Fun facts about Apple

The history of the firm with the apple logo in itself is surprising. Created in a garage in 1976 by two hobbyists, on the verge of bankruptcy in 1997, it recalled its founder that it had fired twelve years earlier. Microsoft had to buy its actions to restore confidence. But then it had success after success with the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and is now one of the most successful IT companies in the world. This is well known. There are other facts about the company that are not so well known.

In an interview given to Bloomberg in 2014, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple with Steve Jobs, said the company founded in a garage was a myth.
The garage is a bit of a myth. We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there. The garage didn’t serve much purpose, except it was something for us to feel was our home. We had no money. You have to work out of your home when you have no money.
However he said also thay made final testings in the garage.
Although Apple is praised and appreciated by its innovations, it is actually a company that invents little. One of the technology companies that has the lowest research and development budget: 2% against 14% for Microsoft or Google!
But in 2012, the R&D budget increased by 50%. To reach 3%!
Apple had only four hardware products: iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod. This was part of Jobs' secret.
But it also has services like iTunes that allows access to music content. In 2008, Steve Jobs asked the musical producers, Warner, EMI, to get rid of competitors like SeekPod, which had an excellent search engine with an algorithm to find the songs that can please an user. SeekPod then had 250 million searches per month. According to the CEO of Warner itself, the start up was placed on a list of companies to be killed and soon the cost of litigation (even without merit) have become so high that SeekPod had to close.
(Ref: How Apple Influenced The Labels To Shut Down My Music Streaming Startup - Kasian Franks).
Desktop computers now represent only 13% of Apple's revenues. There were near 100% before 2008.
In January 2014, Apple's revenue came from following products: iPhone (55%), iPad (18%), desktops and laptops (13%), iTunes and software (9%), other (5%).

Sources of income to Apple in 2014
Market share of Android in 2012 are four times those of iOS in the smartphone. iOS was predominant in the previous year.
Apple like other Web companies, only pay 1.9% tax outside the USA. Its European headquarters is in Ireland where enterprises only pay 12.5% tax but it manages to pass its operations in tax havens. That in 2012, in 2011 it was 2.5%. It makes use of the "Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich" technique which transit revenues by the Bermuda. So the firm shifts $20 billion per year from the IRS (Source WSJ).
Although in 2013 it had 145 billion in the bank, Apple has decided to make a loan to pay dividends to shareholders: to use the money it has in the banks it would have to repatriate it in the U.S. and pay full taxes on it!
Apple has created a tablet before the iPhone, but did not believe to its commercial potential. The first models of iPhone had a classic design when Apple had the idea to apply the principles of the tablet. The success of the iPhone has then encouraged it to sell the tablet.
To replace the first mouse of the Mac, barely usable, Steve Jobs asked his designers seven models. They did not have time to finish the design of the latter, and have not added buttons, just the overall shape. Steve Jobs liked this model with no button very much and its the one he chosen. Nobody dared to contradict him. The developers then had to design a GUI operating with a mouse without button, which forced them to oversimplify. This has contributed to the success of the Mac.
The mouse used also an optical ray rather than a ball, a thing that was invented in 1981 by Dick Lyon and Steve Kirsch.
As for Alan Turing, Steve Jobs has been poisoned by an apple. The fruit-time diet he followed is far from being something healthy because a lot of fructose promotes the development of cancer, from what he died. Let's open a parenthesis to remember the only good diet is a balanced diet.
The actor who played the role in the biopic jOBS tried to follow the same diet and had to spend two days in the hospital. He had severe pancreas problems.
In 1995, under the direction of Michael Spindler, Apple launched a game console, such as Microsoft will later. Based on technologies of the MacIntosh, it was called Pippin. Sold three times the price of a Nintendo, it was a total commercial failure.
After several trials for dummy patents, Apple lose a fight to Samsung, and the ITC banned the iPhone 4 to be imported to the USA (it is made in China). The government overturned the ban. Then Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet had this interesting statement:
"Samsung was wrong to abuse the patent system in this way."
To fuly appreciate the irony, see Apple against Samsung....
(August 4, 2013).
During the anti-trust lawsuit against Apple in 2014, which promotes its iTunes music service on iPods devices, it was revealed that when the user installs on the iPod a song from another services that iTumes, the system displays an error message and the song is removed. This is to protect the user, defends Apple! And its sources of revenue also, maybe...
HyperCard. It was a system for creating visually applications very easy to use. Based on the principle of hypertext, it allowed to store application components, and add scripts with the Hypertalk language. This was used to create the game Myst. Due to lack of development, and because too closed, it disappeared completely in 2004.
Replacement tools emerged: Visual Studio, App Inventor for Android, or even HTML 5.
In 2014, Apple employs 93,000 persons.
On 30 June 2015, Apple was ordered to pay $ 450 million fine for participating in a conspiracy to raise the price of books online. "We have done nothing wrong," proclaimed the firm. But to empty buyers' pockets.
These Nobel Prize who know nothing about anything.
August 13, 2016, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, estimates that the tax position of Apple in Ireland is a fraud. To what the CEO of Apple replied:
If someone says that, he does not know what he is talking about.
However, the European Commission concluded in a report released August 30, 2016 that Apple owe 13 billion euro to Ireland to have received undue reduction on the prevoous years.
Apple and the courage.
Apple is doing everything it can to prevent users from repairing their iPhone. It refuses to sell spare parts, lobbies against the right to repair, sues independent repairers, asks Amazon to ban second-hand iPhone dealers and has contracts with recyclers to recover no spare parts but destroy everything that come to them.
But these efforts are in vain and in january 2019, the CEO recognizes that sales are down because users still get to fix their devices (mainly replacing the battery!
According to the English dictionary Merriam-Webster, which exists since 1843, Apple fans are a good example to illustrate the term "sheeple". This example is used to define sheeple:
Apple's debuted a battery case for the juice-sucking iPhone—an ungainly lumpy case the sheeple will happily shell out $99 for.