A bright, shiny Apple turns 30

The Apple Lisa, introduced in 1983, used an innovative icon- and mouse-based graphical user interface that laid the foundation of today's computers and replaced the previous arcane text-based systems. But the Lisa was a commercial flop: Its high price — $9,995 — sent business users to PCs from rival IBM Corp.

The hugely successful — and more affordable — Apple Macintosh followed in 1984, giving birth to desktop publishing by allowing users to create their own newsletters or printed material.

Microsoft eventually copied the user-friendly graphical interface and licensed its Windows software to manufacturers who copied the IBM PC. The clones proliferated while Macintosh sales were hobbled by Apple's decision not to license its software to other hardware makers.

The next decade was punctuated by an internal power struggle that forced then-chairman Jobs to leave the company, a series of execution missteps, and botched projects — most notably the Newton, a handheld computer dubbed a personal digital assistant.

In 1996, when Apple was struggling for a foothold in the personal computing market and its efforts to upgrade its operating system were going nowhere, the company bought Jobs' second computer company, NeXT, returning the prodigal son to the fold, and later to the helm.

Paul Sakuma / AP file Steve Jobs leans on the new "Macintosh" personal comptuer following a shareholder's meeting in Cupertino, Calif., in this file image from Jan. 24, 1984.

Jobs, whose charismatic persona is the face of Apple, led the company's resurrection with one breakthrough after another — first with the iMac, then the slick new OS X operating system, then the iPod music player, then the market-leading online iTunes store.

A side venture Jobs founded during his absence from Apple, Pixar Animation Studios Inc., had also put the already celebrated high-tech executive in the middle of Hollywood. The connection to Pixar, which is now being acquired by The Walt Disney Co., has since bolstered Apple's rising star in the world of digital entertainment and consumer electronics.

Apple's iPod and iTunes franchises have popularized the notion of music — and more recently, video _ on-the-go. They also spawned the modern explosion in podcasts, or self-made broadcasts of audio programming over the Internet to portable gadgets.

Today, Apple's well-honed, self-propelled reputation as David fighting the Goliath of Microsoft and the rest of the PC industry belies reality.

Apple may still hold roughly only a 4 percent share of the worldwide PC market, but analysts say its current operating system set the bar for rival Microsoft with innovative features, including 3D-like imaging and a side pane for "widget" applications.

Many analysts expect that Apple's market-dominating iPod — which works with both Windows and Macintosh machines — and its new computers based on Intel Corp. chips — the same used by Windows — help grow Apple's slice of the PC market.

Meanwhile, Apple's financial health is better than ever. It posted record revenue of nearly $14 billion for its fiscal 2005 and is armed with more than $8 billion in cash.

"Apple will continue to be a force in portable music and video, and desktop innovation," Bajarin said. "Its key challenge now is how it will extend the Mac more into the digital lifestyle, into the living room and the rest of the house, as well as to other portable devices."

No matter how well the company does with its future endeavors, many things people do today — from desktop publishing to music downloads — will long be regarded as the fruits of Apple.

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