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Established on April 1, 1976 in
Cupertino, California, and incorporated January 3, 1977, the company was
previously named Apple
Computer, Inc. for its first 30 years, but removed the word "Computer"
on January 9, 2007, to reflect the company's ongoing expansion into the
consumer electronics market in addition to its traditional focus on
personal computers. As of September 26, 2009, Apple had 34,300 full time
employees and 2,500 temporary full time employees worldwide and had
worldwide annual sales of $42.91 billion in its fiscal year ending
September 26, 2009. For reasons as various as its philosophy of comprehensive aesthetic design to its distinctive advertising campaigns, Apple has established a unique reputation in the consumer electronics industry. This includes a customer base that is devoted to the company and its brand, particularly in the United States. Fortune magazine named Apple the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world in 2008, 2009, and 2010. In May 2010, Apple's market cap exceeded that of Microsoft for the first time since 1989. |
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Linux (commonly
pronounced /ˈlɪnəks/ LIN-əks in American English, also pronounced /ˈlɪnʊks/
LIN-ooks in Europe and Canada) refers to the family of Unix-like
computer operating systems using the Linux kernel. Linux can be
installed on a wide variety of computer hardware, ranging from mobile
phones, tablet computers and video game consoles, to mainframes and
supercomputers. Linux is predominantly known for its use in servers; in
2009 it held a server market share ranging between 20–40%. Most desktop
computers run either Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X, with Linux having
anywhere from a low of an estimated 1–2% of the desktop market to a high
of an estimated 4.8%. However, desktop use of Linux has become
increasingly popular in recent years, partly owing to the popular Ubuntu,
Fedora, Mint, and openSUSE distributions and the emergence of netbooks
and smartphones running an embedded Linux. The development of Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed, both commercially and non-commercially, by anyone under licenses such as the GNU General Public License. Typically Linux is packaged in a format known as a Linux distribution for desktop and server use. Linux distributions include the Linux kernel and all of the supporting software required to run a complete system, such as utilities and libraries, the X Window System, the GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and the Apache HTTP Server. Commonly used applications with desktop Linux systems include the Mozilla Firefox web-browser, the OpenOffice.org office application suite and the GIMP image editor. The name "Linux" comes from the Linux kernel, originally written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. The main supporting user space system tools and libraries from the GNU Project (announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman) are the basis for the Free Software Foundation's preferred name GNU/Linux. |
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Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood
friends with a passion in computer programming, were seeking to make a
successful business utilizing their shared skills. The January 1975
issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and
Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer. Allen noticed that
they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device; after a call from
Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a
demonstration. Since they didn't actually have one, Allen worked on a
simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter. Although
they developed the interpreter on a simulator and not the actual device,
the interpreter worked flawlessly when they demonstrated the interpreter
to MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico in March 1975; MITS agreed to
distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC. They officially established
Microsoft on
April 4, 1975 with Gates as the CEO. In August 1977 the company formed
an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first
international office, "ASCII Microsoft". The company moved to a new home
in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, called Xenix. However, it was DOS (Disk Operating System) that solidified the company's dominance. After negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M OS, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, which IBM rebranded to PC-DOS. Following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft secured the marketing rights to MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to reverse engineer it in order for other OSes to run, resulting in IBM PC compatibles. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOS's available software selection, Microsoft eventually became the leading PC OS vendor. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in February after developing Hodgkin's disease. |