Thirty years after two wide-eyed pioneers launched a company to sell computer kits to their fellow geeks, Apple Computer is still pushing the boundaries of technology.
The iconic Silicon Valley firm was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Wozniak was the archetypal nerdy tinkerer who sold his beloved calculator to buy the parts he needed to build the Apple I. Jobs was the fiery visionary who sold his Volkswagen bus to raise the marketing funds.
Apple faithful around the world are flocking to Web sites to mark the auspicious occasion. But their dearest wish is for the company to roll out some cool new products, like the full-screen video iPod that is said to be in the pipeline or an Intel-based iBook laptop.
Comparing those devices to Apple's original product shows the astounding technological advances that Apple has led over the past 30 years, even as it prepares to take another leap forward.
The original Apple was a 1 MHz computer that cost US$666 and was actually only a circuit board for which consumers had to build their own cases.
But it was followed a year later by the Apple II, the company's first mass-produced computer that sold for US$1,298. This time the circuit board was encased in molded plastic and the product pioneered the era of the personal computer and turned Apple into a multimillion dollar company.
Apple's history since then has been an amalgam of virtuoso technological and marketing feats, interspersed with management struggles, design failures and ill-conceived strategies.
There was the brilliant Macintosh, which in 1984 introduced the world to the mouse and the graphical user interface that allows you to click on icons rather than type lines of code to get the computer to perform tasks.
But there was also the decision to prevent other manufacturers from making clones of the Macs or licensing other companies to use the Mac operating system on other computers.
That decision allowed Microsoft to step in with its Windows oper-ating system, which now dominates 90 percent of the world's personal computers, while Apple wallows at between two and five percent.
MIT economist Lester Thurow once estimated that Apple gave up half a trillion US dollars in profit when it allowed the PC market to slip through its fingers.
Yet except for a 12-year period in which Jobs was forced out of the company in a corporate power struggle, Apple has remained true to its famous slogan, "Think Different" and upheld its reputation as the coolest counterculture computer brand on the planet.
Now analysts agree that as it enters middle age, Apple finally stands on the brink of fulfilling the potential that its constant innovation has always promised.
Ironically, this success will come not from the computers that are at the core of the company's heritage, but as an outgrowth of the iPod.
The handheld player not only became the company's top seller, it sent Apple's stock price from around US$9.50 in 2001 to US$60, giving the company a market capitalization of US$50 billion and launching a digital revolution that could finally see an Apple in every living room.
But that Apple may not be a traditional computer, or even an iPod. Many industry analysts believe it is only a matter of time before Apple launches an iPhone or an iTV.
"Apple is really turning more into a digital entertainment company than anything," says Shaw Wu an analyst at American Technology Research.
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