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Anatolia
| 854 |
Names
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Vazken Davidian terms the expanded use of "Anatolia" to apply to eastern Turkey, where Ottoman Armenians lived for centuries, an "ahistorical imposition". Some scholars prefer to use different toponyms, rather than lazily refer to the Ottoman East as "Eastern Anatolia".
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Etymology
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The English-language name Anatolia derives from the Greek Ἀνατολή (Anatolḗ) meaning "the East". The Greek word refers to the direction where the sun rises, coming from ἀνατέλλω anatello '(Ι) rise up', comparable to terms in other languages such as "levant" from Latin levo 'to rise', "orient" from Latin orior 'to arise, to originate', Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ 'east' from זָרַח zaraḥ 'to rise, to shine', Aramaic מִדְנָח midnaḥ from דְּנַח denaḥ 'to rise, to shine'.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Etymology
|
The Latinized form "Anatolia", with its -ia ending, is probably a Medieval Latin innovation. The modern Turkish form Anadolu derives directly from the Greek name Aνατολή (Anatolḗ).
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
Human habitation in Anatolia dates back to the Paleolithic. Neolithic settlements include Çatalhöyük, Çayönü, Nevali Cori, Aşıklı Höyük, Boncuklu Höyük, Hacilar, Göbekli Tepe, Norşuntepe, Köşk Höyük, and Yumuktepe. Çatalhöyük (7.000 BCE) is considered the most advanced of these. Neolithic Anatolia has been proposed as the homeland of the Indo-European language family, although linguists tend to favour a later origin in the steppes north of the Black Sea. However, it is clear that the Anatolian languages, the earliest attested branch of Indo-European, have been spoken in Anatolia since at least the 19th century BCE.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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Recent advances in archaeogenetics have confirmed that the spread of agriculture from the Middle East to Europe was strongly correlated with the migration of early farmers from Anatolia about 9,000 years ago, and was not just a cultural exchange. Anatolian Neolithic farmers derived a significant portion of their ancestry from the Anatolian hunter-gatherers, suggesting that agriculture was adopted in site by these hunter-gatherers and not spread by demic diffusion into the region.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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The earliest historical data related to Anatolia appear during the Bronze Age and continue throughout the Iron Age. The most ancient period in the history of Anatolia spans from the emergence of ancient Hattians, up to the conquest of Anatolia by the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BCE.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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The earliest historically attested populations of Anatolia were the Hattians in central Anatolia, and Hurrians further to the east. The Hattians were an indigenous people, whose main center was the city of Hattush. Affiliation of Hattian language remains unclear, while Hurrian language belongs to a distinctive family of Hurro-Urartian languages. All of those languages are extinct; relationships with indigenous languages of the Caucasus have been proposed, but are not generally accepted. The region became famous for exporting raw materials. Organized trade between Anatolia and Mesopotamia started to emerge during the period of the Akkadian Empire, and was continued and intensified during the period of the Old Assyrian Empire, between the 21st and the 18th centuries BCE. Assyrian traders were bringing tin and textiles in exchange for copper, silver or gold. Cuneiform records, dated c. 20th century BCE, found in Anatolia at the Assyrian colony of Kanesh, use an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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Unlike the Akkadians and Assyrians, whose Anatolian trading posts were peripheral to their core lands in Mesopotamia, the Hittites were centered at Hattusa (modern Boğazkale) in north-central Anatolia by the 17th century BCE. They were speakers of an Indo-European language, the Hittite language, or nesili (the language of Nesa) in Hittite. The Hittites originated from local ancient cultures that grew in Anatolia, in addition to the arrival of Indo-European languages. Attested for the first time in the Assyrian tablets of Nesa around 2000 BCE, they conquered Hattusa in the 18th century BCE, imposing themselves over Hattian- and Hurrian-speaking populations. According to the widely accepted Kurgan theory on the Proto-Indo-European homeland, however, the Hittites (along with the other Indo-European ancient Anatolians) were themselves relatively recent immigrants to Anatolia from the north. However, they did not necessarily displace the population genetically; they assimilated into the former peoples' culture, preserving the Hittite language.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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The Hittites adopted the Mesopotamian cuneiform script. In the Late Bronze Age, Hittite New Kingdom (c. 1650 BCE) was founded, becoming an empire in the 14th century BCE after the conquest of Kizzuwatna in the south-east and the defeat of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia. The empire reached its height in the 13th century BCE, controlling much of Asia Minor, northwestern Syria, and northwest upper Mesopotamia. However, the Hittite advance toward the Black Sea coast was halted by the semi-nomadic pastoralist and tribal Kaskians, a non-Indo-European people who had earlier displaced the Palaic-speaking Indo-Europeans. Much of the history of the Hittite Empire concerned war with the rival empires of Egypt, Assyria and the Mitanni.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
The Ancient Egyptians eventually withdrew from the region after failing to gain the upper hand over the Hittites and becoming wary of the power of Assyria, which had destroyed the Mitanni Empire. The Assyrians and Hittites were then left to battle over control of eastern and southern Anatolia and colonial territories in Syria. The Assyrians had better success than the Egyptians, annexing much Hittite (and Hurrian) territory in these regions.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
After 1180 BCE, during the Late Bronze Age collapse, the Hittite Empire disintegrated into several independent Syro-Hittite states, subsequent to losing much territory to the Middle Assyrian Empire and being finally overrun by the Phrygians, another Indo-European people who are believed to have migrated from the Balkans. The Phrygian expansion into southeast Anatolia was eventually halted by the Assyrians, who controlled that region.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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Another Indo-European people, the Luwians, rose to prominence in central and western Anatolia c. 2000 BCE. Their language belonged to the same linguistic branch as Hittite. The general consensus amongst scholars is that Luwian was spoken across a large area of western Anatolia, including (possibly) Wilusa (Troy), the Seha River Land (to be identified with the Hermos and/or Kaikos valley), and the kingdom of Mira-Kuwaliya with its core territory of the Maeander valley. From the 9th century BCE, Luwian regions coalesced into a number of states such as Lydia, Caria, and Lycia, all of which had Hellenic influence.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
Arameans encroached over the borders of south-central Anatolia in the century or so after the fall of the Hittite empire, and some of the Syro-Hittite states in this region became an amalgam of Hittites and Arameans. These became known as Syro-Hittite states.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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From the 10th to late 7th centuries BCE, much of Anatolia (particularly the southeastern regions) fell to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, including all of the Syro-Hittite states, Tabal, Commagene, the Cimmerians and Scythians, and swathes of Cappadocia.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
The Neo-Assyrian empire collapsed due to a bitter series of civil wars followed by a combined attack by Medes, Persians, Scythians and their own Babylonian relations. The last Assyrian city to fall was Harran in southeast Anatolia. This city was the birthplace of the last king of Babylon, the Assyrian Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar. Much of the region then fell to the short-lived Iran-based Median Empire, with the Babylonians and Scythians briefly appropriating some territory.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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From the late 8th century BCE, a new wave of Indo-European-speaking raiders entered northern and northeast Anatolia: the Cimmerians and Scythians. The Cimmerians overran Phrygia and the Scythians threatened to do the same to Urartu and Lydia, before both were finally checked by the Assyrians.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
The north-western coast of Anatolia was inhabited by Greeks of the Achaean/Mycenaean culture from the 20th century BCE, related to the Greeks of southeastern Europe and the Aegean. Beginning with the Bronze Age collapse at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, the west coast of Anatolia was settled by Ionian Greeks, usurping the area of the related but earlier Mycenaean Greeks. Over several centuries, numerous Ancient Greek city-states were established on the coasts of Anatolia. Greeks started Western philosophy on the western coast of Anatolia (Pre-Socratic philosophy).
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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In Classical antiquity, Anatolia was described by the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus and later historians as divided into regions that were diverse in culture, language, and religious practices. The northern regions included Bithynia, Paphlagonia, and Pontus; to the west were Mysia, Lydia, and Caria; and Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia belonged to the southern shore. There were also several inland regions: Phrygia, Cappadocia, Pisidia, and Galatia. Languages spoken included the late surviving Anatolic languages, Isaurian, and Pisidian, Greek in western and coastal regions, Phrygian spoken until the 7th century CE, local variants of Thracian in the northwest, the Galatian variant of Gaulish in Galatia until the 6th century CE, Cappadocian in the homonymous region, Armenian in the east, and Kartvelian languages in the northeast.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
Anatolia is known as the birthplace of minted coinage (as opposed to unminted coinage, which first appears in Mesopotamia at a much earlier date) as a medium of exchange, some time in the 7th century BCE in Lydia. The use of minted coins continued to flourish during the Greek and Roman eras.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
During the 6th century BCE, all of Anatolia was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the Persians having usurped the Medes as the dominant dynasty of Persia. In 499 BCE, the Ionian city-states on the west coast of Anatolia rebelled against Persian rule. The Ionian Revolt, as it became known, though quelled, initiated the Greco-Persian Wars, which ended in a Greek victory in 449 BCE, and the Ionian cities regained their independence. By the Peace of Antalcidas (387 BCE), which ended the Corinthian War, Persia regained control over Ionia.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
In 334 BCE, the Macedonian Greek king Alexander the Great conquered the Anatolian peninsula from the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Alexander's conquest opened up the interior of Asia Minor to Greek settlement and influence.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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Following the death of Alexander the Great and the subsequent breakup of the Macedonian Empire, Anatolia was ruled by a series of Hellenistic kingdoms, such as the Attalids of Pergamum and the Seleucids, the latter controlling most of Anatolia. A period of peaceful Hellenization followed, such that the local Anatolian languages had been supplanted by Greek by the 1st century BCE. In 133 BCE the last Attalid king bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman Republic; western and central Anatolia came under Roman control, but Hellenistic culture remained predominant.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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Mithridates VI Eupator, ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia, waged war against the Roman Republic in the year 88 BCE in order to halt the advance of Roman hegemony in the Aegean Sea region. Mithridates VI sought to dominate Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, waging several hard-fought but ultimately unsuccessful wars (the Mithridatic Wars) to break Roman dominion over Asia and the Hellenic world. He has been called the greatest ruler of the Kingdom of Pontus. Further annexations by Rome, in particular of the Kingdom of Pontus by Pompey, brought all of Anatolia under Roman control, except for the southeastern frontier with the Parthian Empire, which remained unstable for centuries, causing a series of military conflicts that culminated in the Roman–Parthian Wars (54 BCE – 217 CE).
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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After the first division of the Roman Empire, Anatolia became part of the Eastern Roman Empire, otherwise known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium. In the 1st century CE, Anatolia became one of the first places where Christianity spread, so that by the 4th century CE, western and central Anatolia were overwhelmingly Christian and Greek-speaking.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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Byzantine Anatolia was one of the wealthiest and most densely populated places in the Later Roman Empire. Anatolia's wealth grew during the 4th and 5th centuries thanks, in part, to the Pilgrim's Road that ran through the peninsula. Literary evidence about the rural landscape stems from the Christian hagiographies of the 6th-century Nicholas of Sion and 7th-century Theodore of Sykeon. Large and prosperous urban centers of Byzantine Anatolia included Assos, Ephesus, Miletus, Nicaea, Pergamum, Priene, Sardis, and Aphrodisias.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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From the mid-5th century onwards, urbanism was affected negatively and began to decline, while the rural areas reached unprecedented levels of prosperity in the region. Historians and scholars continue to debate the cause of the urban decline in Byzantine Anatolia between the 6th and 7th centuries, variously attributing it to the Plague of Justinian (541), the Byzantine–Sasanian War (602–628), and the Arab invasion of the Levant (634–638).
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
In the 10 years following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Seljuk Turks from Central Asia migrated over large areas of Anatolia, with particular concentrations around the northwestern rim. The Turkish language and the Islamic religion were gradually introduced as a result of the Seljuk conquest, and this period marks the start of Anatolia's slow transition from predominantly Christian and Greek-speaking, to predominantly Muslim and Turkish-speaking (although ethnic groups such as Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians remained numerous and retained Christianity and their native languages). In the following century, the Byzantines managed to reassert their control in western and northern Anatolia. Control of Anatolia was then split between the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm, with the Byzantine holdings gradually being reduced.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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In 1255, the Mongols swept through eastern and central Anatolia, and would remain until 1335. The Ilkhanate garrison was stationed near Ankara. After the decline of the Ilkhanate from 1335 to 1353, the Mongol Empire's legacy in the region was the Uyghur Eretna Dynasty that was overthrown by Kadi Burhan al-Din in 1381.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
By the end of the 14th century, most of Anatolia was controlled by various Anatolian beyliks. Smyrna fell in 1330, and the last Byzantine stronghold in Anatolia, Philadelphia, fell in 1390. The Turkmen Beyliks were under the control of the Mongols, at least nominally, through declining Seljuk sultans. The Beyliks did not mint coins in the names of their own leaders while they remained under the suzerainty of the Mongol Ilkhanids. The Osmanli ruler Osman I was the first Turkish ruler who minted coins in his own name in 1320s; they bear the legend "Minted by Osman son of Ertugrul". Since the minting of coins was a prerogative accorded in Islamic practice only to a sovereign, it can be considered that the Osmanli, or Ottoman Turks, had become formally independent from the Mongol Khans.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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Among the Turkish leaders, the Ottomans emerged as great power under Osman I and his son Orhan. The Anatolian beyliks were successively absorbed into the rising Ottoman Empire during the 15th century. It is not well understood how the Osmanlı, or Ottoman Turks, came to dominate their neighbours, as the history of medieval Anatolia is still little known. The Ottomans completed the conquest of the peninsula in 1517 with the taking of Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum) from the Knights of Saint John.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
With the acceleration of the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century, and as a result of the expansionist policies of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, many Muslim nations and groups in that region, mainly Circassians, Tatars, Azeris, Lezgis, Chechens and several Turkic groups left their homelands and settled in Anatolia. As the Ottoman Empire further shrank in the Balkan regions and then fragmented during the Balkan Wars, much of the non-Christian populations of its former possessions, mainly Balkan Muslims (Bosniaks, Albanians, Turks, Muslim Bulgarians and Greek Muslims such as the Vallahades from Greek Macedonia), were resettled in various parts of Anatolia, mostly in formerly Christian villages throughout Anatolia.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
A continuous reverse migration occurred since the early 19th century, when Greeks from Anatolia, Constantinople and Pontus area migrated toward the newly independent Kingdom of Greece, and also towards the United States, the southern part of the Russian Empire, Latin America, and the rest of Europe.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
|
Following the Russo-Persian Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) and the incorporation of Eastern Armenia into the Russian Empire, another migration involved the large Armenian population of Anatolia, which recorded significant migration rates from Western Armenia (Eastern Anatolia) toward the Russian Empire, especially toward its newly established Armenian provinces.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
History
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Anatolia remained multi-ethnic until the early 20th century (see the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire). During World War I, the Armenian genocide, the Greek genocide (especially in Pontus), and the Assyrian genocide almost entirely removed the ancient indigenous communities of Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian populations in Anatolia and surrounding regions. Following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, most remaining ethnic Anatolian Greeks were forced out during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Of the remainder, most have left Turkey since then, leaving fewer than 5,000 Greeks in Anatolia today.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Geology
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Anatolia's terrain is structurally complex. A central massif composed of uplifted blocks and downfolded troughs, covered by recent deposits and giving the appearance of a plateau with rough terrain, is wedged between two folded mountain ranges that converge in the east. True lowland is confined to a few narrow coastal strips along the Aegean, Mediterranean, and the Black Sea coasts. Flat or gently sloping land is rare and largely confined to the deltas of the Kızıl River, the coastal plains of Çukurova and the valley floors of the Gediz River and the Büyük Menderes River as well as some interior high plains in Anatolia, mainly around Lake Tuz (Salt Lake) and the Konya Basin (Konya Ovasi).
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Geology
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There are two mountain ranges in southern Anatolia: the Taurus and the Zagros mountains.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Geography
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Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to an indefinite line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta to the Black Sea, coterminous with the Anatolian Plateau. This traditional geographical definition is used, for example, in the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. Under this definition, Anatolia is bounded to the east by the Armenian Highlands, and the Euphrates before that river bends to the southeast to enter Mesopotamia.< To the southeast, it is bounded by the ranges that separate it from the Orontes valley in Syria and the Mesopotamian plain.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Geography
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The highest mountain in the Eastern Anatolia Region (also the highest peak in the Armenian Highlands) is Mount Ararat (5123 m). The Euphrates, Aras, Karasu and Murat rivers connect the Armenian Highlands to the South Caucasus and the Upper Euphrates Valley. Along with the Çoruh, these rivers are the longest in the Eastern Anatolia Region.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Climate
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Anatolia has a varied range of climates. The central plateau is characterized by a continental climate, with hot summers and cold snowy winters. The south and west coasts enjoy a typical Mediterranean climate, with mild rainy winters, and warm dry summers. The Black Sea and Marmara coasts have a temperate oceanic climate, with warm, foggy summers and much rainfall throughout the year.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Ecoregions
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There is a diverse number of plant and animal communities.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Ecoregions
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The mountains and coastal plain of northern Anatolia experience a humid and mild climate. There are temperate broadleaf, mixed and coniferous forests. The central and eastern plateau, with its drier continental climate, has deciduous forests and forest steppes. Western and southern Anatolia, which have a Mediterranean climate, contain Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecoregions.
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Anatolia
| 854 |
Demographics
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The largest cities in Anatolia (aside from the Asian side of Istanbul) are Ankara, İzmir, Bursa, Antalya, Konya, Adana, İzmit, Mersin, Manisa, Kayseri, Samsun, Balıkesir, Kahramanmaraş, Aydın, Adapazarı, Denizli, Muğla, Eskişehir, Trabzon, Ordu, Afyonkarahisar, Sivas, Tokat, Zonguldak, Kütahya, Çanakkale, Osmaniye, Şırnak and Çorum. All have populations of more than 500,000.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California. As of March 2023, Apple is the world's largest company by market capitalization, and with US$394.3 billion the largest technology company by 2022 revenue. As of June 2022, Apple is the fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales; the largest manufacturing company by revenue; and the second-largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Meta (parent company of Facebook), and Microsoft.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
Apple was founded as Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976, by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne to develop and sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. It was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc. in 1977. The company's second computer, the Apple II, became a best seller and one of the first mass-produced microcomputers. Apple went public in 1980 to instant financial success. The company developed computers featuring innovative graphical user interfaces, including the 1984 original Macintosh, announced that year in a critically acclaimed advertisement called "1984". By 1985, the high cost of its products, and power struggles between executives, caused problems. Wozniak stepped back from Apple and pursued other ventures, while Jobs resigned and founded NeXT, taking some Apple employees with him.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
As the market for personal computers expanded and evolved throughout the 1990s, Apple lost considerable market share to the lower-priced duopoly of the Microsoft Windows operating system on Intel-powered PC clones (also known as "Wintel"). In 1997, weeks away from bankruptcy, the company bought NeXT to resolve Apple's unsuccessful operating system strategy and entice Jobs back to the company. Over the next decade, Jobs guided Apple back to profitability through a number of tactics including introducing the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad to critical acclaim, launching the "Think different" campaign and other memorable advertising campaigns, opening the Apple Store retail chain, and acquiring numerous companies to broaden the company's product portfolio. When Jobs resigned in 2011 for health reasons, and died two months later, he was succeeded as CEO by Tim Cook.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion in August 2018, then at $2 trillion in August 2020, and at $3 trillion in January 2022. In June 2023, it was valued at just over $3 trillion. The company receives criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors, its environmental practices, and its business ethics, including anti-competitive practices and materials sourcing. Nevertheless, the company has a large following and enjoys a high level of brand loyalty. It has also been consistently ranked as one of the world's most valuable brands.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne as a partnership. The company's first product was the Apple I, a computer designed and hand-built entirely by Wozniak. To finance its creation, Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator. Neither received the full selling price but in total earned $1,300 (equivalent to $6,700 in 2022). Wozniak debuted the first prototype Apple I at the Homebrew Computer Club in July 1976. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips—a base kit concept which would not yet be marketed as a complete personal computer. It went on sale soon after debut for $666.66 (equivalent to $3,400 in 2022). Wozniak later said he was unaware of the coincidental mark of the beast in the number 666, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits".
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated on January 3, 1977, without Wayne, who had left and sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800 only twelve days after having co-founded it. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 (equivalent to $1,207,000 in 2022) to Jobs and Wozniak during the incorporation of Apple. During the first five years of operations, revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, yearly sales grew from $775,000 to $118 million, an average annual growth rate of 533%.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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The Apple II, also invented by Wozniak, 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 of its character cell-based color graphics and open architecture. While the Apple I and early Apple II models used ordinary audio cassette tapes as storage devices, they were superseded by the introduction of a 5+1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II in 1978.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first "killer application" of the business world: VisiCalc, a spreadsheet program released in 1979. VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II: compatibility with the office, but Apple II market share remained behind home computers made by competitors such as Atari, Commodore, and Tandy.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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On December 12, 1980, Apple (ticker symbol "AAPL") went public selling 4.6 million shares at $22 per share ($.10 per share when adjusting for stock splits as of September 3, 2022), generating over $100 million, which was more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956. By the end of the day, 300 millionaires were created, including Jobs and Wozniak, from a stock price of $29 per share and a market cap of $1.778 billion.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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A critical moment in the company's history came in December 1979 when Jobs and several Apple employees, including human–computer interface expert Jef Raskin, visited Xerox PARC in to see a demonstration of the Xerox Alto, a computer using a graphical user interface. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for the option to buy 100,000 shares (22.4 million split-adjusted shares as of September 3, 2022) of Apple at the pre-IPO price of $10 a share. After the demonstration, Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a graphical user interface, and development of a GUI began for the Apple Lisa, named after Jobs's daughter.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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The Lisa division was plagued by infighting, and in 1982, Jobs was pushed off the project. The Lisa launched in 1983 and became the first mass marketed personal computer with a GUI, but was a commercial failure due to its high price and limited software library.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
|
Jobs, angered by being pushed off the Lisa team, took over the company's Macintosh division. Wozniak and Raskin had envisioned the Macintosh as a low-cost computer with a text-based interface like the Apple II, but a plane crash in 1981 forced Wozniak to step back from the project. Jobs quickly redefined the Macintosh as a graphical system that would be cheaper than the Lisa, undercutting his former division. Jobs was also hostile to the Apple II division, which at the time, generated most of the company's revenue.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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In 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh, the first personal computer without a bundled programming language. Its debut was signified by "1984", a $1.5 million television advertisement directed by Ridley Scott that aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. This was hailed as a watershed event for Apple's success and was called a "masterpiece" by CNN and one of the greatest TV advertisements of all time by TV Guide.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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The advertisement created great interest in Macintosh, and sales were initially good, but began to taper off dramatically after the first three months as reviews started to come in. Jobs had required 128 kilobytes of RAM, which limited its speed and software in favor of aspiring for a projected price point of $1,000 (equivalent to $2,800 in 2022). The Macintosh shipped for $2,495 (equivalent to $7,000 in 2022), a price panned by critics due to its slow performance. In early 1985, this sales slump triggered a power struggle between Steve Jobs and CEO John Sculley, who had been hired away from Pepsi two years earlier by Jobs saying, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?" Sculley removed Jobs as the head of the Macintosh division, with unanimous support from the Apple board of directors.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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The board of directors instructed Sculley to contain Jobs and his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from leadership. Jean-Louis Gassée informed Sculley that Jobs had been attempting to organize a boardroom coup and called an emergency meeting at which Apple's executive staff sided with Sculley and stripped Jobs of all operational duties. Jobs resigned from Apple in September 1985 and took several Apple employees with him to found NeXT. Wozniak had also quit his active employment at Apple earlier in 1985 to pursue other ventures, expressing his frustration with Apple's treatment of the Apple II division and stating that the company had "been going in the wrong direction for the last five years". Wozniak remained employed by Apple as a representative, receiving a stipend estimated to be $120,000 per year. Jobs and Wozniak remained Apple shareholders following their departures.
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Apple Inc.
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After the departures of Jobs and Wozniak in 1985, Sculley launched the Macintosh 512K that year with quadruple the RAM, and introduced the LaserWriter, the first reasonably priced PostScript laser printer. PageMaker, an early desktop publishing application taking advantage of the PostScript language, was also released by Aldus Corporation in July 1985. It has been suggested that the combination of Macintosh, LaserWriter, and PageMaker was responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market.
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Apple Inc.
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This dominant position in the desktop publishing market allowed the company to focus on higher price points, the so-called "high-right policy" named for the position on a chart of price vs. profits. Newer models selling at higher price points offered higher profit margin, and appeared to have no effect on total sales as power users snapped up every increase in speed. Although some worried about pricing themselves out of the market, the high-right policy was in full force by the mid-1980s, due to Jean-Louis Gassée's slogan of "fifty-five or die", referring to the 55% profit margins of the Macintosh II.
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Apple Inc.
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This policy began to backfire late in the decade as desktop publishing programs appeared on IBM PC compatibles that offered some of the same functionality of the Macintosh at far lower price points. The company lost its dominant position in the desktop publishing market and estranged many of its original consumer customer base who could no longer afford their high-priced products. The Christmas season of 1989 was the first in the company's history to have declining sales, which led to a 20% drop in Apple's stock price. During this period, the relationship between Sculley and Gassée deteriorated, leading Sculley to effectively demote Gassée in January 1990 by appointing Michael Spindler as the chief operating officer. Gassée left the company later that year.
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Apple Inc.
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The company pivoted strategy and in October 1990 introduced three lower-cost models, the Macintosh Classic, the Macintosh LC, and the Macintosh IIsi, all of which saw significant sales due to pent-up demand. In 1991, Apple introduced the hugely successful PowerBook with a design that set the current shape for almost all modern laptops. The same year, Apple introduced System 7, a major upgrade to the Macintosh operating system, adding color to the interface and introducing new networking capabilities.
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Apple Inc.
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The success of the lower-cost Macs and PowerBook brought increasing revenue. For some time, Apple was doing incredibly well, introducing fresh new products and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.
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Apple Inc.
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The success of Apple's lower-cost consumer models, especially the LC, also led to the cannibalization of higher-priced machines. To address this, management introduced several new brands, selling largely identical machines at different price points, aimed at different markets: the high-end Quadra series, the mid-range Centris series, and the consumer-marketed Performa series. This led to significant market confusion, as customers did not understand the difference between so many models.
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Apple Inc.
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In the early 1990s, the Apple II series was discontinued, which was expensive to produce, and the company decided was still taking sales away from lower-cost Macintosh models. After the launch of the LC, Apple began encouraging developers to create applications for Macintosh rather than Apple II, and authorized salespersons to direct consumers away from Apple II and toward Macintosh. The Apple IIe was discontinued in 1993.
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Apple Inc.
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Apple also experimented with several other unsuccessful consumer targeted products during the 1990s, including digital cameras, portable CD audio players, speakers, video game consoles, the eWorld online service, and TV appliances. Enormous resources were invested in the problem-plagued Newton tablet division, based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts.
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Apple Inc.
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Throughout this period, Microsoft continued to gain market share with Windows by focusing on delivering software to inexpensive personal computers, while Apple was delivering a richly engineered but expensive experience. Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response; instead, they sued Microsoft for using a GUI similar to the Apple Lisa in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. The lawsuit dragged on for years before it was finally dismissed.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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The major product flops and the rapid loss of market share to Windows sullied Apple's reputation, and in 1993 Sculley was replaced as CEO by Michael Spindler.
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Apple Inc.
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History
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With Spindler at the helm, Apple, IBM, and Motorola formed the AIM alliance in 1994 with the goal of creating a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform; PReP), which used IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind and thus counter the dominance of Windows. That year, Apple introduced the Power Macintosh, the first of many computers with Motorola's PowerPC processor.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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In the wake of the alliance, Apple opened up to the idea of allowing Motorola and other companies to build Macintosh clones. Over the next two years, 75 distinct Macintosh clone models were introduced. However, by 1996, Apple executives were worried that the clones were cannibalizing sales of their own high-end computers, where profit margins were highest.
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Apple Inc.
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In 1996, Spindler was replaced by Gil Amelio as CEO. Hired for his reputation as a corporate rehabilitator, Amelio made deep changes, including extensive layoffs and cost-cutting.
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Apple Inc.
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This period was also marked by numerous failed attempts to modernize the Macintosh operating system (MacOS). The original Macintosh operating system (System 1) was not built for multitasking (running several applications at once). The company attempted to correct this with by introducing cooperative multitasking in System 5, but the company still felt it needed a more modern approach. This led to the Pink project in 1988, A/UX that same year, Copland in 1994, and the attempted purchase of BeOS in 1996. Talks with Be stalled when the CEO, former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée, demanded $300 million instead of the $125 million Apple wanted to pay.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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Only weeks away from bankruptcy, Apple's board decided NeXTSTEP was a better choice for its next operating system and purchased NeXT in late 1996 for $400 million, bringing back Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
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Apple Inc.
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The NeXT acquisition was finalized on February 9, 1997, and the board brought Jobs back to Apple as an advisor. On July 9, 1997, Jobs staged a boardroom coup that resulted in Amelio's resignation after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses.
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Apple Inc.
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The board named Jobs as interim CEO and he immediately began a review of the company's products. Jobs would order 70% of the company's products to be cancelled, resulting in the loss of 3,000 jobs, and taking Apple back to the core of its computer offerings. The next month, in August 1997, Steve Jobs convinced Microsoft to make a $150 million investment in Apple and a commitment to continue developing software for the Mac. The investment was seen as an "antitrust insurance policy" for Microsoft who had recently settled with the Department of Justice over anti-competitive practices. Jobs also ended the Mac clone deals and in September 1997, purchased the largest clone maker, Power Computing. On November 10, 1997, Apple introduced the Apple Store website, which was tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing that had been successfully used by PC manufacturer Dell.
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Apple Inc.
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The moves paid off for Jobs; at the end of his first year as CEO, the company turned a $309 million profit.
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Apple Inc.
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On May 6, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the original Macintosh: the iMac. The iMac was a huge success for Apple selling 800,000 units in its first five months and ushered in major shifts in the industry by abandoning legacy technologies like the 3+1⁄2-inch diskette, being an early adopter of the USB connector, and coming pre-installed with internet connectivity (the "i" in iMac) via Ethernet and a dial-up modem. The device also had a striking teardrop shape and translucent materials, designed by Jonathan Ive, who although hired by Amelio, would go on to work collaboratively with Jobs for the next decade to chart a new course the design of Apple's products.
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Apple Inc.
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A little more than a year later on July 21, 1999, Apple introduced the iBook, a laptop for consumers. It was the culmination of a strategy established by Jobs to produce only four products: refined versions of the Power Macintosh G3 desktop and PowerBook G3 laptop for professionals, along with the iMac desktop and iBook laptop for consumers. Jobs felt the small product line allowed for a greater focus on quality and innovation.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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At around the same time, Apple also completed numerous acquisitions to create a portfolio of digital media production software for both professionals and consumers. Apple acquired Macromedia's Key Grip digital video editing software project which was renamed Final Cut Pro when it was launched on the retail market in April 1999. The development of Key Grip also led to Apple's release of the consumer video-editing product iMovie in October 1999. Next, Apple successfully acquired the German company Astarte in April 2000, which had developed the DVD authoring software DVDirector, which Apple would sell as the professional-oriented DVD Studio Pro software product, and used the same technology to create iDVD for the consumer market. In 2000, Apple purchased the SoundJam MP audio player software from Casady & Greene. Apple renamed the program iTunes, while simplifying the user interface and adding the ability to burn CDs.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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2001 would be a pivotal year for the Apple with the company making three announcements that would change the course of the company.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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The first announcement came on March 24, 2001, that Apple was nearly ready to release a new modern operating system, Mac OS X. The announcement came after numerous failed attempts in the early 1990s, and several years of development. Mac OS X was based on NeXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, and BSD Unix, with Apple aiming to combine the stability, reliability, and security of Unix with the ease of use afforded by an overhauled user interface, heavily influenced by NeXTSTEP. To aid users in migrating from Mac OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of OS 9 applications within Mac OS X via the Classic Environment.
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Apple Inc.
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In May 2001, the company opened its first two Apple Store retail locations in Virginia and California, offering an improved presentation of the company's products. At the time, many speculated that the stores would fail, but they went on to become highly successful, and the first of more than 500 stores around the world.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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On October 23, 2001, Apple debuted the iPod portable digital audio player. The product, which was first sold on November 10, 2001, was phenomenally successful with over 100 million units sold within six years.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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In 2003, Apple's iTunes Store was introduced. The service offered music downloads for 99¢ a song and integration with the iPod. The iTunes Store quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over five billion downloads by June 19, 2008. Two years later, the iTunes Store was the world's largest music retailer.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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In 2002, Apple purchased Nothing Real for their advanced digital compositing application Shake, as well as Emagic for the music productivity application Logic. The purchase of Emagic made Apple the first computer manufacturer to own a music software company. The acquisition was followed by the development of Apple's consumer-level GarageBand application. The release of iPhoto that year completed the iLife suite.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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At the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on June 6, 2005, Jobs announced that Apple would move away from PowerPC processors, and the Mac would transition to Intel processors in 2006. On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006, Apple made the transition to Intel chips for the entire Mac product line—over one year sooner than announced. The Power Mac, iBook, and PowerBook brands were retired during the transition; the Mac Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Pro became their respective successors. On April 29, 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was building its own team of engineers to design microchips. Apple also introduced Boot Camp in 2006 to help users install Windows XP or Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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Apple's success during this period was evident in its stock price. Between early 2003 and 2006, the price of Apple's stock increased more than tenfold, from around $6 per share (split-adjusted) to over $80. When Apple surpassed Dell's market cap in January 2006, Jobs sent an email to Apple employees saying Dell's CEO Michael Dell should eat his words. Nine years prior, Dell had said that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders".
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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During his keynote speech at the Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the renaming of Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple Inc., because the company had shifted its emphasis from computers to consumer electronics. This event also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV. The company sold 270,000 iPhone units during the first 30 hours of sales, and the device was called "a game changer for the industry".
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the iTunes Store without digital rights management, thereby allowing tracks to be played on third-party players if record labels would agree to drop the technology. On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in the iTunes Store, effective in May 2007. Other record labels eventually followed suit and Apple published a press release in January 2009 to announce that all songs on the iTunes Store are available without their FairPlay DRM.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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In July 2008, Apple launched the App Store to sell third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and registered an average daily revenue of $1 million, with Jobs speculating in August 2008 that the App Store could become a billion-dollar business for Apple. By October 2008, Apple was the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone.
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Apple Inc.
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On January 14, 2009, Jobs announced in an internal memo that he would be taking a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple until the end of June 2009 and would spend the time focusing on his health. In the email, Jobs stated that "the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well", and explained that the break would allow the company "to focus on delivering extraordinary products". Though Jobs was absent, Apple recorded its best non-holiday quarter (Q1 FY 2009) during the recession with revenue of $8.16 billion and profit of $1.21 billion.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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After years of speculation and multiple rumored "leaks", Apple unveiled a large screen, tablet-like media device known as the iPad on January 27, 2010. The iPad ran the same touch-based operating system as the iPhone, and all iPhone apps were compatible with the iPad. This gave the iPad a large app catalog on launch, though having very little development time before the release. Later that year on April 3, 2010, the iPad was launched in the U.S. It sold more than 300,000 units on its first day, and 500,000 by the end of the first week. In May of the same year, Apple's market cap exceeded that of competitor Microsoft for the first time since 1989.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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In June 2010, Apple released the iPhone 4, which introduced video calling using FaceTime, multitasking, and a new uninsulated stainless steel design that acted as the phone's antenna. Later that year, Apple again refreshed its iPod line of MP3 players by introducing a multi-touch iPod Nano, an iPod Touch with FaceTime, and an iPod Shuffle that brought back the clickwheel buttons of earlier generations. It also introduced the smaller, cheaper second generation Apple TV which allowed renting of movies and shows.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he would take another medical leave of absence for an indefinite period to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer Tim Cook assumed Jobs's day-to-day operations at Apple, although Jobs would still remain "involved in major strategic decisions". Apple became the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world. In June 2011, Jobs surprisingly took the stage and unveiled iCloud, an online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files, and software which replaced MobileMe, Apple's previous attempt at content syncing. This would be the last product launch Jobs would attend before his death.
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Apple Inc.
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On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned his position as CEO of Apple. He was replaced by Cook and Jobs became Apple's chairman. Apple did not have a chairman at the time and instead had two co-lead directors, Andrea Jung and Arthur D. Levinson, who continued with those titles until Levinson replaced Jobs as chairman of the board in November after Jobs' death.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs died, marking the end of an era for Apple. The next major product announcement by Apple was on January 19, 2012, when Apple's Phil Schiller introduced iBook's Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York City. Jobs stated in the biography "Steve Jobs" that he wanted to reinvent the textbook industry and education.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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From 2011 to 2012, Apple released the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5, which featured improved cameras, an intelligent software assistant named Siri, and cloud-synced data with iCloud; the third- and fourth-generation iPads, which featured Retina displays; and the iPad Mini, which featured a 7.9-inch screen in contrast to the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. These launches were successful, with the iPhone 5 (released September 21, 2012) becoming Apple's biggest iPhone launch with over two million pre-orders and sales of three million iPads in three days following the launch of the iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad (released November 3, 2012). Apple also released a third-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display and new iMac and Mac Mini computers.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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On August 20, 2012, Apple's rising stock price increased the company's market capitalization to a then-record $624 billion. This beat the non-inflation-adjusted record for market capitalization previously set by Microsoft in 1999. On August 24, 2012, a US jury ruled that Samsung should pay Apple $1.05 billion (£665m) in damages in an intellectual property lawsuit. Samsung appealed the damages award, which was reduced by $450 million and further granted Samsung's request for a new trial. On November 10, 2012, Apple confirmed a global settlement that dismissed all existing lawsuits between Apple and HTC up to that date, in favor of a ten-year license agreement for current and future patents between the two companies. It is predicted that Apple will make $280 million per year from this deal with HTC.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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In May 2014, the company confirmed its intent to acquire Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's audio company Beats Electronics—producer of the "Beats by Dr. Dre" line of headphones and speaker products, and operator of the music streaming service Beats Music—for $3 billion, and to sell their products through Apple's retail outlets and resellers. Iovine believed that Beats had always "belonged" with Apple, as the company modeled itself after Apple's "unmatched ability to marry culture and technology." The acquisition was the largest purchase in Apple's history.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
History
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During a press event on September 9, 2014, Apple introduced a smartwatch, the Apple Watch. Initially, Apple marketed the device as a fashion accessory and a complement to the iPhone, that would allow people to look at their smartphones less. Over time, the company has focused on developing health and fitness-oriented features on the watch, in an effort to compete with dedicated activity trackers.
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Apple Inc.
| 856 |
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In January 2016, it was announced that one billion Apple devices were in active use worldwide.
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