs met with Mike Markkula, who had been a marketing manager at
Fairchild and Intel.
Markkula was at the age of 38, but had already retired, since he had made a fortune of many million dollars by his stock option at Intel. He visited
Jobs's garage and became interested in their project. Markkula, the former marketing wizard at Intel, thought it "made sense to provide computing power to individuals in the home and workplace" and offered to help them
"draw up a business plan.") Finally, he decided to join the two Steves. He offered $250,000 of his own money and his marketing expertise for on e third of the company, which was incorporated as Apple Computer in January
1977. Markkula's decision marked the turning point in Apple's history; he took care of the business side and arranged all the things necessary to create a successful company. Markkula's know-how was crucial for Apple, since Woz and Jobs did not have any business expertise. This knowledge is very important for new firms. A lot of other start-ups in Silicon Valley failed as their founders were only engineers, who lost control over their enterprises when they could not meet the skyrocketing demand for their products.
In 1977, Markkula hired Mike Scott, who had worked for product marketing at
Fairchild, as the company's president, because he felt Apple needed an experienced person to run the company.
Jobs, who wanted only the best for his company, also persuaded Regis
McKenna, who ran the biggest and most influential agency in Silicon Valley, to do public relations and advertising for Apple. McKenna, who worked for successful Intel and many other companies, brought Apple legitimacy and, among other things, designed the famous Apple logo. Another important contribution was the fact that he made Apple the first company to advertise personal computers in consumer magazines to "get national attention" and " popularize this idea of low-cost computers.")
Steve Jobs's persistency had persuaded Wozniak, the electronics genius who designed the machine, McKenna, and Markkula, the business expert. Jobs himself was the driving force that brought the key components together to build up a successful company.

Apple II - starting the personal computer boom

In April 1977, the Apple II was introduced to the public at the West coast
Computer Faire (market), where Apple had rented the largest booth just opposite the entrance. Wozniak's "technological wonder") was a great success and the first orders were already made. The Apple II was the "first true personal computer.") It was the first microcomputer able to generate color graphics and the first with BASIC in ROM and included a keyboard, power supply and an attractive lightweight and beige plastic case, which would become standard for subsequent PCs. The Apple II was more sophisticated than any microcomputer before, and represented a machine, which could be worked with effectively. Steve Wozniak had put all his
"engineering savvy") into it, and had created a computer he would like to own.
The Apple II was given a rapturous welcome in the public. In 1977, the company sold more than 4,000 computers, which were priced at $1,300, and grew rapidly.
Programs and data for the Apple II were stored on cassette tapes. But this common way of storage turned out to be quite unreliable and awkward. Mike
Markkula saw the future in floppy disks, which had been developed by IBM in the early 1970s, and asked Wozniak to design a disk drive for the Apple II.
Woz took the challenge and finished in record time (only one month). His final design was brilliant: he developed a new technique ("self-sync") and created the fastest minifloppy disk drive. It was shipped in June 1978 and proved vital for Apple's further growth. It made possible the development of serious software such as word processors and data base packages,") which increased the practical use of the computer decisively.
In 1979, Daniel Fylstra, a programmer from Boston, released VisiCalc for the Apple II. This spreadsheet was a novelty in computer software. It relieved business calculations considerably and could be used to do financial forecasting. It was the first application that made personal computers a practical tool for people who do not know how to write their own programs. VisiCalc was very successful and contributed to the skyrocketing sales of the Apple II.
The same year, marketing wizard Mike Markkula made another important decision for Apple future growth. His idea was to create a new market in the field of education and schools. The Apple Education Foundation was established, which granted complete Apple systems equipped with learning software to schools. This market should account for a major part of the company's sales in the subsequent years, since Apple II soon became the most popular machine for students.

Turbulences in the early 1980s

The successful stock sale provided Apple with an "extravagant amount of capital ($1 billion)," which could be spent on developing the "company's next computer generation.") This time, however, was quite turbulent for
Apple and was marked by crises and inner power struggles.
Designing on Apple III began in 1978. This computer was to be the successor to Wozniak's Apple II, and was finally introduced to the public in 1981.
But it was not successful - a "disaster" or "fiasco,") since it had too many faults and did not work properly. Nevertheless, the company was without any financial troubles, since sales of the Apple II continued to increase rapidly.
Concurrently, Steve Jobs became the company's visionary and thought about the next computer generation. Such a visionary is a "person who has both the vision and the willingness to put everything on the line, including his career, to further that vision. Jobs became a perfect visionary and convinced everyone around him with his vision.
In 1979, he and some other Apple employees visited the Xerox PARC (Palo
Alto Research Center), which was known for its advanced research in computing. What they saw was revolutionary and had never appeared on any personal computer before. The "environment of the screen was graphically based" with icons (representing files or programs), with a mouse for pointing and moving at them, windows and pull-down menus. Thus, the user could "interact easily with the computer [...] without ever typing a single letter.
Jobs was quite impressed and wanted to transfer this concept on a new PC called Lisa, which was intended for the business world. Steve, however, came up with ever-new ideas for the designers of this project. He "created chaos because he would get an idea, start a project, then change his mind two or three times, until people were doing a kind of random walk, continually scrapping and starting over.")
Markkula and Scott were concerned about the further progress of Lisa. So, in the course of a reorganization of the company, they decided to put John
Couch, a former software designer at HP, in a charge of the Lisa project.
Jobs was made chairman of the boa rd to represent Apple in the public.
However, Steve was shocked that he was taken the chance to fulfill his vision, and relations between him and Scott deteriorated.
In February 1981, Wozniak, the technological brains behind the Apple I and
II, crashed his four-seated airplane. He hit his head badly and suffered from a case of temporary amnesia. For some time, he retired from the company and he finished his undergraduate degree at U.C. Berkeley.
The company had grown rapidly to 2,000 employees, and some of them had joined Apple in the hope of a safe job. Setting an example, president Mike
Scott laid off 42 people on a day which came to be called "Black
Wednesday". Apple was shocked since some of t hose people seemed to have been chosen arbitrarily. Scott's management style became more and more disliked, and finally Mike Markkula decided to fire Scott and took over his position until a new president was found.

The Lisa project

Meanwhile, Steve Jobs had discovered his new project. Soon he had taken control of the Macintosh project, which had been started by Jeff Raskin in
1979 to design a small and handy personal computer. Steve dedicated all his power to the Macintosh, which was to be a smaller and cheaper Lisa and was to revolutionize the way of computing.
The company was now separated into three divisions, Apple II, Lisa and
Macintosh, which began competing against each other - particularly between the latter two.
Lisa was developed by a number of experienced engineers and programmers who had been recruited from HP, DEC and Xerox. This project was "the most professional operation ever mounted at Apple") and was in contrast to
Steve's bunch of young hackers at Macintosh.
When Lisa was introduced to the public in August 1983, it was "ahead of its time:") Lisa was easy to use because of the mouse, graphical interface and windows, and had additional features such as multitasking. Though is was first welcomed by the press as revolutionary, Lisa failed. One problem was
Steve's "lack of self-discipline:") When introducing Lisa he talked about
"his" Macintosh which would come out soon and with features like Lisa but cost only a fraction ($2,000 instead of $10,000 for Lisa). The other strategic mistake was the announcement that the two computers were not compatible. So it is no wonder many people waited until the Macintosh would come.
Finally, Lisa, which was intended for the business market at its price of
$10,000, lacked the ability to communicate with other computers - a fact which was decisive for this market.
In the meantime, IBM had entered the personal computer market with its first IBM PC in 1981, and already dominated a large part of it. Its first
PC "wasn't an earth-shattering machine technically") and was much harder to use than the forthcoming Apple machines. But the fact that it was built by
IBM was enough to make it successful, and many software companies wrote applications for it. Apple had bravely run a full-page ad saying "Welcome
IBM, Seriously", but it soon seemed to have lost the battle. Nevertheless,
IBM's entry brought Apple a lot of publicity as the only real competition to Big Blue.
Thus, Lisa was not very successful and the second failure after the Apple
III. Still, Apple's sales increased - only because of the successful Apple
II. But the company needed a successor, and all its hopes were now placed in the Macintosh.

The Macintosh revolution

The Macintosh was to fulfill Steve Jobs' vision of "computer to the people". He created a personal computer, which was easy to use and at a low cost. Steve thought of a tool for all people to broaden their mind - a revolution towards the modern way of computing.
His Macintosh team was made up of teenagers and self-taught hackers -
"idiot savants, passionate plodders and inspired amateurs" - who "loved to cut code.") They followed his vision and passionately designed this outstanding computer. Jobs continuously drove his team to ever-greater feats. He "kept thinking up crazier things, or more aggressive goals if they were doing good, or if they were achieving their goals he wanted them to do more. He couldn't just stop, he had to push you to the edge.") Steve
"gave impossible tasks, never acknowledging that they were impossible,") he
"doesn't have any boundaries, [...] because he has always been able to do anything he wanted" due to "his early success.") As a consequence, people usually worked 80 hours a week or more for their project.
Steve's most brilliant hackers were Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson and
Burrell Smith. The Macintosh was equipped with Motorola's 68000 CPU, a 3.5- inch floppy disk drive, a detachable keyboard, and the amount of space it took up from the desk should not be larger then a telephone book (this meant a revolution in size). The computer was meant to be an open system, and software applications were to be programmed by other companies, the work of which was supported by a standard modular toolbox. This box made sure that all applications were easy to use and appeared in a standardized way. As well as other fundamental software the standard toolbox was available from the computer's ROM (Read Only Memory).
Influenced by robotics assembly lines in Japan, Steve decided to "build the most advanced assembly plant in the world") for the production of the
Macintosh. It was fully automated and the labor component accounted for only one percent of the total cost.
Simultaneously to feverish efforts to finish the Macintosh, Apple succeeded in finding a new president. Thanks to Steve's visionary powers of persuasion, John Sculley, top manager at PepsiCo, finally agreed to join
Apple in April 1983.
The introduction of the Macintosh, which was Steve's revolutionary machine to change the world, was dated to January 1984 and was to be accompanied by a massive ad campaign in the media. Chiat/Day agency was asked to create a commercial referring to the fact that 1984 was the year of Orwell's famous novel. They produced the sixty-second ad, which was really exceptional, and proposed running it only once - during the Super Bowl, the most watched television event of the year.
It would be a million dollar minute, which was to capture public attention.
Macintosh was presented as a milestone product that would revolutionize the way of computing, breaking IBM's, the "Big Brother's" dominance and conformity it was about to establish by its IBM PCs.
When the commercial was broadcast, it reached 46.4 percent of America's households. People were stunned about this outrageous ad, which was "unlike anything they had seen before.") Suddenly, millions of people knew something called Macintosh. The "commercial sparked widespread controversy"), and won the highest advertising awards (more than 30).
The Macintosh (priced at $2,495) was a success from the start. Steve Jobs, the visionary, compared it to Graham Bell's invention of the telephone a hundred years ago. It was the "most approachable") and sophisticated personal computer of the time, which ushered in a new era of easy computing with a graphical interface and mouse. This feature would be taken over by many software companies in the subsequent years, particularly by big
Microsoft, which developed Windows. This graphical user interface, which ha s been established as the industry standard today, is quite similar to
Macintosh’s and makes possible the easy use of IBM PCs.
In the first 100 days, an industry record of more than 70,000 Macintosh computers were shipped - a number that went up to the total of 250,000 sold units by the end of the year.

John Sculley and Steve Jobs

Despite the astonishing figures of sold Macintosh computers and a boost in sales to more than $1.5 billion in 1984 (up 55% from 1983),) Apple soon fell into its most severe crisis, which would only be overcome by Sculley's hard measures and led to the firing of its visionary Steve Jobs.
John Sculley had been vice-president at PepsiCo where he had successfully made Pepsi the number one brand in the Cola Wars. Actually, there was no reason for him, one of America's top managers with a secure and highly paid position at PepsiCo, to join a bunch of young computer nerds at the West coast. The reason why he finally agreed yet is Steve Jobs who impressed him by his visionary ideas and asked him a question to which he did have no answer: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?") This question told him that his "entire life was at a critical crossroads.")
Sculley and Jobs became close friends. They could "complete each other's sentences" because they "were on the same wavelength.") The "dynamic duo", as they were called in an issue of Business Week in October 1983, was esteemed highly in the press and contributed significantly to Apple's good reputation in the public at the time.
The downfall came soon, however, when their largely overestimated expectations of the Macintosh sales could not be met. In their euphoria about the revolutionary Mac, they thought they would ship 80,000 units by the end of 1984, and had produced them in advance. When the reality brought
"merely" 20,000 with a falling tendency, the crisis was evident. Reasons for that decline were that the Macintosh was not as "perfect" as expected - with its 128 KByte RAM (they were then mounted to 512 KB) it was not powerful enough, and there were hardly any software applications available yet. Moreover, at the 1985 annual meeting, Jobs and Sculley neglected the fact that 70 percent of the company's sales were still due to the Apple II, whereas the Macintosh accounted for only 30 percent. Many sophisticated
Apple II designers were annoyed and left the company.
Steve Jobs became more and more angry and aggressive because of the continuing drop in Macintosh sales (merely 2,500 units in March 1985).) He blamed everyone for it, except for himself. Steve just did not see that the
"problem was with him.") In the end, he blamed even Sculley for the crisis and wanted to lead the company himself. But this seemed impossible to everyone else: "Steve was a big thinker, an inspirational motivator, but not a day-to-day manager. What was sad was that he could not see it.")
When Sculley was informed that Jobs intended to remove him insidiously from the company, he was quite concerned, but then decided to choose the company's welfare over his friendship to its visionary co-founder.
Supported by Markkula and the other members of the board, in May 1985, he dismissed Steve from his positions as the vice-president and as the leader of the Macintosh division; Jobs did not have any managerial power anymore.
Steve Jobs was quite depressed and made trips to Europe and the Soviet
Union. Finally, he decided to leave Apple in December 1985, and sold all his Apple shares. He took along some of the best employees to start his new venture - NeXT. He intended to design a workstation for the university sector. In February 1987, billionaire Ross Perot invested $20 million for
16 percent of NeXT. The new computer was introduced to the public in
October 1988, priced at $6,000.
At Apple, John Sculley took several measures to save the company, which had become chaotic. In the course of a major reorganization he dismissed 1,200 employees (20% of the total workforce) and put the broken parts of the company together to form one unified Apple. His restructuring saved a lot of costs and consolidated the company.
1986 was Apple's worst year with a decline in net sales from $1.92 (1985) to $1.90 billion. Gradually, Sculley could persuade software companies, which had turned away from Apple, to write applications for the Macintosh.
Apple found its new market in desktop publishing (DTP), for which the
Macintosh was predestined. By the time, the Macintosh became a serious tool for the business market and its sales increased again.
Until today, Apple has grown steadily and now reaches net sales of more than $7 billion. Although the Macintosh lost the battle against Big Blue, today it is a successful product and was sold over 2.5 million times worldwide in 1992. Apple remains the second-biggest personal computer manufacturer after IBM and has released innovative products such as
QuickTime, an easy to use multimedia software combining sound, video and animation. Its latest development is Newton, a personal digital assistant
(PDA), which serves as an electronic notepad and "integrates advanced hand- writing recognition, communication and data-management technologies.")

Apple today.

CUPERTINO, California—December 5, 2000—Apple® today announced that it has experienced significantly slower than expected sales during October and
November, which will result in revenues and earnings for its quarter ending
December 30, 2000 being substantially below expectations.
The company expects to report revenue of about $1 billion and a net loss, excluding investment gains, of between $225 and $250 million.
The $600 million revenue shortfall from previous expectations is due to lower than expected channel sell-through across all geographies and unplanned sales promotions and pricing actions. The net loss is the result of the revenue shortfall and cancellation charges related to decreases in forecasted component purchases for current products.
“The swift industry-wide decline in PC sales will result in Apple’s first non-profitable quarter in three years,” said Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs. “We’re not happy about it, and plan to return to sustained profitability next quarter. We are committed to reducing our channel inventories to normal levels by the end of this quarter, and remain very excited about the new products and programs Apple will be rolling out in 2001.”
“In light of the lower results anticipated for the December quarter, we now expect revenues for fiscal 2001 to be in the $6 to $6.5 billion range,” said Apple’s CFO Fred Anderson.

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