Star Wars creator George Lucas once made the comment that he had become what he had always battled, the corporation. I wonder if Apple’s Steve Jobs ever feels that way.
Apple, more than any company, arguably created the personal-computer revolution. It actually shipped finished devices rather than parts that hobbyists would assemble into computers. At the time, it wasn’t a given that personal computers would find a large market. It seemed that only Apple’s Jobs and Steve Wozniak, as well as Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Paul Allen were confident in the personal computer’s future.
Apple’s success soon led to IBM releasing its first personal computer, and the race was on. The IBM PC and the included Microsoft MS-DOS, and later Windows software, created the standards that most of us use today.
When Apple introduced the first Macintosh in early 1984, it did so with a now-famous commercial during the Super Bowl. The commercial seemed to compare IBM to the dictator Big Brother in the book “1984” and themselves to a beautiful woman in the spot who freed all the “clones.” This commercial is still recognized as one of the best and most-effective ever created in branding a company.
Ever since, Apple has declared itself the liberator of computer users from the bondage of IBM-style PCs and especially from Microsoft Windows, which came to dominate computer sales. Its main complaint centered on uniformity and uninspired design, and certainly no one could successfully argue that PCs were not becoming commodities that were basically boring in their sameness.