In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the first Apple, Inc. computer, the Apple I. Just as importantly, their company had received seed capital from early investors. The next year, they were ready to unveil their newest creation, the Apple II, their first mass-produced computer.
They debuted the home computer at that year’s West Coast Computer Faire, and it went on to become one of the first successful mass-produced desktop computers. Jobs’ close attention to the machine’s appearance was already evident based on the time he spent designing its beige plastic case. Steve Wozniak was primarily responsible for the technology of the Apple II.
The computer’s success made Jobs a millionaire by the time he was 23, in 1978. That same year, with the company growing, Jobs and Wozniak hired Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO. By late 1980, Apple was ready to hold an initial public offering (IPO), a sale that generated more capital than any IPO since the 1956 Ford Motor Company’s offering, and created roughly 300 millionaires instantly, more than any IPO in history.
By 1981, Apple was one of the three top producers of personal computers in the United States, and possibly the biggest. But other, bigger competitors were getting into the market, most notably International Business Machines Corp (IBM), whose most popular model surpassed the Apple II as the best-selling PC by 1983. The next year, the computing colossus also boasted $4 billion in annual PC revenue, more than doubling Apple’s revenues.
