Did you know that the current shiny, half eaten apple wasn’t even the first logo of the legendary Apple Inc.? The original logo was actually a detailed image of Newton below an apple tree. This little fact is just one of the many things we don’t know about Apple, the company which Fortune magazine named as the most admired company in the world, the company which makes us want to buy things we don’t need (Example: iPad=WTF?), is also the company which began as a struggling company that has now exceeded the popularity and revenue of Microsoft. 🙂
Apple began its winning series of products with the Macintosh, named after a type of apple, which began its production in the 1970’s. It was initially labeled as a “toy” because its software was different from that of IBM and Microsoft. The Macintosh only became popular and more user friendly when Apple decided to use software processors run by Intel in 2006. While the Mac laptop is every student’s dream laptop, the iPod is what makes Apple popular. The iPod launched in 2001, created a halo effect on all of it’s other products- where people would buy other Apple products because they loved their music blaring Apple iPods. And why wouldn’t we love the iPod when it came through such carefully executed marketing strategy in addition to having shiny, colorful aluminum casing and more storage space than the now obsolete cassette Walkmans and CD players.
After these two lovable Apple babies, Apple gave birth to the third smashing success, the iPhone, in 2007. The iPhone is a cell phone with internet access which also doubles as an iPod and helps you find your way back home with its GPS navigation and allows you to sift through software applications in the App store when you get bored of everything else in the world. Fancy huh? The iPhone was named the Invention of the Year by Time magazine in 2007.
And the latest Apple invention, the iPad, a merged version of all of the above products is proving to be quiet the disappointing child of the brood. It’s a laptop which can’t run simultaneous applications (thus, counter-productive), doesn’t have Adobe Flash Player (Why not?!) and you can read books on it (I don’t know if we’re completely prepared to let go of our tangible books).
Despite the lukewarm response to the iPad, we have to recognize Apple’s innovative nature. In the past decade, Apple has released product after product, improving on tiny details like color, sound, visibility and waste management. It has also set marketing strategy to a whole new level where it creates this curiosity about each and every one of its products and thus, people go out and buy an iTouch even if they have an iPod. Apple has built a brand which no one seems to get enough of, which everyone wants to own and flaunt and caress, all while waiting with child-like eagerness and curiosity about the next shiny, aluminum cased toy we all get to play with.
With the recently unveiled iPhone 4, Apple and Steve Jobs (CEO) are on an invention spree.