The company's hardware products include the i. Phone smartphone, the i. Pad tablet computer, the Mac personal computers, the i. Pod portable media player, the Apple Watch smartwatch, and the Apple TV digital media player. Apple's consumer software includes the mac. OS and i. OS operating systems, the i. Tunes media player, the Safari web browser, and the i.

Life and i. Work creativity and productivity suites. Its online services include the i.

Tunes Store, the i. OS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, and i. Cloud. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. Within a few years, they had hired a staff of computer designers and had a production line.

Apple went public in 1. Over the next few years, Apple shipped new computers featuring innovative graphical user interfaces, and Apple's marketing commercials for its products received widespread critical acclaim. However, the high price tag of its products and limited software titles caused problems, as did power struggles between executives at the company. Jobs resigned from Apple and created his own company. As the market for personal computers increased, Apple's computers saw diminishing sales due to lower- priced products from competitors, in particular those offered with the Microsoft Windows operating system. More executive job shuffles happened at Apple until then- CEO Gil Amelio in 1.

Jobs' company to bring him back. Jobs regained position as CEO, and began a process to rebuild Apple's status, which included opening Apple's own retail stores in 2.

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It again saw success and returned to profitability. In January 2. 00. Jobs announced that Apple Computer, Inc. In August 2. 01. 1, Jobs resigned as CEO due to health complications, and Tim Cook became the new CEO. Two months later, Jobs died, marking the end of an era for the company. Apple is the world's largest information technology company by revenue and the world's second- largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung.

In February 2. 01. Apple became the first U. S. The company employs 1. October 2. 01. 6.

It operates the i. Tunes Store, which is the world's largest music retailer. As of January 2. 01. The company enjoys a high level of brand loyalty and has been repeatedly ranked as the world's most valuable brand.

However, it receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business practices, including the origins of source materials. History. 19. 76–8.

Founding and incorporation. Apple's first product, the Apple I, invented by Apple co- founder Steve Wozniak, was sold as an assembled circuit board and lacked basic features such as a keyboard, monitor, and case. The owner of this unit added a keyboard and wooden case.

Between September 1. September 1. 98. 0 yearly sales grew from $7. It differed from its major rivals, the TRS- 8. Commodore PET, because of its character cell- based color graphics and open architecture. While early Apple II models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 . Visi. Calc created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II: compatibility with the office.

The company introduced the Apple III in May 1. IBM and Microsoft in the business and corporate computing market. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for the option to buy 1. Apple at the pre- IPO price of $1.

Jobs took over Jef Raskin's low- cost- computer project, the Macintosh. A race broke out between the Lisa team and the Macintosh team over which product would ship first. Lisa won the race in 1. GUI, but was a commercial failure due to its high price tag and limited software titles. The machine's fortunes changed with the introduction of the Laser. Writer, the first Post. Scriptlaser printer to be sold at a reasonable price, and Page.

Maker, an early desktop publishing package. It has been suggested that the combination of these three products were responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from his leadership role at Apple. Sculley found out that Jobs had been attempting to organize a coup and called a board meeting at which Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties. Jobs had argued the company should produce products aimed at the consumer market and aimed for a $1.

Macintosh, which they were unable to meet. Newer models selling at higher price points offered higher profit margin, and appeared to have no effect on total sales as power users snapped up every increase in power. Although some worried about pricing themselves out of the market, the high- right policy was in full force by the mid- 1.

Jean- Louis Gass. The company lost its monopoly in this market, and had already estranged many of its original consumer customer base who could no longer afford their high- priced products. The Christmas season of 1. Apple's stock price. Later that year, Apple introduced three lower cost models, the Macintosh Classic, Macintosh LC and Macintosh IIsi, all of which saw significant sales due to pent up demand. In 1. 99. 1, Apple introduced the Power. Book, replacing the .

The same year, Apple introduced System 7, a major upgrade to the operating system which added color to the interface and introduced new networking capabilities. It remained the architectural basis for the Classic Mac OS. The success of the Power.

Book and other products brought increasing revenue. The magazine Mac. Addict named the period between 1. Created in 1. 99. Mac OS to a tablet – but was shelved in favor of the Newton. To address this, management introduced several new brands, selling largely identical machines at different price points aimed at different markets. These were the high- end Quadra, the mid- range Centris line, and the ill- fated Performa series.

This led to significant market confusion, as customers did not understand the difference between models. Enormous resources were also invested in the problem- plagued Newton division based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts. Microsoft Corp. At this time, a series of major product flops and missed deadlines sullied Apple's reputation, and Sculley was replaced as CEO by Michael Spindler. Despite being a financial flop at the time of its release, it helped pave the way for the Palm. Pilot and Apple's own i. Phone and i. Pad in the future.

By the early 1. 99. Apple was developing alternative platforms to the Macintosh, such as A/UX. The Macintosh platform itself was becoming outdated because it was not built for multitasking and because several important software routines were programmed directly into the hardware. In addition, Apple was facing competition from OS/2 and UNIX vendors such as Sun Microsystems. The Macintosh would need to be replaced by a new platform or reworked to run on more powerful hardware. The AIM alliance hoped that PRe. P's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind and thus counter Microsoft.

The same year, Apple introduced the Power Macintosh, the first of many Apple computers to use Motorola's Power. PC processor. Amelio made numerous changes at Apple, including extensive layoffs and cut costs. On July 9, 1. 99. Amelio was ousted by the board of directors after overseeing a three- year record- low stock price and crippling financial losses. Jobs acted as the interim CEO and began restructuring the company's product line; it was during this period that he identified the design talent of Jonathan Ive, and the pair worked collaboratively to rebuild Apple's status.

The i. Mac design team was led by Ive, who would later design the i. Pod and the i. Phone. In 1. 99. 8, Apple purchased Macromedia's Key Grip software project, signaling an expansion into the digital video editing market.

RIP, Microsoft Paint. MS Paint, the first app you used for editing images, will probably be killed off in future updates of Windows 1. Paint 3. D. Microsoft lists the 3. Windows 1. 0’s next autumn update, a little X marking the end of an era. The app is certainly a relic, from a time when the casual computer user couldn’t crack open Photoshop or Skitch or Pixelmator or thousands of web apps. MS Paint can’t save image components as layers or vectors; it’s for making flat static images only.

It doesn’t smooth lines or guess at your best intentions. It does what you tell it and nothing more, faithfully representing the herky- jerky motion of drawing freehand with a computer mouse. It’s from a time before touch, a time before trackpads. As more sophisticated options appeared, Paint’s janky aesthetic became a conscious choice. TV Tropes lists major limitations that came to define a certain look: the wobbly freehand lines, awkward color handling, and inappropriate export settings that give Paint its distinctive look. In 2. 01. 4, Gawker’s Sam Biddle noted Paint’s influence on conspiracy theory images, calling the form “Chart Brut.” In amateur detectives’ attempts at identifying the Boston Marathon bombers, the simplicity and jaggedness of Paint evokes the “crazy wall” aesthetic of red string and scribbled notes, apparently without irony.

The same year, internet historian Patrick Davison explored Paint’s influence on the last decade of meme culture, particularly Rage Comics. The outsider- art aesthetic feels appropriate to the relatable everyday content, and makes the art form unthreatening. Of course, Paint offered a few features to smooth things out, like the circle and line tools and the “fill” tool, all used in the stoner comics of the early 1. Crucially, those circles still had jagged curves. The bright colors of stoner comics are flat, as MS Paint didn’t support gradients (without an elaborate hack). Contrast those pixellated lines with the slick, stylish face from this art tutorial: This slickness is built into Paint’s successor, Paint 3. D. From the moment you start sketching, Paint 3.

D smooths out your art. Paint’s sloppiness is probably why rage comics got so popular. Looking at a rage comic, you can tell exactly how it was drawn, and how you might draw one yourself. By delivering exactly what the artist draws, MS Paint forms an image that the viewer can mentally reverse- engineer and imitate. Unless you go absolutely nuts with it. Reddit user Toweringhorizon painstakingly assembled the drawing “To a Little Radio” using MS Paint tools like the oil brush, stretching the medium while maintaining a pixelated look.

It’s one of the top submissions to MS Paint subreddit, a beautiful collaborative art gallery. Scrolling through this art feels like flipping through the sketchbook of the most artistic kid in high school. There’s an accepted roughness, a desired minimalism. Poweriso 3 7 Key By Sky Sports. For example, the exquisite raindrops in the work above are reflected in a flat, featureless tabletop. Like a transistor radio, Paint might be showing its age, but this tenacious little gadget should not be underestimated.“To a Little Radio” doesn’t even come close to testing Paint’s limits. As we say goodbye to the app that shaped an era, let us watch this bizarrely soundtracked time lapse of drawing Santa Claus in MS Paint on Windows 7 over the course of 5. We can only believe this is real because faking it would be even harder.