The Genius of Apple: How Tim Cook and Personal Computing Changed the World
TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 THE BEGINNING CHAPTER 2 STANDOUT PRODUCTS CHAPTER 3 IN THE NEWS CHAPTER 4 A LOOK AHEAD Timeline Glossary Learn More Index 4 6 16 20 24 28 30 31 32
INTRODUCTION A famous Apple campaign Think Different highlighted creative visionaries throughout history Later people associated Steve Jobs himself with the phrase In 1979 the personal computing industry was just getting started The first personal computers had come on the market only a few years earlier Using these computers could be frustrating To operate them users had to type in symbols and codes Monitors displayed only letters numbers and other characters 4
Steve Jobs cofounder and head of Apple Computer Company wanted to make personal computing easier and more exciting In December 1979 he and other Apple staffers met with engineers at the Palo Alto Research Center PARC not far from Apple’s offices in California At PARC Jobs saw a new approach to computing Engineers had designed a computer with a graphical user interface GUI Instead of typing characters and codes to run the machine users clicked on icons with a mouse Instead of displaying only numbers letters and symbols the computer displayed multicolor pictures Immediately Jobs knew he had seen the future of personal computing He declared that Apple would build a GUI into its new machines That decision revolutionized the personal computer industry PARC is owned by Xerox 5
