It already seems worn out, to say it so much, but 44 years ago (April 1, 1976), two naive fools who wanted to do something they were passionate about and a friend of Atari (Ronald Wayne, who sold his stakes in Apple within a few weeks) founded a company that would change the world ... several times.
What began as an artisanal task handcrafted by Steve Wozniak and sold by Steve Jobs, has attacked business, education, the arts in just a few years ...
It peaked and lost the company, nearly lost the education sector (hegemony lost), and held out in design and graphic arts, music and video creation, and science.
Why did people keep using Apple computers?
It's true that Windows compatible computers ended up being faster, cheaper, and with a software offering that Apple users couldn't even dream of.
Yet the brand loyalty of the bitten apple has resisted temptations, fundamentally based on a single reason: tranquility.
Despite paying more for slower computers, having less software than computers with Intel processors, the design of the operating system made programs run smoothly longer, and their small market share made them an unattractive market for software creators. viruses and other malicious software.
The passage of the years has increased the strengths of macOS, with the UNIX foundation it now uses, significantly narrowing the gap between the software available on both platforms.
If we add to this the superlative industrial design of its products and a practically pristine image of the brand, cultivated with respect for the privacy of its users, with the environment, with diversity and with integration, it makes it more and more attractive for more people… without renouncing its “accessible luxury” label, ie operating margins that are the envy of many industries.
Music, films, mobility ...
The iPod has definitely changed the way we listen to music, destroying all competition (cheap and expensive) and - as collateral damage - sweeping away the purchase of physical media, starting the drift towards the consumption of streaming music that concerns us. today. Something that I'm sure Steve Jobs, although eminently pragmatic, regretted (and held out for a long time, allowing the Skype advantage).
With Apple TV he has long led the new phase of rental without physical media. Only Netflix has been able to make the leap from a video store to an online viewing system and despite having an unsustainable business model (due to its cost in relation to income), it has been able to exploit its letters to establish itself at the forefront.
On the iPhone there is little to add that has not already been said: that product that presented itself as iPod, internet browser and telephone, today is much more and has once again devastated sectors that seemed untouchable years ago.
Satellite navigation systems (i.e. Maps), cameras, commerce, the list of products and services that are integrated into the iPhone today and that previously required a specific physical device or store, is very long and continues to absorb every New Year, such as a vacuum cleaner that has no limits.
The future of Apple
The services, whether it be credit, games, entertainment, reading (when to subscribe to Books?) Have already taken their first steps.
Virtual reality is getting closer and closer to transform the way we look at what surrounds us, we travel, we do tourism, we learn….
The car… ah, the myth of the car…. it will come one day, with its electric and solar rechargeable batteries, its intelligent driving system, its advanced safety capabilities ...
The smart home. If for a while Apple's "hobby" was Apple TV, we could say that it is now HomeKit. It exists, some use it, but it doesn't get much attention from Cupertino. If one day, like the eye of Sauron, Apple will fix its gaze on the house and put all its capacity for innovation to good use, its transformative power will be felt in all its intensity.
In the meantime, let's raise our glasses of imprisonment for these years that Apple has allowed us to enjoy using a computer, a music player, a multimedia console, a telephone… where it will continue to be a source of social change, hopefully for the better.
