Corporate affairs

During the Mac's early history Apple generally refused to adopt prevailing industry standards for hardware, instead creating their own. This trend was largely reversed in the late 1990s beginning with Apple's adoption of the PCI bus in the 7500/8500/9500 Power Macs. Apple has since adopted USB, AGP, HyperTransport, Wi-Fi, and other industry standards in its computers and was in some cases a leader in the adoption of standards such as USB. FireWire is an Apple-originated standard that has seen widespread industry adoption after it was standardized as IEEE 1394.

Ever since the first Apple Store opened, Apple has sold third party accessories. This allows, for instance, Nikon and Canon to sell their Mac-compatible digital cameras and camcorders inside the store. Adobe, one of Apple's oldest software partners, also sells its Mac-compatible software, as does Microsoft, who sells Microsoft Office for the Mac. Books from John Wiley & Sons, who publishes the For Dummies series of instructional books, are a notable exception, however. The publisher's line of books were banned from Apple Stores in 2005 because Steve Jobs disagreed with their decision to publish an unauthorized Jobs biography, iCon.

Headquarters

Company headquarters on Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California

Apple Inc.'s world corporate headquarters are located in the middle of Silicon Valley, at 1–6 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California. This Apple campus has six buildings that total 850,000 square feet (79,000 m²) and was built in 1993 by Sobrato Development Cos.

Future plans

In 2006, Apple announced its intention to build a second campus on 50 acres (200,000 m²) assembled from various contiguous plots (east of N Wolfe Road between Pruneridge Avenue and Vallco Parkway). Later acquisitions increased this to 175 acres. The new campus, also in Cupertino, will be about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of the current campus. The new campus building will be designed by Norman Foster.

On June 7, 2011, Steve Jobs gave a presentation to Cupertino City Council, detailing the architectural design of the new building and its environs. The new campus is planned to house up to 13,000 employees in one central four-storied circular building (with a café for 3,000 sitting people integrated) surrounded by extensive landscape (with parking mainly underground and the rest centralized in a parking structure). There will be additional buildings such as an auditorium, R&D facilities, a fitness center and a dedicated generating plant as primary source of electricity (powered by natural gas and other more environmentally sound means).

Advertising

Main article: Apple Inc. advertising

Further information: Think Different, Get a Mac, and Apple Switch ad campaign

Since the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984 with the 1984 Super Bowl commercial to the more modern 'Get a Mac' adverts, Apple has been recognized in the past for its efforts towards effective advertising and marketing for its products, though its advertising has been criticized for the claims of some more recent campaigns, particularly 2005 Power Mac ads and iPhone ads in Britain.

Name

According to Steve Jobs, Apple was so named because Jobs was coming back from an apple farm, and he was on a fruitarian diet. He thought the name was "fun, spirited and not intimidating".

Logos

The original

logo with Isaac Newton

under an apple

tree

The rainbow

"bitten" logo,

used from late

 1976 to 1998

The monochrome

logo, used since 1998

Apple's first logo, designed by Ron Wayne, depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree.

Almost immediately, though, this was replaced by Rob Janoff's "rainbow Apple", the now-familiar rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. Janoff presented Jobs with several different monochromatic themes for the "bitten" logo, and Jobs immediately took a liking to it. While Jobs liked the logo, he insisted it be in color to humanize the company. The Apple logo was designed with a bite so that it wouldn't be recognized as another fruit. The colored stripes were conceived to make the logo more accessible, and to represent the fact the Apple II could generate graphics in color.

This logo is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide. Both the designer of the logo and the company deny that there is any homage to Turing in the design of the logo.

In 1998, with the roll-out of the new iMac, Apple discontinued the rainbow theme and began to use monochromatic themes, nearly identical in shape to its previous rainbow incarnation, on various products, packaging and advertising. An Aqua-themed version of the monochrome logo was used from 2001–2003, and a Glass-themed version has been used since 2003.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were  fans, but Apple Inc. had trademark issues with Apple Corps Ltd., a multimedia company started by The Beatles in 1967, involving their name and logo. This resulted in a series of lawsuits and tension between the two companies. These issues ended with settling of their most recent lawsuit in 2007.

Slogans

Apple's first slogan, "Byte into an Apple", was coined in the late 1970s. From 1997–2002, Apple used the slogan "Think Different" in advertising campaigns. Although the slogan has been retired, it is still closely associated with Apple. Apple also has slogans for specific product lines — for example, "iThink, therefore iMac" was used in 1998 to promote the iMac, and "Say hello to iPhone" has been used in iPhone advertisements. "Hello" was also used to introduce the original Macintosh, Newton, iMac ("hello (again)"), and iPod.

Commercials

Apple's product commercials gained fame for launching musicians into stardom as a result of their eye-popping graphics and catchy tunes. First, the company popularized Canadian singer Feist's "1234" song in its ad campaign. Later, Apple used the song "New Soul" by French-Israeli singer-songwriter Yael Naïm to promote the MacBook Air. The debut single shot to the top of the charts and sold hundreds of thousands of copies in a span of weeks.