Why is Apple Popular?
posted 1/27/2022 by Achyut Shastri
Apple started off as any business did: It was small. Yet, it still became one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Over the course of its history, Apple came up with the first implementation of color graphics, made the highly popular home computer, the Mac, and also became the first publicly traded company to be valued at a trillion dollars in 2018! However, some companies have had less success over the same amount of time. So, what makes Apple so popular?
Apple’s history inspires trust and reliability within their brand, boosting their popularity. Apple was created by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the 1970s, starting off with the Apple 1, a computer consisting of just a motherboard. This started them off in the business of kit computers, leading them on the path to the massive company we know today. The Apple 1, now remembered as a collectible which, in its time, gave the company enough capital to build the Apple II. This new computer gave Apple enough revenue to last until the mid-1980s. This led to the release of the first Macintosh computer. However, with other companies catching up to Apple as well as internal struggles, mainly to push a new CEO into power, John Sculley, Steve Jobs was fired and went to work for NeXT. After this, John Sculley was placed in Jobs’ position.
In the following years, Apple began to release a wide scope of new products, like laser printers, the Macintosh Portable, PowerBooks, an earlier version of the Macbooks, the Newton, a digital assistant that paved the way for Siri, and much more. They sold at a high price, so Apple had financial gain. However, with the introduction of Windows, Apple seemed to have an unnecessarily high price. Windows machines also had the benefit of more powerful processors; in comparison, Apple's computers were slow. In response to Windows’ rapid growth, Apple bought NeXT, the company Jobs was working at, leading to his return as CEO of Apple in 1997. He released the aesthetically pleasing iMac in 1998 with an OS upgrade to rival Windows machines. After this, they released a variety of new, revolutionary products that paved the way for Apple’s future, like the iPod, the iPhone, the Macbook Air, and the iPad, all of them with incredible quality and design.
Apple’s history of reliability and amazing products inspire a sense of trust in their consumers, resulting in an attachment to Apple products.
Apple is also popular due to how they evolve over time. With every new release, there is always something significant that is new or improved. For example, with their latest iMac, they implemented their M1 chips, and gave it a whole new design. With their new M1 chips, they outperform Intel and AMD processors on productive tasks like video editing, image editing, web browsing, and more. They are also much more compact and sleek, giving them a more modern look and giving space for other components. The M1 is also more power-efficient than other processors, giving it an edge in laptops and PCs. Because of their ability to evolve their designs, Apple is more popular due to their consumers’ needs for new features and hardware.
Finally, Apple is popular because of its product usability. Their OS is simple, and easy to use. For example, to write down a quick note, you simply have to drag your finger diagonally from the bottom right corner of the screen. Also, to perform a wide variety of complicated tasks, you can simply talk to the voice AI Siri for a couple of seconds. If you want to take a simple photo, there are presets in the camera app to help you, however if you want an advanced photo, you can fiddle with those settings yourself as well. Because of features like these that improve the usability of Apple’s devices, their consumers are more likely to use them instead of other devices that might not be as practical or usable as Apple devices. They also made their own network, iCloud and Apple ID, that works only with Apple devices, making it easy to use a variety of apple devices at the same time..
Apple’s success can be accredited to their experience and history, how they have been making products for years, building their popularity and reliability over time, their ability to evolve their products to appeal to a user’s desire for new technology, and their products’ usability, how they make their products practical and easy to operate. Apple has been in business for a long time, building up a consumer base and learning how to make their products popular. So, they employ many strategies within their products as well as within their image to make sure they appeal to users.