Apple’s 50-year odyssey has redefined technology, pop culture and comeback stories

CUPERTINO, Calif. — A skinny hippie and a nerdy engineer turned prankster friend vowed to change the world when they founded a startup in Silicon Valley on April Fool’s Day 50 years ago and then – no kidding – succeeded.

The improbable odyssey began on April 1, 1976, when a then-shaggy Steve Jobs and his gadget-tinkering friend Steve Wozniak signed a two-page partnership document creating the Apple Computer Co.

Jobs, a 21-year-old college dropout, and Wozniak, a 25-year-old Hewlett-Packard employee, each received a 45 percent stake in Apple, with the remaining 10 percent going to their 41-year-old advisor, Ron Wayne.

The company got off to such a rocky start trying to build a home computer in Los Altos, California, the home of Jobs’ parents, that Wayne gave up his stake for $2,300. That turned out to be a $370 billion mistake, considering how much his holdings have grown now that Apple claims a market value of $3.7 trillion.

But Apple nearly collapsed before building its current empire.

After ousting Jobs in a bitter breakup in 1985, the tech company struck a surprise deal that brought back its exiled co-founder in 1997. After reluctantly agreeing to serve as a temporary advisor, Jobs took over as CEO and led an innovation factory that produced the iPod, iPhone and iPad during a decade of feverish creativity.

Here’s a look at Apple’s odyssey so far:

Although it was founded in 1976, Apple did not experience its first breakout success until June 1977, with the release of the Apple II computer priced at $1,298 (about $7,000 today, adjusted for inflation).

With sales booming, Apple went public in the late 1980s at $22 per share, which translates to 10 cents per share after adjusting for stock splits. That means $2,200 spent to buy 100 shares at the IPO price would be worth more than $5.5 million today.

Apple’s next big thing came at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting on January 24, 1984, when Jobs read the opening lines of Bob Dylan’s song, “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and unveiled the first Macintosh, a machine that introduced the computer mouse and a graphical interface to the public.

The coming out party took place two days after Apple teased the Macintosh computer with a 60-second commercial directed by Ridley Scott that evoked George Orwell’s novel “1984” during that year’s Super Bowl. The ad created such a buzz that it is widely credited with turning Super Bowl commercials into an art form and part of the cultural zeitgeist.

Despite its revolutionary features, the Macintosh (named after engineers’ favorite type of apple) cost $2,500 (nearly $7,900 today) – one reason it didn’t sell as well as expected.

The disappointment led to layoffs and other cost-cutting by Apple CEO John Sculley, a former PepsiCo executive whom Jobs had personally helped recruit to the company in 1983. A year after the Macintosh’s release, the once-close relationship between Sculley and Jobs had disintegrated into a power struggle. Apple’s board of directors sided with Sculley, prompting Jobs to resign in September 1985 with a sense of betrayal so deep that he sold all but one of his Apple shares.

After Jobs left, Apple produced popular versions of the Mac with Sculley at the helm.

But Apple’s sleekly designed computers couldn’t slow the sales momentum of cheaper computers running software from Microsoft, whose brazen tactic of replicating the Mac’s graphical interface sparked a seven-year legal battle that ended with a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that rejected Apple’s copyright claims.

Before this setback, Apple fired Sculley in mid-1993 and replaced him with Michael Spindler, who held the position until early 1996, when he, too, was ousted amid the company’s mounting losses.

In desperation, Apple removed its next CEO, Gil Amelio, who had engineered a turnaround at computer chipmaker National Semiconductor, from its own board.

Almost all of Amelio’s moves failed to bear fruit, except one: a surprising $428 million deal for an operating system created by NeXT, a computer startup launched by Jobs after he left Apple.

Jobs only wanted to spend a few months advising Amelio in 1997, insisting that he wanted to focus on his family when he wasn’t busy as CEO of Pixar, the computer animation studio he bought from “Star Wars” director George Lucas for $5 million in 1986.

But those plans changed in July 1997, when Apple fired Amelio, paving the way for Jobs to orchestrate a stunning turnaround.

By August 1997, Jobs had made peace with his longtime rival, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and reached a deal that included a $150 million cash infusion from the Windows maker. The money allowed Jobs to introduce a new line of candy-colored translucent computers, dubbed the “iMac.” The “i” before the Mac announced a new five-point credo: “Internet, individual, educate, inform and inspire”.

Jobs introduced the first iPod in October 2001, a music storage device that could initially hold up to 1,000 songs. Apple would sell 450 million devices in different models while phasing out the CD format and setting the stage for the era of music streaming.

In what would become his crowning achievement, Jobs took the stage in San Francisco on January 9, 2007, and informed the audience that he was about to show them three advances: an iPod with touch-screen controls, a revolutionary cell phone, and an Internet communicator. Then came his explosive revelation: “These aren’t three separate devices. It’s one device! And we call it the iPhone.”

More than 3 billion iPhones have been sold since then, and the device still accounts for more than half of Apple’s annual revenue of $416 billion, nearly 15 years after Jobs died of cancer. Apple’s continued reliance on the iPhone stems in part from the company’s inability to create another compelling product under Jobs’ hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.

Despite this, Apple is worth 10 times more than its market value of $350 billion at the time of Jobs’ death – proof that Cook has been a worthy steward of the legacy left by a visionary who embraced an ad campaign celebrating “those who see things differently.”