August 25, 2011 12:13 am EDT

Steve Jobs' Apple: a timeline

Let there be no question: ours would be a very different industry, were it not for Steve Jobs. Few, if any individuals have had so profound an effect on their given spaces; a unprecedented track record that began in 1976 with the co-founding of Apple. In earliest incarnation, the company would prove the driving force of the personal computer explosion of the early '80s, beginning with the Apple II -- one of the industry's first hugely popular microcomputers. The Macintosh shook things up yet again, a launch celebrated by the debut of the "1984" ad during that year's Superbowl. That line helped break both the graphical user interface and the mouse to a massive audience.

Soon after, Jobs would resign, going on to form NeXT. The company never managed sales figures anywhere near the previous endeavor, but its products would prove highly influential, forming, among other things, the basis of Apple's paradigm-shifting OS X operating system. While Steve Jobs was focused on NeXT and The Graphic Group -- the company that would later morph into the far more familiar Pixar -- Apple suffered a series of defeats.

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Steve Jobs' Apple: a timeline originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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