Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL; previously Apple Computer, Inc.) is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers.

The company’s best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software; the iWork suite of productivity software; Aperture, a professional photography package; Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio and film-industry software products; Logic Studio, a suite of music production tools; and iOS, a mobile operating system.

As of August 2010, the company operates 301 retail stores in ten countries, and an online store where hardware and software products are sold.

Established on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California, and incorporated January 3, 1977, the company was previously named Apple Computer, Inc., for its first 30 years, but removed the word “Computer” on January 9, 2007, to reflect the company’s ongoing expansion into the consumer electronics market in addition to its traditional focus on personal computers.

As of September 25, 2010, Apple had 46,600 full time employees and 2,800 temporary full time employees worldwide and had worldwide annual sales of .23 billion.

For reasons as various as its philosophy of comprehensive aesthetic design to its distinctive advertising campaigns, Apple has established a unique reputation in the consumer electronics industry. This includes a customer base that is devoted to the company and its brand, particularly in the United States.

Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world in 2008, 2009, and 2010.

The company has also received widespread criticism for its contractors’ labor, environmental, and business practices.

Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. They were hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club.

The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips) – less than what is today considered a complete personal computer and went on sale in July 1976. It was market-priced at 6.66 (,548 in 2010 dollars, adjusted for inflation.

Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977 without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for 0. Multi-millionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of 0,000 during the incorporation of Apple.

The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It differed from its major rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, because it came with color graphics and an open architecture. While early models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface, the Disk II.

The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the VisiCalc spreadsheet program which was the first “killer app” of the business world.

VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II and it’s compatibility with the office gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II computer.

According to Brian Bagnall, Apple exaggerated its sales figures and was a distant third place to Commodore and Tandy until VisiCalc came along.

By the end of the 1970s, Apple had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The company introduced the ill-fated Apple III in May 1980 in an attempt to compete with IBM and Microsoft in the business and corporate computing market.

Steve Jobs and several Apple employees including Jef Raskin visited Xerox PARC in December 1979 to see the Xerox Alto. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for the option to buy 100,000 shares of Apple at the pre-IPO price of a share.

Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a graphical user interface (GUI), and development of a GUI began for the Apple Lisa.

When Apple went public, it generated more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956 and instantly created more millionaires (about 300) than any company in history.

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