A Brief History of Apple

Some historical context would be useful before we plunge into the various product launches of Christmas Past.

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak in the late 1970's from an infamous garage in California.

Jobs' mercurial personality drove the company to revolutionise the computer industry with products such as the Apple II and Macintosh.

But by the late-1980's, Jobs had been ousted by the very man that he himself had brought in to drive the company further -- John Sculley, formerly an executive for PepsiCo.

During his wilderness years, Jobs occupied himself with the NeXT computer -- essentially a more powerful version of the Macintosh in all but name.

NeXT ultimately failed as a hardware company but did have some success with their software -- WebObjects was one of the earliest e-commerce offerings taken up by large corporations.

The NeXT computer also has a place in history as the machine used by Tim Bermers-Lee to create WorldWideWeb -- the world's first web browser.

But NeXT may have failed to thrive because Jobs was more focused with his other company -- a computer animation studio bought from George Lucas called Pixar.

With the roaring success of movies such as Toy Story, it seemed as if Jobs was destined never to return to the scene of his first glory.

But as Jobs' studio was picking up Oscars, Apple was in serious danger of going out of business.

Sculley may have ousted Jobs but he and his successors ultimately failed to drive the company forward.

By the mid-1990s, the Mac OS was looking long in the tooth and frustrating users with frequent crashes.

The product line had stagnated with a confusing range of models that had bizarre features such as built-in TV tuners.

Apple's board took the bold decision to shore up the flagging morale of the company by purchasing NeXT and re-appointing Jobs as CEO.

Although it was initially an interim appointment -- Jobs joked that he was the iCEO -- his old management style kicked back in.

He was soon cutting a swathe through the decaying company by abandoning the Newton handheld and rationalising the confused range of desktops and laptops.

The ageing Mac OS was dropped in favour of the NeXT OS which was given a shiny new look to make it more Mac-like.

Jobs signalled a new era with the launch of the iMac -- the iBook, iPod, iPhone, and a host of other devices followed that assured the future of a company that once faced oblivion.

The point of all this historical meandering is to demonstrate two points.

Firstly, that Jobs rescued the company from itself and all his decisions are driven by the knowledge that Apple has to prosper at all costs.

Secondly, Jobs is not afraid of iconoclasm -- such as the first iMac having no floppy drive or launching a mobile phone without a keypad.

Past launches have inspired violent reactions but Apple has usually been vindicated -- most of the time.

Let's take a look back at past product launches to see what the reaction was -- and how they actually fared in the market.

1998: iMac

The iMac was the breakthrough product that revived Apple -- but it faced criticisms for lacking a floppy drive.

It also used USB ports -- a departure from the ADB and SCSI ports used previously -- drawing complaints from users that their old peripherals would be obsolete.

But the iMac went on to become the top-selling computer in its first year on sale.

800,000 iMacs were sold in that year -- with Apple's total retail sales jumping 176%.

After several revisions, the iMac is still a key part of the Apple product range.

2000: Power Mac G4 Cube

A rare failure for the company, the Cube was praised for its good looks but failed to make enough profits.

It was essentially the guts of a laptop in an transparent plastic cube measuring 8" x 8' x 8"-- reminiscent of the legendary cuboid computers made by NeXT.

But there was little love for the silent beauty and the device was put 'on ice' in 2001.

However, the Cube lives on in some shape or form as the Mac Mini launched in 2005 -- the dimintive Mini is the same basic idea in a smaller housing.

As the cheapest Mac in the range, the Mini has proved to be a strong seller for first-time buyers looking to switch from PCs as well as those looking for a 'media centre' they can hook up to a TV.

At the time of writing, Mac Mini models hold the number 2 and 3 spots in Amazon's list of top-selling desktops.

2001: iPod

Although MP3 players were nothing new, Apple entered the market with an innovative interface and a hard drive that allowed for far greater capacity.

But sceptics heaped criticism on the fact that it was expensive and only featured a FireWire connector -- ubiquitous on Macs but rarely found on PCs.

Consumers felt differently and snapped up the iPod as it succeeded where others had failed by integrating closely with the iTunes client software.

Within three years, Apple had taken 70% of the market share for MP3 players.

The iTunes Store then went on to popularise paid music downloads and Apple is now the largest distributor of digital music in the world.

2007: iPhone

The iPhone was the clearest demonstration of Jobs' iconoclasm -- a touchscreen phone with no keypad.

Worst still, the first model was 2G only and featured a risible 2 megapixel camera without a flash.

But the real kicker was the eye-watering price -- as well as paying for the phone, users had to sign an 18-month contract with AT&T for mobile service.

Apple did listen to critics and quickly dropped the price -- the iPhone now retails for one-sixth of the price of the original 8GB iPhone.

By the end of 2009, 33.75 million iPhones had been sold.

They also repeated history by creating the App Store to sell software to users in the same way they had popularised music downloads.

The billionth application sold on the App store was downloaded on April 23rd 2009.

At the time of writing, that figure has jumped to three billion applications downloaded.

And the moral of the story is...

Futurology is perhaps a job best left to prophets and augurs.

The knee-jerk criticism of the iPad puts me in mind of Zhou Enlai, first Premier of the People's Republic of China.

When asked for his assessment of the 1789 French Revolution, he replied:

"It is too early to say."