Apple began in 1976, when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, with Ronald Wayne briefly involved, formed a company to sell Wozniak’s computer design. Their first product was assembled for hobbyists. The Apple II, released in 1977, reached a much broader audience because it arrived as a finished computer with a keyboard, color graphics, and an expandable design. VisiCalc, the first widely used spreadsheet program, gave businesses a compelling reason to buy one.
Apple’s next major bet was to make the computer feel less like equipment for specialists. The Lisa introduced a graphical interface and mouse in 1983, but its high price limited its audience. The Macintosh, launched in 1984, brought a more approachable interface to a lower-cost machine and was supported by strong industrial design and advertising. Its early sales were uneven, and it took later models and software to make the Mac a lasting business.
Apple’s approach linked product decisions that were often separated elsewhere: the company designed the computer, controlled its operating system, shaped the interface, and cultivated software and retail experiences around the machine. That integration helped Apple make a distinctive product. It also meant the company controlled more of the system than users and outside developers did, creating tradeoffs around compatibility and choice.
The personal-computing shift did not belong to Apple alone. Hobbyist clubs, semiconductor firms, software makers, IBM, Microsoft, and many other companies built the market. Apple’s special contribution was showing how engineering and design could be assembled into a consumer experience people wanted to use. Personal computing became personal when capability was paired with accessibility—and when useful applications gave people reasons to return to the machine.