It’s been more around 35 years since Jobs and Wozniak started their Apple empire. From humble beginnings, when the two pals sold their prized possessions to raise money and start a company in 1976, the humble Apple I, sold for the forboding price of $666.66. Nowadays, Apple offer a range of sleek, intuitive and beautiful products, that wouldn’t be out of place in a museum of modern art. With their iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. The brand has become a huge trendsetter the world has ever had in this technological era. Here is a list of some of their more famous products through the years:
iMac
The golden era for Apple kicked off in 1998 with the launch of the iMac series. This coincided with the lucky re-acquisition of Jobs. He had skipped off to do his own thing for most of the 90s. With Jobs at the helm again, the design and marketing side of things really took off for Apple. This was the time for Jonathan Ive’s famous Bondi blue Internet mac or iMac. An all-in-one system without the messy cords, floppy and weird plugs, it was stripped back and sleek, and featured USB ports, with a relatively low price compared with their other products. This was the beginning of the Apple renaissance after a lull in the 80s and early 90s.
iPod
The iPod has been around for an astounding 12 years in 2013. One way to feel old is to think of the current generation of 12 year olds who have never known life before the click wheel mp3 player! The first device touched down in 2001 at the gut-busting price of around £300 with a paltry 5GB and 10GB capacity. We owe the name to a copywriter called Vinnie Chieco.
Fast forward a decade and we have iPods that are less clunky and more funky. In a spectrum of colours, shapes and storage capacities. The iPod touch in 2010 couldn’t decide if it was a camera or an mp3 player, with front and back cameras and a retina display. It was really skinny, yet still had the signature chrome back. Nowadays there’s better storage capacity for iPods (64 GB is nothing to sniff at).
Macbook Air
The latest in a long line of successful and covetable tech products, the Macbook Air is a must-have notch in the belt, for the cool kids. The next-generation MacBook Pro is no exception. On its launch in 2012, Phil Schiller from Apple gushed that it was “thinner than a finger”. Whose finger, a baby’s or a truck driver’s? that’s the question.
It certainly weighs less than a baby though. It also has fantastic battery life and high-quality display – an excellent choice for designers and programmers.
Apple is Apple because they know how to package technological innovation in a user-friendly experience, while obeying design principles for sleek presentation. They have amassed some ground-breaking devices over the years.