Apple

Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered

in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software,
and online services. Its hardware products include the iPhonesmartphone, the iPad tablet computer,
the Mac personal computer, the iPod portable media player, and the Apple Watch. Apple's consumer
software includes the OS X and iOS operating systems, the iTunes media player, the Safariweb
browser, and the iLife and iWork creativity and productivity suites. Its online services include
the iTunes Store, the iOS App Store and Mac App Store, and iCloud.
Apple was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne on April 1, 1976, to
develop and sell personal computers. It was incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3,
1977, and was renamed as Apple Inc. on January 9, 2007, to reflect its shifted focus toward
consumer electronics.
Apple is the world's largest information technology company by revenue, the world's largest
technology company by total assets, and the world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer. In
November 2014, in addition to being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market
capitalization, Apple became the first U.S. company to be valued at over US$700 billion. The
company employs 115,000 permanent full-time employees as of July 2015 and maintains 475 retail
stores in seventeen countries as of March 2016. It operates the online Apple Store and iTunes
Store, the latter of which is the world's largest music retailer. There are over one billion actively used
Apple products worldwide as of March 2016.
Apple's worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in
September 2015. The company enjoys a high level of brand loyalty and, according to the 2014
edition of the Interbrand Best Global Brands report, is the world's most valuable brand with a
valuation of $118.9 billion. By the end of 2014, the corporation continued to receive significant
criticism regarding the labor practices of its contractors and its environmental and business
practices, including the origins of source materials.

According to Steve Jobs, the company's name was inspired by his visit to an apple farm
while on a fruitarian diet. Jobs thought the name "Apple" was "fun, spirited and not intimidating".
Apple's first logo, designed by Ron Wayne, depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. It
was almost immediately 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. However, Jobs
insisted that the logo be colorized to humanize the company. The logo was designed with a bite so
that it would not be confused with a cherry. 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 Janoff and Apple deny any homage to Turing in the design of the logo.[229][232]
On August 27, 1999 (the year following the introduction of the iMac G3), Apple officially
dropped the rainbow scheme and began to use monochromatic logos nearly identical in shape to the
previous rainbow incarnation. An Aqua-themed version of the monochrome logo was used from
1999 to 2003, and a glass-themed version was used from 2007 to 2013.