History of Apple Inc./The Apple Inc. is established

During 1983, Jobs did some research at the labs of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) and Alto's GUI (Graphical User Interface) systems. After various visits to these labs, Jobs was convinced that he should add the GUI to both the Macintosh and Lisa systems to heighten its marketability, and in 1983 Apple had another hit with the Macintosh model. The "Mac" was the first successful personal computer with a graphical user interface complete with mouse, windows, menus. Along with the Apple LaserWriter, one of the earliest mass-market Laser Printers, the Mac redefined how a computer should be used, and all personal computers since have worked like the Mac. Unit sales were again, in the millions. At the turn of the decade Apple released a line of attractive, usable laptop computers and again made millions. Apple appeared to be a charmed company; Apple products were innovative in both design and engineering, high quality, and fun to use. Legions of Apple fans drooled over press releases and went to extremes such as tattooing the Apple logo on their bodies in their expression of Apple-philia.

On January 22, 1984, following the Super Bowl Half-Time marketing blitz, which premiered the Macintosh commercial with a woman throwing a sledgehammer into an Orwellian "Big Brother" video screen representing the competitor: IBM. The final Macintosh featured 128KB RAM (2 64KB chips soldered onto the motherboard) and expandable to 512KB, the Motorola 68000 processor operating at 8Mhz, an internal, 3.5” floppy disk drive, and 384x256 pixel bitmap display. Included were the Xerox-inspired GUI and two user-friendly programs – MacWrite, a word processor, and MacPaint, a simple graphics program. The Mac retailed at a price of $2,495.00, much less than the similarly designed and financially disastrous Lisa model (at $9,995.00 and including an internal hard drive) released a year earlier.

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By 1984 the Apple Company faced several internal struggles between the CEO John Scully and Steve Jobs; eventually Jobs was forced out of Apple. During Jobs absence, Apple released Macintosh-specific packages such as, MacPublisher and Aldus PageMaker, along with the first LaserWriter Printer; this created a firm foundation for Apple's reputation of desktop publishing. The following year, Apple released the Macintosh Plus to combat the issues of the original Mac. The Mac Plus featured 1MB of RAM (expandable to 4MB), a SCSI hard drive controller that allowed for the possibility of adding 6 additional devices, and increased floppy disk capacity of 800KB.

In 1987 Apple upgraded to the faster Motorola 68020 for the Macintosh II and introduced color graphics and open architecture. The Mac SE, (a lower-cost version of the Mac II), was released in the same year to follow-up with the declining PC clone prices. Later, the Mac IIx, Mac IIxi, Mac IIcx, Mac IIci, Mac II SE, and Mac IIfx were released into the 90's.

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  Macintosh II
  other images: 1, 2, mainboard
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  Macintosh IIx
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  Macintosh IIcx
  other images: 1
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  Macintosh IIci
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  Macintosh IIsi
  other images: back view, 1
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  Macintosh IIvi
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  Macintosh IIvx
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  Macintosh IIfx

During 1992, the sales of Macintosh computers suffered from the accumulation of inexpensive PC clones, and finally for the first time in its history, Apple resorted to creating clones. Eventually in 1997, Steve Jobs the founding leader of Apple returned. He maneuvered the company away from the clones and reversed their direction with a back-to-basics approach.