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At 40, There's Never Been a Tech Company Quite Like Apple (qz.com)
Mike Murphy, reporting for Quartz: Forty years ago today, two college dropouts decided to start selling cobbled-together computers out of a garage in California because they couldn't afford the ones on the market. They had an intricate wood-cut logo, not much money or manpower, and their first computer only sold about 175 units. But in the years between then and now, Apple has become one of the most valuable companies in the world, spurring revolutions in how we communicate, use computers, listen to music, and to a lesser extent, tell the time. [...] Some critics think that Apple is boring now, setting itself up to iterate on its successes and lock customers into their services with products that are very good, but nothing they haven't really seen before. This is a solid business strategy that will provide strong returns for years to come, but not those eye-popping leaps we've seen before. Here's a video Apple published recently showcasing 40 of its most remarkable products.
The 30-50% thing is a myth. Apple's most recent gross margin is something on the order of 25%. The iPhone has at times peaked in mid-30's. That's not 30% over 'market rates' (whatever that means), that's 30% over cost.
Having a margin in the 25% range is not at all unusual or excessive. Intel, Qualcomm and Cisco all have similar margins, and I found those with ten seconds of googling.
"They had an intricate wood-cut logo, not much money or manpower, and their first computer only sold about 175 units"
And if you can find one of these units, they are still the most expensive product that Apple has ever sold
I have one (No fooling). "Serial No." written on the back of the PCB reads "0064". Fully decked-out with 8 kB RAM and that wonderful cassette interface board. Also has a case, Datatronics (IIRC) keyboard, and video RF modulator. With manuals, Woz's Integer BASIC on cassette (unfortunately a "dub" on a "Poly88"-labeled tape!), and a bunch of other Apple 1 software that I've scraped-up on a CD.
Traded some computer work for it in 1977.
Had it, one-owner, since then.
I also have an original "Woz Pak", sent to me by Woz himself in 1978 (IIRC). And a couple of vintage Kilobaud and Byte magazines with articles like "Sweet 16: The 6502 Dream Machine", authored by Woz.
Anyone interested?