From a Los Altos garage location in the 1970s to a Norman Foster-designed super-campus, Apple has risen from a nerdy computing project into the world’s most valuable company. With striking design and iconic branding, game-changing innovations (can you remember a world without touchscreen mobiles?) and intuitive, user-friendly hardware and software, Apple often feels more like a lifestyle choice than a computing solution.
Forty Years of Innovation
The first Macintosh computer may be forty years old, but the principle behind new Apple products remains the same — by using a simple, intuitive, graphically based interface, it makes advanced technology easy to use for consumers. The touchscreen popularized by the iPhone in 2007 is the perfect example, now a standard feature on all modern mobile devices. It has enabled even the least tech-savvy among us to access banking services, video streaming, and has even made mobile a legitimate platform for video gaming.
Some of the most popular mobile games come in the form of online casino slots, and a glance at https://bingo.betfair.com/c/bingo-slots will show just how many games with amazing graphics and intuitive controls are on offer. With popular titles such as Big Bass Fishing and newer hybrid games such as slingo (slots combined with bingo), mobile games show just how far affordable consumer tech has come in terms of providing immersive entertainment to an ever-widening set of demographics.
Consumer Empowerment
The other major change brought about by Apple and the companies seeking to emulate their success over the years seems maybe counterintuitive. Their computers, mobiles, and other devices are geared towards simplicity for the consumer — they’re reliable, easy to use, and support rapidly developing software. This in turn, has enabled an entire new generation of startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses to get moving, without having to rely on huge, expensive database solutions (and support teams to maintain them), and without the overheads traditionally associated with starting up an enterprise.
If you really push yourself you could start a business with your mobile alone, says https://www.business.com/, from product development and design to accounting, from marketing to customer service. Cloud-based services are enormously effective, both in terms of cost and ease of use, bypassing the need, space, and upkeep of hardware servers. And those who want to invest in stocks, forex or get involved in crypto/fintech will find no shortage of apps and resources they can download and use, often with expert guidance and live streaming data. It’s interesting that a company pushing consumer-first tech has inspired future generations to bypass the costly and restrictive technologies which were designed with businesses in mind, which had dominated the market before Steve Jobs and Wozniak changed the game.
1984 was always destined to be a watershed year. And the launch of the first Macintosh made it so, as far as computing is concerned. No one ever accused Steve Jobs of lacking showmanship – the computer’s launch was announced via an eye-wateringly expensive commercial, as https://medium.com/ reminds us – and Apple has continued to make it its mission to appeal to the consumer, not the business, leaving an indelible mark on the way technology is developed.
