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@ Job's and Wozniak's first computer, Apple 1, had no keyboard, case, sound or graphics. Jobs sold his VW van and Wozniak his programmable calculator to finance production, and within a couple of months the computer was on sale to elec- tronics enthusiasts for $666.66 # Apple could not have grown so fruitfully unless the ground had been prepared before them. The ground was Silicon Valley, and electrical engineer Fred Terman was the man who first tilled it # Hewlett-Packard was the first of the electronics entrepreneurs. Its success showed that the computer industry was a new Klondike where there were fortunes to be made by those with bold ideas. The lesson was not lost on one of its employees, Steve Wozniak # Microelectronics dates back to the transistor. The science was soon applied in high- tech industries such as defense and aerospace. The invention of the silicon chip made the technology adaptable for use by small firms - and also in the home. Apple made the most of this opportunity # The Apple II, launched in 1977, looks prehistoric now; but at the time it was revolutionary. The company devised clever point-and- click iconography as an aid to use, and dreamed up the 'desktop' metaphor to overcome the intimidating feeling some novices users experienced in the face of technology # While the Apple name went from strength to strength, Jobs and Wozniak lost their jobs. In 1985 Jobs resigned as chairman in a fight with chief executive John Scully. Wozniak had stormed out of the company following an argument over corporate strategy the previous year # Apple encountered legal trouble in 1989 when the company was sued by the three surviving Beatles over the apple logo. The Beatles featured a green apple on their Apple record label. The court case lasted over a year and cost $10 million before the dispute was settled out of court # From the start, Apple has had certain advantages over its giant software rival, Microsoft: it had technological pre- eminence earlier on and, most people agree, a friendlier user-interface. Microsoft has tried to retrieve that ground with Windows 95, but Apple lovers tend to remain faithful to their Macintosh's @