Apple's Inversion

Apple and I are the same age.

Well, not exactly, but close enough! We’re both Gen Xers.

Apple Computer was founded on April Fools’ Day, 1976 by the two Steves, Wozniak and Jobs. Woz handled the hardware, and Jobs knew how to make computers easy to use and understand. It was a really incredible dynamic duo of sorts that only comes around every so often, like Banting and Best, or Batman and Robin.

Apple’s origin story has been told hundreds of times by people who were there to witness it, so I’ll give a pretty quick recap of how they got started here.

Up until the late 70s, virtually nobody could hope to own a computer, but that all changed when Popular Electronics decided to put the Altair 8800 on the cover of their January 1975 magazine. The Altair created an incredible buzz within the budding home computer niche—it really wasn’t fair to call it anything other than a fringe activity for engineers and geeks, people like Jobs and Woz, and their friend Bill Gates.

Wozniak knew he could do a better job with the hardware than the Altair, and so did Jobs, having worked with Woz on several other electronics projects over the last few years. Woz was something of a legend at the Homebrew Computer Club where all the geeks hung out to talk about the latest tech, just vastly better than everyone else at building the hardware efficiently.

At least as importantly, Jobs knew he could do a much, much better job of packaging and selling a personal computer than the current market leader. Like Woz, he had some experience in his arena of expertise.

The two came up with the Apple computer, which you can see here in this advertisement:

The Apple I was just a motherboard (central collection of transistor chips) that the hobbyist would then have to attach to a keyboard (not included) and a monitor or TV (not included).

Even though Apple was the first to market (and a very early market leader) for the PC revolution, personal computers weren’t really where the big money was. IBM, the leader in “Business Machines” (the BM of IBM), had about $6 billion in revenue in 1976. The idea that Apple was anything other than a serious underdog was just plain silly.

1977 was a little different, though. The Apple II was a much, much more user-friendly computer. Many would argue that this was the actual first home computer, at least in the way we think of them today. I would tend to agree: the Apple II came with everything you needed to start using it immediately, unlike the Apple I (which didn’t even come with a case to hold the motherboard!).

Apple II by National Museum of American History

To everyone’s surprise, the nascent PC market really took off, largely thanks to Apple’s combination of cutting-edge hardware and incredible user-friendliness, at least for the time.

Jobs and Woz weren’t interested in coasting on their previous success. Instead, they immediately went to work on future projects, including the Macintosh computer, which would have the first ever home version of the GUI (Graphical User Interface—if you see images on your screen and can manipulate them, thank the GUI for this), a mouse, and a very intuitive user interface.

By the time the Macintosh computer was ready for prime time, Apple had a serious arsenal of revenue to compete with IBM, as they did most famously here:

This ad is nearly as iconic as the Mac itself! What a production!

Clearly, Apple thought of itself as “the little guy” in the PC world, even though they had played such a huge role in launching the home computer revolution. Apple’s decline in sales after 1985 (coincidentally the same year Jobs left the company) made it much easier to believe this narrative. It was real: Apple’s revenue in 1986 was nearly $2 billion, but IBM’s was now over $50 billion.

Years went by, and Apple languished. By 1996, they had managed to make it all the way up near $10 billion in revenue, but IBM had nearly $76 billion that same year. Even worse for Apple shareholders, the company lost a staggering $700 million in a single quarter. In December of ‘96, Jobs returned to Apple, ultimately taking on the role of interim CEO first, then full CEO by ‘98.

Between 1998 and 2009, Steve Jobs oversaw some of the most consequential product launches in human history. Sound hyperbolic? I’d agree, except it’s completely true.

First, the PC market was energized with the release of the iMac PC, which just looked… cool. Instead of packaging inside a sterile white or black case, this computer was translucent, so you could see everything inside. iMac ended up being the top-selling desktop computer in US stores the first three months of its release, and Apple quickly turned profitable.

Then, in 2001, the iPod rocked the music world. Sure, there were MP3 players out there in the early 2000s, but there wasn’t a central hub the way Apple created one, where your PC was the center of the action and you could store extra songs. This one led to 2003’s iTunes, which absolutely upended the traditional music industry. Now, instead of just stealing songs from artists (the Napster era), you could buy them for a reasonable price in one spot, then listen to them from a user-friendly device.

Jobs shocked the world again with the iPhone in 2007. I was an early adopter of smartphones, being a huge fan of the Sidekick II “back in the day”, so I keenly remember being unimpressed by the iPhone when it first came out. I really didn’t understand what I was looking at, but neither did most folks. The world was captivated by the combination of Gorilla Glass (you could slide your finger along it and move icons around and stuff) and a very fast, slim computer that could fit in your pocket.

iPhone led to iPad, and before you knew it Apple was the biggest company in the world, and Steve Jobs had died of cancer.

The flash of product-led brilliance that Jobs oversaw ultimately pushed Apple over the top. With incredible logistical skills, Tim Cook has been CEO since Jobs’s passing. Under Cook’s watch, Apple became the most valuable company in the world, never mind the computer industry.

Today, Apple is worth 15 IBMs, give or take (and depending on market fluctuations).

From underdog to overlord, they’ve come a long way. Are they still “cool” and “rebellious”, or is Apple more of an indicator of status or privilege today?

For my part, I’ve never really seen Apple as representative of anything other than a large corporation with their own particular interests. It has always felt like pandering, but maybe that’s the punk in me coming out.

What do you think? Is Apple now a status symbol for people with money, or is there a genuine undercurrent of antiestablishment thought that somehow still runs through the company, now worth 2.5 trillion dollars?