Silicon Valley's historic orchards have virtually disappeared but one notable fruit still stands: Apple.
As the storied company celebrates its 30th birthday in a week, Apple Computer Inc will have brushed off its bruises from product failures and arguably misguided decisions to emerge with a shine that's more than skin-deep.
Its brand name and products -- from the Mac to the iPod -- resonate as both hip and innovative.
PHOTO: AP
For all of its recent successes, however, Apple also has its share of challenges ahead as it matures into a digital media provider.
In the digital music arena, where Apple dominates, French lawmakers are angling to force the company to change its successful way of chaining its popular iPod player to its online iTunes Music Store.
Recording labels are also chafing at Apple's insistence that its song downloads remain US$0.99 apiece. Apple CEO Steve Jobs rebutted by calling the record industry "greedy."
In the computer space, where Apple is seeing its best sales in years, information-security firms have discovered a few new vulnerabilities in its Macintosh operating system.
Though the security breaches have been innocuous, security experts say they signal that Apple is a higher-profile target now for hackers, who in the past have focused heavily on Microsoft Corp's predominant Windows system.
"Apple is on more people's radar now that the company is a major force," said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a technology consultancy. "And these are all growing pains."
Apple's journey began in 1976 when two college dropouts -- Jobs, a marketing whiz, and his friend Steve Wozniak, an engineering genius -- filed partnership papers on April Fools' Day, their eyes set on building and selling personal computers. Another friend, Ron Wayne, opted out of the risky venture within two weeks.
Their first product was a build-it-yourself computer kit. A year later, in 1977, the Apple II microcomputer was born. It was not the first personal computer but it was the most successful -- a hit not just among engineers, but home users too. Many credit the Apple II as the genesis of the personal computer revolution.
Apple's cultural and technological influences only grew from there. Some of the Cupertino, California-based company's creations have been duds that failed to make it any money, but became a source of inspiration and income for others.
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 (US$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.
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 acquired 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 -- will help grow Apple's slice of the PC market.
Meanwhile, Apple's financial health is better than ever. It posted record revenue of nearly US$14 billion for fiscal 2005 and is armed with more than US$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.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day