Apple Inc. I'm going to start by going over a little bit of the history of the apple and how it has grown over the last 10 years, I'm also going to talk about some of the new products from Apple such as the Apple TV and the iPhone, as well as the name change and the new direction they have chosen to take with their marketing and what that has helped them accomplish over the last couple of years. Apple Inc. has come a long way from what it was. The computer market has always been a PC-based system, mainly driven by the Microsoft software platform. Apple Computers has long struggled to establish itself in the computer market, coming up against its competitor Microsoft who held a monopoly on the market. Microsoft had such popularity throughout the business world that it was very difficult for Apple to have any impact on its competitor Microsoft. In 1997, Bill Gates invested $150 million in Apple Computers and agreed to create Microsoft Office for the Macintosh platform which was a big step forward for the struggling company. This gave Apple the boost they needed to fight back and enter the major consumer market. On October 23, 2001, Apple introduced the iPod which revolutionized the portable music player industry. It was the best way to listen to CD quality songs on a small portable player that fits in your pocket. There were many other types of mp3 players at the time, but the simplicity of transferring your music to your iPod was second to none. With the auto sync feature through iTunes, this made things very simple for the average user. I bet there aren't many people in this class who don't have an iPod, or the percentage of people with an mp3 player would be...... middle of paper... ...ves with the iphone also trying to get the mobile phone market. The opportunities are almost endless with iPhone technology, making email, web browsing, or text messaging very attractive to the business market. It's all about the average consumer looking for a toy with phone capabilities. All these other products using the Mac platform and the fact that Apple is making it easier to switch from Windows to Mac is changing people's opinions of Apple and making them think twice about the computer choice they want to make when their next purchase. a computer. So the next time you're thinking about buying a computer, think about it. Apple has really thought about it and they are moving. If they can successfully implement their marketing strategy, I predict that one day, not too far away, they will take over the world..