Happy Birthday, Apple Computer

On April 1st, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve "Woz" Wozniak ("The 2 Steves") & Armas Clifford "Mike" Markkula founded Apple Computers in Woz's garage. Up 'til then the Two Steves & their friend Ronald Wayne were building each Apple I computer by hand using slim credit lines and scrounged parts & equipment. With the US$250,000 and business & marketing savvy earned by Mike Markkula at Intel & Fairchild Semiconductor the Apple II was built & presented to the public first West Coast Computer Faire on April 16, 1977.

The Apple II's original technical specs were: a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, an audio cassette interface, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. The video controller displayed 24 lines by 40 columns of upper-case-only text on the screen, with NTSC composite video output for display on a monitor, or on a TV set by way of an RF modulator. Users could save and retrieve programs and data on audio cassettes; other programming languages, games, applications and other software were available on cassette too. The original retail price was $1298 with 4KB of RAM and $2638 with 48KB of RAM (hey, this was cutting edge stuff in the late '70s!). The Apple II's low cost, ease of set up & (relative) ease of use started the home computing industry, and Apple added new technology rapidly: an external 5¼-inch floppy disk drive called the Disk II, the Apple II Plus, which included the Applesoft BASIC and had a total of 48 kilobytes of RAM, expandable to 64 KB through a "language card" that enabled the use of UCSD Pascal and FORTRAN 77 compilers, the Apple IIe that displayed both upper and lowercase letters and had 64 KB of RAM expandable to 128 KB, the Apple IIGS featured a 2.8 MHz 65C816 processor with 16-bit registers and 24-bit addressing, more memory, better color, more peripherals (switchable between IIe-style card slots and IIc-style onboard controllers), and a user interface derived from Mac OS, and the final Apple "Apple" computer, the Apple IIc Plus, introduced in 1988, it had a 3½" floppy drive, an internal power supply & a built-in 4MHz CPU accelerator! Some of these later Apple IIs even had an internal 5MB harddrive! The Apple II line of computers were produced & supported until 1996, but they had been eclipsed in sales by Apple's McIntosh line back in 1986.

After misstepping with the abortive Apple III (with no cooling fan & various hardware problems it was described as having "a 100% failure rate") and Lisa (US$10,000 for a home computer?!?!) computers, Apple hit gold with the Jef Raskin designed McIntosh. Launched in 1984 with the famous "1984" Super Bowl ad, McIntosh's ease of use, stability & stylishness allowed Apple to sell umpty-million computers sharing the same basic design over the past 20+ years. Although they haven't ruled the roost like they did in the late '70s (with 29% of all home/small businesses using Apple IIs), they've continued to innovate with the PowerMac & PowerBook computers, AppleTalk networking, QuickTime & Final Cut multimedia programs, the Mac OS X (based on Unix through Job's NeXTstep Object Oriented OS), the smooth design of the iMac, G4 & G5 computers, AirTalk wireless Lan technology, the flawed but ahead of it's time Newton handheld, the XServe 1U rack mounted server (used in the #7 & #3 fastest super computers on earth!), and the iPod portable digital music player. The newest member of the Mac PC family is the MiniMac, a 6.5"x6.5"x2", under US$500 desktop computer that you can attach any USB attachable monitor, keyboard & mouse to, it comes with a standard set of multimedia editing programs called iLife & an optional built in CD/DVD burner, making it one of the world's smallest & cheapest audio & video media editor/players.

Other Historical Highlights for today are:

• April Fool's Day, also the Japanese start of the school year, the start of the financial year in India, National Day in San Marino & the date when the 2 Captains Regent are elected by the San Marino Parlament, the ancient Norse Loki's Day, the "Festival of Irritating Jokes and Childish Japes," the start of the Kentucky Tater's Days, "Alaska Dryrotta Day," "Gowkie Day (aka Gowkin' Day)," "April Noddy Day," "Huntigowk Day," "Sorry Charlie Day," "Festival of Positive Threats," "Hospital Admittance Clerks Day," and the traditional day you're supposed to get your ice fishing hut off of lakes in New Hampshire.
• 1826 - Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine. Morey's holding of this patent forced competing internal combustion innovators to work around his design for the next twenty years.
• 1867 - Singapore becomes British crown colony.
• 1875 - Edgar Wallace, Prolific British crime writer & playwrite, his last piece was "King Kong", was Born (d. 1932)
• 1883 - Lon Chaney, Sr., actor, "the Man od a Thousand Faces", is Born (d. 1930)
• 1885 - Wallace Beery, actor, portrayed Long John Silver in the 1934 "tresure Island", is Born (d. 1949)
• 1891 - The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago, Illinois.
• 1920 - Toshirô Mifune, actor in "the 7 Samurai," "The Throne of Blood," "the Hidden Fortress" (recognised as the basis for "Star Wars") & "Yohiimbo," among many others, is Born (d. 1997)
• 1922 - William Manchester, writer, author of "Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War" on his tour in the South Pacific as a WW II Marine, is Born (d.2004)
• 1926 - Anne McCaffrey, American science fiction author
• 1932 - Debbie Reynolds, actress, singer, dancer, force of nature, is Born
• 1942 - Samuel R. Delany, Science Fiction author, is Born
• 1946 - Aleutian Island earthquake: A 7.8 magnitude earthquake near the Aleutian Islands creates a tsunami that strikes the Hawaiian Islands killing 159 (mostly in Hilo, Hawaii).
• 1948 - Jimmy Cliff, Reggae musician, is Born
• 1957 - The BBC broadcasts a documentary on the harvesting of the Spagetti crop in Switzerland, leading many in Britain to enquire about growing their own Spagetti Bush.
• 1970 - American Motors introduces the Gremlin.
• 1984 - Marvin Gaye, singer, was shot to death by his father (b. 1939)
• 1985 - David Lee Roth announces his departure from Van Halen.
• 1988 - Joe "Curley Joe" Besser, actor, comedian; last surviving member of the Three Stooges, Died (b. 1907)
• 1998 - Rozz Williams, member of Christian Death, hung himself in his W. Hollywood apartment. (b. 1963)
• 2001 - The first legal same-sex marriage in the Netherlands is celebrated.
• 2003 - In Sturgis, Michigan, seven men place signs around town reading "All your base are belong to us," based on the popular mistranslation from the Japanese video game Zero Wing.
• 2004 - The first legal same-sex marriage in the Canadian province of Quebec: Michael Hendricks and René Leboeuf wed in Montreal.

Currently viewing this thread on an APPLE COMPUTER.
I 've owned an Apple computer since my first SE (1 megabyte BABY!!!). Steve Jobs rules!!!!

Thanks for taking the time to do these Freddie. I love 'em!!!

On 2005-04-01 08:15, MachTiki wrote:
Steve Jobs rules!!!!

Job's was always just the cheerleader. The Woz rules.

On 2005-04-01 08:15, MachTiki wrote:
Thanks for taking the time to do these Freddie. I love 'em!!!

Here Here

And Apple is da shit