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Environmental Scan and Risk Analysis

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Brief History of Apple Computer, Incorporated aka Apple, Incorporated:
In 1976, college dropouts Steve Jobs quit his job at Atari and convinced Steve Wozniak to quit his job at Hewlett-Packard. Together, along with Ronald Wayne, they established Apple Computer with the purpose of developing and selling an inexpensive and simple personal computer. (Brashares, pp.15-16)

On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started out by building and introducing their first system known as Apple I in Job’s garage and sold them for $666.66. This system was without a monitor, keyboard or casing, which they decided to add on in 1977. The creation of the Apple II system by Jobs and Wozniak would revolutionize the computer industry with the introduction of the first-ever color graphics. Due to the Apple II system, sales jumped from $7.8 million in 1978 to $117 million in 1980, the year Apple went public. (Brashares, p.21)

On January 3, 1977, Apple Computer was incorporated without Ronald Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak for $800 dollars. Today Ronald Wayne’s share of the company would have been worth over 3 billion dollars. (Brashares, p. 35)

In 1983, Steve Wozniak left Apple Computer, Inc. due to a diminishing interest in the day to day running of the company. Thereafter, Steve Jobs hired John Sculley from PepsiCo to become president of the company. However, this move backfired and after much controversy with John Sculley, Steve Jobs left Apple Computer, Incorporated and started a new company. Steve Jobs went on to create NeXT Software and purchase Pixar, which later became a huge success in computer animation of such movies as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monster, Inc. and Finding Nemo. (Brashares, pp.47-48, 54)

In 1997, Apple Computer, Incorporated brought out NeXT Software company and requested Steve Jobs to

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