STEVE JOBS INTRODUCES THE ORIGINAL IPHONE IN 2007

Today, The Grandma has been reading about the first iPhone, that was introduced by Steve Jobs, on a day like today in 2007.

The iPhone, retroactively referred to as the iPhone 2G or iPhone 1, is the first iPhone model and the first smartphone developed and marketed by Apple Inc. 

After years of rumours and speculation, it was officially announced on January 9, 2007, and was released in the United States on June 29, 2007. Development of the iPhone began in 2005 and continued in complete secrecy until its public unveiling at Macworld 2007. The device broke with prevailing mobile phone designs by eliminating most physical hardware buttons and eschewing a stylus for its finger-friendly touch interface.

The iPhone instead featured only a few physical buttons and a touch screen. It featured quad-band GSM cellular connectivity with GPRS and EDGE support for data transfer, and it used continuous internet access and onboard processing to support features unrelated to voice communication. Its successor, the iPhone 3G, was announced on June 9, 2008.

The iPhone quickly became Apple's most successful product, with later generations propelling it to become one of the world's most profitable companies. The introduction of the App Store allowed established companies and startup developers to build careers and earn money, via the platform, while providing consumers with new ways to access information and connect with other people. The iPhone largely appealed to the general public, as opposed to the business community BlackBerry and IBM focused on at the time. By integrating existing technology and expanding on usability, the iPhone turned the smartphone industry on its head.

In 2000, Apple CEO Steve Jobs envisioned an Apple touchscreen product that the user could interact with directly with their fingers rather than using a stylus. The stylus was a common tool for many existing touchscreen devices at the time including Apple's own Newton, launched in 1993. He decided that the device would require a triple layered capacitive multi-touch touch screen, a very new and advanced technology at the time. This helped with removing the physical keyboard and mouse. The same as was common at the time for tablet computers, human machine interfaces, and point of sale systems.

Jobs recruited a group of Apple engineers to investigate the idea as a side project. When Jobs reviewed the prototype and its user interface, he saw the potential in developing the concept into a mobile phone to compete with already established brands in the then emerging market for touch screen phones. The whole effort was called Project Purple 2 and began in 2005. Apple purchased the iphone.org domain in December 1999.

Apple created the device during a secretive and unprecedented collaboration with Cingular Wireless, now part of AT&T. The development cost of the collaboration was estimated to have been $150 million over a thirty-month period. Apple rejected the design by committee approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, a largely unsuccessful collaboration with Motorola. Instead, Cingular Wireless gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house.

The original iPhone was introduced by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, in a keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo held in Moscone West in San Francisco, California. 

In his address, Jobs said, This is a day that I have been looking forward to for two and a half years, and that today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. Jobs introduced the iPhone as a combination of three devices: a widescreen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communicator.

Six weeks prior to the iPhone's release, the plastic screen was replaced with glass. This was after Jobs was upset when he saw that his keys scratched the prototype in his pocket. The quick switch led to a bidding process for a manufacturing contractor that was won by Foxconn, which had just opened up a new wing of its Shenzhen factory complex specifically for this bid.

The original iPhone received largely positive reviews.

More information: Seamgen

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator...
these are NOT three separate devices!
And we are calling it iPhone!
Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
And here it is.

Steve Jobs

THE APPLE COMPUTER 1 IS CREATED BY STEVE WOZNIAK

Today, The Grandma has been working with her Apple Computer 1, a desktop computer that she bought when it was created, on a day like today in 1976.

The Apple Computer 1, originally released as the Apple Computer and known later as the Apple I, or Apple-1, is a desktop computer released by the Apple Computer Company, now Apple Inc., in 1976.

It was designed by Steve Wozniak. The idea of selling the computer came from Wozniak's friend and co-founder Steve Jobs.

The Apple I was Apple's first product, and to finance its creation, Jobs sold his only motorized means of transportation, a VW Microbus, for a few hundred dollars. Wozniak later said that Jobs planned instead to use his bicycle to get around, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500. Wozniak demonstrated the first prototype in July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California.

Production was discontinued on September 30, 1977, after the June 10, 1977 introduction of its successor, the Apple II, which Byte magazine referred to as part of the 1977 Trinity of personal computing, along with the PET 2001 from Commodore Business Machines and the TRS-80 Model I from Tandy Corporation.

On March 5, 1975, Steve Wozniak attended the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club in Gordon French's garage. He was so inspired that he immediately set to work on what would eventually become the Apple I computer.

More information: Apple 1 Registry

After building it for himself and showing it at the club, he and Steve Jobs gave out schematics, technical designs, for the computer to interested club members and even helped some of them build and test out copies. Then, Steve Jobs suggested that they design and sell a single etched and silkscreened circuit board -just the bare board, with no electronic parts- that people could use to build the computers. Wozniak calculated that having the board design laid out would cost $1,000 and manufacturing would cost another $20 per board; he hoped to recoup his costs if 50 people bought the boards for $40 each.

To fund this small venture -their first company- Jobs sold his van and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator. Very soon after, Steve Jobs arranged to sell something like 50 completely-built computers to the Byte Shop, a computer store in Mountain View, California, at $500 each. To fulfill the $25,000 order, they obtained $20,000 in parts at 30 days net and delivered the finished product in 10 days.

The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 at a price of US$666.66, because Wozniak liked repeating digits and because of a one-third markup on the $500 wholesale price.

The first unit produced was used in a high school math class, and donated to Liza Loop's public-access computer center. About 200 units were produced, and all but 25 were sold within nine or ten months.

In April 1977, the price was dropped to $475. It continued to be sold through August 1977, despite the introduction of the Apple II in April 1977, which began shipping in June of that year.

In October 1977, the Apple I was officially discontinued and removed from Apple's price list. As Wozniak was the only person who could answer most customer support questions about the computer, the company offered Apple I owners discounts and trade-ins for Apple IIs to persuade them to return their computers. These recovered boards were then destroyed by Apple, contributing to their rarity today.

More information: Mac-History

Wozniak's design originally used a Motorola 6800 processor, which cost $175, but when MOS Technology introduced the much cheaper 6502 microprocessor ($25) he switched.

The Apple I CPU ran at 1.022,727 MHz, a fraction (2⁄7) of the NTSC color carrier which simplified video circuitry. Memory used the new 4K bit DRAM chips, and was 4K Bytes, expandable to 8KB on board, or 64KB externally The board was designed to use the next generation of 16K bit memory chips when they became available. An optional $75 plug-in cassette interface card allowed users to store programs on ordinary audio cassette tapes. A BASIC interpreter, originally written by Wozniak, was provided that let users easily write programs and play simple games. An onboard AC power supply was included.

The Apple I's built-in computer terminal circuitry was distinctive. All one needed was a keyboard and a television set.

The Apple 1 did not come with a case. It was either used as-is or some chose to build custom, mostly wooden, cases. Competing machines such as the Altair 8800 generally were programmed with front-mounted toggle switches and used indicator lights (red LEDs, most commonly) for output, and had to be extended with separate hardware to allow connection to a computer terminal or a teletypewriter machine. This made the Apple I an innovative machine for its day.

Both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have stated that Apple did not assign serial numbers to the Apple l. Several boards have been found with numbered stickers affixed to them, which appear to be inspection stickers from the PCB manufacturer/assembler.

A batch of boards is known to have numbers hand-written in black permanent marker on the back; these usually appear as "01-00##".

As of January 2022, 29 Apple-1s with a serial number are known. The highest known number is 01–0079. Two original Apple-1s have been analyzed by PSA, Los Angeles, concluding the serial numbers had been hand-written by Steve Jobs.

More information: The Apple 1

Your first projects aren't the greatest things in the world,
and they may have no money value, they may go nowhere,
but that is how you learn
-you put so much effort into making something right
if it is for yourself.

Steve Wozniak

1984, THE MACINTOSH PC ON SALE IN THE UNITED STATES

Today, The Grandma has been working with her old Macintosh. She has remembered when she bought it, when Apple Computer placed the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States, on a day like today in 1984.

The Macintosh (mainly Mac since 1998) is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Inc. (originally as Apple Computer, Inc.) since January 1984.

The original Macintosh is the first successful mass-market all-in-one desktop personal computer to have featured a graphical user interface, built-in screen, and mouse.

Apple sold the Macintosh alongside its popular Apple II, Apple IIGS, Apple III, and Apple Lisa families of computers until the other models were discontinued in the 1990s.

Early Macintosh models were relatively expensive, hindering competitiveness in a market dominated by the much cheaper Commodore 64 for consumers, as well as the IBM Personal Computer and its accompanying clone market for businesses, although they were less expensive than the Xerox Alto and other computers with graphical user interfaces that predated the Mac, except Atari ST.

Macintosh systems were successful in education and desktop publishing, making Apple the second-largest PC manufacturer for the next decade.

In the early 1990s, Apple introduced the Macintosh LC II and Color Classic which were price-competitive with Wintel machines at the time.

However, the introduction of Windows 3.1 and Intel's Pentium processor, which beat the Motorola 68040 used in then-current Macintoshes in most benchmarks, gradually took market share from Apple, and by the end of 1994 Apple was relegated to third place as Compaq became the top PC manufacturer.

More information: Mac-History

Even after the transition to the superior PowerPC-based Power Macintosh line in the mid-1990s, the falling prices of commodity PC components, poor inventory management with the Macintosh Performa, and the release of Windows 95 contributed to continued decline of the Macintosh user base.

Upon his return to the company, Steve Jobs led Apple to consolidate the complex line of nearly twenty Macintosh models in mid-1997 (including models made for specific regions) down to four in mid-1999: the Power Macintosh G3, iMac G3, 14.1" PowerBook G3, and 12" iBook.

All four products were critically and commercially successful due to their high performance, competitive prices, and aesthetic designs, and helped return Apple to profitability.

Around this time, Apple phased out the Macintosh name in favor of Mac, a nickname that had been in common use since the development of the first model. After their transition to Intel processors in 2006, the complete lineup was Intel-based. This changed in 2020 when the M1 chip was introduced to the MacBook Air, entry level MacBook Pro and Mac Mini. 

Its current lineup includes three desktops, the all-in-one iMac and the desktop Mac Mini and Mac Pro, and two notebooks (the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro). Its Xserve server was discontinued in 2011 in favor of the Mac Mini and Mac Pro.

Apple has developed a series of Macintosh operating systems. The first versions initially had no name but came to be known as the Macintosh System Software in 1988, Mac OS in 1997 with the release of Mac OS 7.6, and retrospectively called Classic Mac OS.

Apple produced a Unix-based operating system for the Macintosh called A/UX from 1988 to 1995, which closely resembled contemporary versions of the Macintosh system software. Apple does not license macOS for use on non-Apple computers, however, System 7 was licensed to various companies through Apple's Macintosh clone program from 1995 to 1997. Only one company, UMAX Technologies, was legally licensed to ship clones running Mac OS 8.

In 2001, Apple released Mac OS X, a modern Unix-based operating system which was later rebranded to simply OS X in 2012, and then macOS in 2016. Its final version was macOS Catalina, as Apple went on to release macOS Big Sur in 2020. The current version is macOS Monterey, first released on June 7, 2021.

Intel-based Macs can run native third party operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, and Microsoft Windows with the aid of Boot Camp or third-party software. The same feat has been accomplished on ARM-based Apple silicon, but it requires an operating system built for it. Volunteer communities have customized Intel-based macOS to run illicitly on non-Apple computers.

The Macintosh family of computers has used a variety of different CPU architectures since its introduction. Originally they used the Motorola 68000 series of microprocessors.

More information: Computer History

In the mid-1990s they transitioned to PowerPC processors, and again in the mid-2000s they began to use 32- and 64-bit Intel x86 processors. Apple began transitioning CPU architectures to its own ARM based Apple silicon for use in the Macintosh beginning in 2020.

The Macintosh project began in 1979 when Jef Raskin, an Apple employee, envisioned an easy-to-use, low-cost computer for the average consumer. He wanted to name the computer after his favorite type of apple, the McIntos /ˈmækɪnˌtɒʃ/ MAK-in-tosh), but the spelling was changed to Macintosh for legal reasons as the original was the same spelling as that used by McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., an audio equipment manufacturer.

Steve Jobs requested that McIntosh Laboratory give Apple a release for the newly spelled name, thus allowing Apple to use it. The request was denied, forcing Apple to eventually buy the rights to use this name.

A 1984 Byte magazine article suggested Apple changed the spelling only after early users misspelled McIntosh. However, Jef Raskin had adopted the Macintosh spelling by 1981, when the Macintosh computer was still a single prototype machine in the lab.

More information: History Computer

Part of what made the Macintosh great was
that the people working on it were musicians,
poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians.
They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.
But if it hadn't been computer science,
these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

Steve Jobs

APPLE COMPUTER IS INCORPORATED IN CALIFORNIA, USA

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Claire Fontaine.

 

Claire loves design and computing and they have been talking about Apple Computer, the enterprise that was incorporated on a day like today in 1977.

 

Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. It is considered one of the Big Five companies in the U.S. information technology industry, along with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.

The company's hardware products include the iPhone smartphone, the iPad tablet computer, the Mac personal computer, the iPod portable media player, the Apple Watch smartwatch, the Apple TV digital media player, the AirPods wireless earbuds and the HomePod smart speaker line.

Apple's software includes macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS operating systems, the iTunes media player, the Safari web browser, the Shazam music identifier, and the iLife and iWork creativity and productivity suites, as well as professional applications like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Xcode. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store, Mac App Store, Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV+, iMessage, and iCloud. Other services include Apple Store, Genius Bar, AppleCare, Apple Pay, Apple Pay Cash, and Apple Card.

Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer, though Wayne sold his share back within 12 days.

It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc., in January 3 1977, and sales of its computers, including the Apple II, grew quickly. Within a few years, Jobs and Wozniak had hired a staff of computer designers and had a production line.

More information: Apple

Apple went public in 1980 to instant financial success. Over the next few years, Apple shipped new computers featuring innovative graphical user interfaces, such as the original Macintosh in 1984, and Apple's marketing advertisements for its products received widespread critical acclaim. However, the high price of its products and limited application library caused problems, as did power struggles between executives. In 1985, Wozniak departed Apple amicably and remained an honorary employee, while Jobs and others resigned to found NeXT.

As the market for personal computers expanded and evolved through the 1990s, Apple lost market share to the lower-priced duopoly of Microsoft Windows on Intel PC clones. The board recruited CEO Gil Amelio to what would be a 500-day charge for him to rehabilitate the financially troubled company -reshaping it with layoffs, executive restructuring, and product focus.

In 1997, he led Apple to buy NeXT, solving the desperately failed operating system strategy and bringing Jobs back. Jobs regained leadership status, becoming CEO in 2000. Apple swiftly returned to profitability under the revitalizing Think different campaign, as he rebuilt Apple's status by launching the iMac in 1998, opening the retail chain of Apple Stores in 2001, and acquiring numerous companies to broaden the software portfolio.

In January 2007, Jobs renamed the company Apple Inc., reflecting its shifted focus toward consumer electronics, and launched the iPhone to great critical acclaim and financial success.

In August 2011, 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.

In June 2019, Jony Ive, Apple's CDO, left the company to start his own firm, but stated he would work with Apple as its primary client.

Apple's worldwide annual revenue totaled $274.5 billion for the 2020 fiscal year. Apple is the world's largest technology company by revenue and one of the world's most valuable companies. It is also the world's third-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung and Huawei.

More information: Infographic Journal

In August 2018, Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion and just two years later in August 2020 became the first $2 trillion U.S. company. The company employs 137,000 full-time employees and maintains 510 retail stores in 25 countries as of 2020. It operates the iTunes Store, which is the world's largest music retailer.

As of January 2020, more than 1.5 billion Apple products are actively in use worldwide. The company also has a high level of brand loyalty and is ranked as the world's most valuable brand. However, Apple receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors, its environmental practices and unethical business practices, including anti-competitive behavior, as well as the origins of source materials.

Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne as a business partnership.

The company's first product is the Apple I, a computer designed and hand-built entirely by Wozniak. To finance its creation, Jobs sold his only motorized means of transportation, a VW Microbus, for a few hundred dollars, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for US$500, equivalent to $2,246 in 2019.

Wozniak debuted the first prototype at the Homebrew Computer Club in July 1976. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips -a base kit concept which would not yet be marketed as a complete personal computer. It went on sale soon after debut for US$666.66, equivalent to $2,995 in 2019. Wozniak later said he was unaware of the coincidental mark of the beast in the number 666, and that he came up with the price because he liked repeating digits.

Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated on January 3, 1977, without Wayne, who had left and sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800 only twelve days after having co-founded Apple.

Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of US$250,000, equivalent to $1,054,778 in 2019, to Jobs and Wozniak during the incorporation of Apple.

More information: Business Insider

Great things in business are never done by one person.
They're done by a team of people.

Steve Jobs

GEORGE WALTON LUCAS, MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!

George Lucas & Master Yoda

Today, The Grandma has decided to stay at home watching George Lucas' films to homage him in his 75th anniversary.

The Grandma loves Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Willow and ET, and it is always a great pleasure watching these films once and once again. Cinema is a beautiful art that explores the best and the worst of the human genre.

George Walton Lucas Jr., born May 14, 1944, is an American filmmaker and entrepreneur. Lucas is known for creating the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic. He was the chairman and CEO of Lucasfilm before selling it to The Walt Disney Company in 2012.

After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1967, Lucas co-founded American Zoetrope with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas wrote and directed THX 1138 (1971), based on his earlier student short Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which was a critical success but a financial failure.

Hamill, Lucas & Ford in Star Wars

His next work as a writer-director was the film American Graffiti (1973), inspired by his youth in early 1960s Modesto, California, and produced through the newly founded Lucasfilm.

Lucas' next film, the epic space opera Star Wars (1977), had a troubled production but was a surprise hit, becoming the highest-grossing film at the time, winning six Academy Awards and sparking a cultural phenomenon. Lucas produced and cowrote the sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983).

With director Steven Spielberg, he created the Indiana Jones films Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Temple of Doom (1984), and The Last Crusade (1989). He also produced and wrote a variety of films through Lucasfilm in the 1980s and 1990s and during this same period Lucas' LucasArts developed high-impact video games, including Maniac Mansion (1987), The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and Grim Fandango (1998) alongside many video games based on the Star Wars universe.

More information: Lucasfilm

In 1997, Lucas rereleased the Star Wars trilogy as part of a Special Edition, featuring several alterations; home media versions with further changes were released in 2004 and 2011. He returned to directing with the Star Wars prequel trilogy, comprising The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005). He later collaborated on served as executive producer for the war film Red Tails (2012) and wrote the CGI film Strange Magic (2015).

George Lucas & Mark Hamill in Star Wars

Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful filmmakers and has been nominated for four Academy Awards. His films are among the 100 highest-grossing movies at the North American box office, adjusted for ticket-price inflation.

Lucas is considered a significant figure in the New Hollywood era. Lucas then set his sights on adapting Flash Gordon, an adventure serial from his childhood that he fondly remembered. When he was unable to obtain the rights, he set out to write an original space adventure that would eventually become Star Wars.

Star Wars quickly became the highest-grossing film of all-time, displaced five years later by Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. After the success of American Graffiti and prior to the beginning of filming on Star Wars, Lucas was encouraged to renegotiate for a higher fee for writing and directing Star Wars than the $150,000 agreed.

More information: Star Wars

Following the release of the first Star Wars film, Lucas worked extensively as a writer and producer, including on the many Star Wars spinoffs made for film, television, and other media.

Lucas acted as a writer and executive producer for the next two Star Wars films, commissioning Irvin Kershner to direct The Empire Strikes Back, and Richard Marquand to direct Return of the Jedi, while receiving a story credit on the former and sharing a screenwriting credit with Lawrence Kasdan on the latter. He also acted as executive producer and story writer on all four of the Indiana Jones films, which his colleague and good friend Steven Spielberg directed.

The animation studio Pixar was founded in 1979 as the Graphics Group, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm.

Pixar's early computer graphics research resulted in groundbreaking effects in films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Young Sherlock Holmes, and the group was purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple Computer.

 
In 1997, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, Lucas returned to the original trilogy and made numerous modifications using newly available digital technology, releasing them in theaters as the Star Wars Special Edition.

The first Star Wars prequel was finished and released in 1999 as Episode I-The Phantom Menace, which would be the first film Lucas had directed in over two decades. Following the release of the first prequel, Lucas announced that he would also be directing the next two, and began working on Episode II.

More information: VOA-Learning English

The first draft of Episode II was completed just weeks before principal photography, and Lucas hired Jonathan Hales, a writer from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to polish it. It was completed and released in 2002 as Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones.

The final prequel, Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith, began production in 2002 and was released in 2005.

Numerous fans and critics considered the prequels inferior to the original trilogy, though they were box office successes nonetheless.

Harrison Ford, George Lucas & Steven Spielberg

From 2003 to 2005, Lucas also served as an executive producer on Star Wars: Clone Wars, an animated microseries on Cartoon Network created by Genndy Tartakovsky, that bridged the events between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

Lucas collaborated with Jeff Nathanson as a writer of the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, directed by Steven Spielberg.

In January 2012, Lucas announced his retirement from producing large blockbuster films and instead re-focusing his career on smaller, independently budgeted features.

Since 2014, Lucas is working as a creative consultant on the Star Wars sequel trilogy, including work on the first film, Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens.

In 2016, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first film of a Star Wars anthology series was released. It told the story of the rebels who stole the plans for the Death Star featured in the original Star Wars film, and it was reported that Lucas liked it more than The Force Awakens.

In 2017, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi was released, which Lucas described as beautifully made.

Lucas has had cursory involvement with Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).

More information: British Council

Everybody has talent, it's just a matter

of moving around until you've discovered what it is.

George Lucas

STEVE JOBS, 'THINK DIFFERENT' TO CREATE OUR FUTURE

The Grandma welcomes the MWC2019

Today, the Mobile World Congress returns to Barcelona as every year. The Grandma loves technology and science and this exposition is a great opportunity to know the last proposals in this sector.

Mobile has become one of the most important world markets earning lots and lots of millions, creating thousands of employments and developing incredible applications. It's impossible to stop progress although we must work to grow up respecting environment and labour conditions. Technology helps to improve our lives but destroy thousands of employments and we must arrive to a balance between create and destroy.

The Grandma remembers Noemí Bond and she wants to talk about one of the most important genius of the last century, Steve Jobs, the man who created Apple Inc., a technologic empire which has changed our lives, our present and future. He was born on a day like today in 1955.

Before talking about Steve Jobs, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 13).

More information: Conditionals 1-I , II & III

Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955-October 5, 2011) was an American business magnate and investor. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and co-founder of Apple Inc.; chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar; and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. Jobs is widely recognized as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Steve Jobs

Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, and put up for adoption. He was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He attended Reed College in 1972 before dropping out that same year, and traveled through India in 1974 seeking enlightenment and studying Zen Buddhism.

His declassified FBI report states that he used marijuana and LSD while he was in college, and once told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life.

Jobs and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Together the duo gained fame and wealth a year later for the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers.

Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto in 1979, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface (GUI). This led to development of the unsuccessful Apple Lisa in 1983, followed by the breakthrough Macintosh in 1984, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI.

More information: GQ

The Macintosh introduced the desktop publishing industry in 1985 with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics. Jobs was forced out of Apple in 1985 after a long power struggle with the company's board and its then-CEO John Sculley.

That same year, Jobs took a few of Apple's members with him to found NeXT, a computer platform development company that specialized in computers for higher-education and business markets. In addition, he helped to develop the visual effects industry when he funded the computer graphics division of George Lucas's Lucasfilm in 1986. The new company was Pixar, which produced Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated film.

Apple merged with NeXT in 1997, and Jobs became CEO of his former company within a few months.

He was largely responsible for helping revive Apple, which had been at the verge of bankruptcy.

He worked closely with designer Jony Ive to develop a line of products that had larger cultural ramifications, beginning in 1997 with the Think different advertising campaign and leading to the iMac, iTunes, iTunes Store, Apple Store, iPod, iPhone, App Store, and the iPad.

In 2001, the original Mac OS was replaced with a completely new Mac OS X, based on NeXT's NeXTSTEP platform, giving the OS a modern Unix-based foundation for the first time.

Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2003. He died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor at age 56 on October 5, 2011.

More information: Famous People Lessons

Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. It is considered one of the Big Four of technology along with Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

The company's hardware products include the iPhone smartphone, the iPad tablet computer, the Mac personal computer, the iPod portable media player, the Apple Watch smartwatch, the Apple TV digital media player, and the HomePod smart speaker. Apple's software includes the macOS and iOS operating systems, the iTunes media player, the Safari web browser, and the iLife and iWork creativity and productivity suites, as well as professional applications like Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Xcode. Its online services include the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, Apple Music, and iCloud.

Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak

Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976 to develop and sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer.

It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc., in January 1977, and sales of its computers, including the Apple II, grew quickly. Within a few years, Jobs and Wozniak had hired a staff of computer designers and had a production line. Apple went public in 1980 to instant financial success.

Over the next few years, Apple shipped new computers featuring innovative graphical user interfaces, such as the original Macintosh in 1984, and Apple's marketing advertisements 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.

More information: Apple Inc.

In 1985, Wozniak stepped away from Apple, while Jobs resigned and founded a new company—NeXT—with former Apple employees.

As the market for personal computers increased, Apple's computers lost share to lower-priced products, particularly ones that ran the Microsoft Windows operating system, and the company was financially on the brink. After more executive job shuffles, CEO Gil Amelio in 1997 bought NeXT to bring Jobs back. 

Steve Jobs shows iPhone Smartphone

Jobs regained leadership within the company and became the new CEO shortly after. He began to rebuild Apple's status, opening Apple's own retail stores in 2001, acquiring numerous companies to create a portfolio of software titles, and changing some of the hardware used in its computers. The company returned to profitability.

In January 2007, Jobs renamed the company Apple Inc., reflecting its shifted focus toward consumer electronics, and announced the iPhone, which saw critical acclaim and significant financial success.

In August 2011, 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 well known for its size and revenues. Apple is the world's largest information technology company by revenue and the world's third-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung and Huawei.

The company employs 123,000 full-time employees and maintains 504 retail stores in 24 countries as of 2018. It operates the iTunes Store, which is the world's largest music retailer. The company also has a high level of brand loyalty and is ranked as the world's most valuable brand.

However, Apple receives significant criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors, its environmental practices and unethical business practices, including anti-competitive behavior, as well as the origins of source materials.

More information: The Logo Creative

Great things in business are never done by one person.

They're done by a team of people.

Steve Jobs