25 Things You Might Not Know About Apple

by Nicholas Kolakowski

Steve Jobs attributed a childhood fascination with “Heathkits,” hobbyist kits that let you assemble electronic equipment by hand, as first giving him “self-confidence” in building products.

Back in 1977, a high-end Apple II system with 48 kilobytes of RAM, a 6-kilobyte BASIC interpreter, and a case and keyboard cost $2,778. Moores Law at work.

Contrast the Apple IIs cost and specs with a high-end Apple PC today: A 27-inch iMac with a 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM and a 2TB Serial ATA hard drive costs $3,937 via the Apple Store.

“The Macintosh will die in another few years and its really sad,” Jobs told an interviewer in 1995, during his exile at NeXT. “The problem is this: No one at Apple has a clue as to how to create the next Macintosh.”

Apples retail stores number some 284 worldwide.

Apples original logo featured more than just fruit: There was also Isaac Newton, reading under a tree.

“Rock and Roll will never die. It is, however, being reborn.” That 2003 slogan helped Apple sell the concept of iTunes, with its 99-cent songs and $9.99 albums.

The New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has a Power Mac G4 Cube as part of its collection.

Before the name “iPad” was announced for Apples tablet PC, rumors circulated that it could be named “iSlate” or “iTablet.”

In 2006, Pixar was sold to Disney for $7.4 billion. Jobs had originally purchased the animation studio from George Lucas for $5 million, plus invested another $5 million in the company.

Before the iPad or the iPod Touch, there was the Apple Newton, a PDA that died messily in 1998 after nine years of development.

Microsoft made a $150 million investment in a struggling Apple in 1997. “We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose,” Steve Jobs told the audience during the announcement.

Apple reached its 1 billionth application downloaded from the App Store on April 23, 2009.

Some of the most-downloaded free applications from the App Store have included Facebook for iPhone and Google Earth. Bestselling paid apps have included Koi Pond and Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D.

“Remembering Ill be dead soon is the most important tool Ive ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” Jobs told a graduating class at Stanford in 2005.

Apple dropped “Apple Computer” from its name to become just “Apple Inc.” in 2007, signaling the companys shift into mobile and other non-PC areas.

Apples initial expectations for the iPhone was that it would take a 1 percent global market share by the end of 2008. According to Gartner, iPhone global market share in Q4 2008 was 10.7 percent.

In a bid to be environmentally friendly, Macs include PVC-free power cords and mercury-free LED-backlit displays. The iPhone “ships free of BFRs, PVC, arsenic and mercury,” according to the company.

Apples board of directors reportedly hated the now-iconic “1984” ad for the Macintosh that aired—just once—during the 1984 Super Bowl.

Research firm IDC has predicted that the App Store will contain some 300,000 apps by the end of 2010.

Apple entered the Fortune 500 at 411 in 1983.

Officially, the Apple Lisa (which debuted in 1983) stood for Local Integrated Software Architecture (“Lisa”). One common assumption, or even misconception, was that the computer was named after Jobs first daughter.

Apple designed a custom processor for the iPad, the 1GHz Apple A4.

Apple designer Jonathan Ive and his team once visited a candy factory to figure out how to mass-produce consistent colors for the iMac.