MSN TV (formerly WebTV ) was a web access product consisting of a thin client device that used a television for display (instead of using a computer monitor ), and the online service that supported it. The original WebTV device design and service were developed by WebTV Networks, Inc. , a company started in 1995. The WebTV product was announced in July 1996 and later released on September 18, 1996. In April 1997, the company was purchased by Microsoft Corporation and in July 2001, was rebranded to MSN TV and absorbed into MSN .
147-526: While most thin clients developed in the mid-1990s were positioned as diskless workstations for corporate intranets , WebTV was positioned as a consumer product, primarily targeting those looking for a low-cost alternative to a computer for Internet access. The WebTV and MSN TV devices allowed a television set to be connected to the Internet, mainly for web browsing and e-mail . The WebTV/MSN TV service, however, also offered its own exclusive services such as
294-569: A Solaris backend network and telephone lines to deliver service to customers via dial-up, with "frontend servers" that talk directly to boxes using a custom protocol, the WebTV Protocol (WTVP), to authenticate users and deliver content to boxes. For the MSN TV 2, however, a completely new service based on IIS servers and regular HTTP/HTTPS services was used. I've been working to create an interactive television my entire life. I always knew it
441-548: A Universal Network Device Interface boot ROM. Diskless network booting is commonly a built-in feature of desktop and laptop PCs intended for business use, since it can be used on an otherwise disk-booted standard desktop computer to remotely run diagnostics, to install software, or to apply a disk image to the local hard drive. After the bootstrapping process has been initiated, as described above, bootstrapping will take place according to one of three main approaches. This third approach makes it easier to use client OS than having
588-456: A boardroom coup and called an emergency meeting at which Apple's executive staff sided with Sculley and stripped Jobs of all operational duties. Jobs resigned from Apple in September 1985 and took several Apple employees with him to found NeXT . Wozniak had also quit his active employment at Apple earlier in 1985 to pursue other ventures, expressing his frustration with Apple's treatment of
735-494: A business incubator for new companies in media and entertainment technology. In July 2001, six years after WebTV's founding, Microsoft rebranded WebTV as MSN TV. Contracts were terminated with all other licensed manufacturers of the WebTV hardware except RCA , leaving them as the sole manufacturer of further hardware. Promotion of the WebTV brand ended. In later years, the number of consumers using dialup access had dropped and as
882-591: A floppy disk , CD or DVD. However, the firmware in many modern computers can be configured to locate a server and begin the bootup process automatically, without the need to insert bootable media. For network auto-booting, the Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) or Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) network protocols are commonly used to find a server with files for booting the device. Standard full-size desktop PCs are able to be network-booted in this manner with an add-on network card that includes
1029-611: A multi-touch iPod Nano , an iPod Touch with FaceTime , and an iPod Shuffle that brought back the clickwheel buttons of earlier generations. It also introduced the smaller, cheaper second-generation Apple TV which allowed the rental of movies and shows. On January 17, 2011, Jobs announced in an internal Apple memo that he would take another medical leave of absence for an indefinite period to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer Tim Cook assumed Jobs's day-to-day operations at Apple, although Jobs would still remain "involved in major strategic decisions". Apple became
1176-479: A "walled garden" newsgroup service, news and weather reports, storage for user bookmarks (Favorites), IRC (and for a time, MSN Chat ) chatrooms, a Page Builder service that let WebTV users create and host webpages that could later be shared to others via a link if desired, the ability to play background music from a predefined list of songs while surfing the web, dedicated sections for aggregated content covering various topics (entertainment, romance, stocks, etc.), and
1323-529: A $ 309 million profit. On May 6, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the original Macintosh: the iMac . The iMac was a huge success, with 800,000 units sold in its first five months, and ushered in major shifts in the industry by abandoning legacy technologies like the 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 -inch diskette , being an early adopter of the USB connector, and coming pre-installed with Internet connectivity (the "i" in iMac) via Ethernet and
1470-415: A 1:N relationship (1 disk image used simultaneously by N diskless nodes). This makes it very easy to install and maintain software applications: The administrator needs to install or maintain the application only once, and the clients can get the new application as soon as they boot off the updated image. Disk image sharing is made possible because they use the write cache: No client competes for any writing in
1617-677: A 33.6 kbit /s dialup modem to connect to the WebTV Service, where powerful servers provide back-end support to the WebTV set-top boxes to provide a full Web-browsing and email experience to the subscribers. Initial sales were slow. By April 1997, WebTV had only 56,000 subscribers, but the pace of subscriber growth accelerated after that, achieving 150,000 subscribers by Autumn 1997, about 325,000 subscribers by April 1998 and about 800,000 subscribers by May 1999. WebTV achieved profitability by Spring 1998, and grossed over US$ 1.3 billion in revenue through its first 8 years of operation. In 2005 WebTV
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#17327827820531764-406: A 56k modem, support for ATVEF , a technology that allowed users to download special script-laden pages to interact with television shows, and in original models, had a Seagate 1.1 GB hard drive for storage in place of the flash memory chips used in the previous Classic models, mainly in order to accommodate large nightly downloads of television schedules. WebTV Plus also introduced a new ASIC into
1911-401: A US jury ruled that Samsung should pay Apple $ 1.05 billion (£665m) in damages in an intellectual property lawsuit. Samsung appealed the damages award, which was reduced by $ 450 million and further granted Samsung's request for a new trial. On November 10, 2012, Apple confirmed a global settlement that dismissed all existing lawsuits between Apple and HTC up to that date, in favor of
2058-456: A complete disk image in RAM or using a read-only file system. In this approach, the system uses some "write cache" that stores every data that a diskless node has written. This write cache is usually a file, stored on a server (or on the client storage if any). It can also be a portion of the client RAM. This write cache can be persistent or volatile. When volatile, all the data that has been written by
2205-403: A dial-up modem. Its striking teardrop shape and translucent materials were designed by Jonathan Ive , who had been hired by Amelio, and who collaborated with Jobs for more than a decade to reshape Apple's product design. A little more than a year later on July 21, 1999, Apple introduced the iBook consumer laptop. It culminated Jobs's strategy to produce only four products: refined versions of
2352-410: A diskless model will not necessarily cause a noticeable degradation in performance. Greater network bandwidth (i.e. capacity) will also be used in a diskless model, compared to a fat client model. This does not necessarily mean that a higher capacity network infrastructure will need to be installed—it could simply mean that a higher proportion of the existing network capacity will be used. Finally,
2499-675: A diskless node , if its disks are unused and network booting is used.) Diskless nodes (or computers acting as such) are sometimes known as network computers or hybrid clients . Hybrid client may either just mean diskless node, or it may be used in a more particular sense to mean a diskless node which runs some , but not all, applications remotely, as in the thin client computing architecture. Advantages of diskless nodes can include lower production cost, lower running costs, quieter operation, and manageability advantages (for example, centrally managed software installation). In many universities and in some large organizations, PCs are used in
2646-433: A distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well", and explained that the break would allow the company "to focus on delivering extraordinary products". Though Jobs was absent, Apple recorded its best non-holiday quarter (Q1 FY 2009) during the recession , with revenue of $ 8.16 billion and profit of $ 1.21 billion. After years of speculation and multiple rumored "leaks", Apple unveiled
2793-570: A few years after Microsoft bought out WebTV, integration with MSN Messenger and Hotmail . The setup included a thin client in the form of a set-top box , a remote, a network connection using dial-up , or with the introduction of Rogers Interactive TV and the MSN TV 2, the option to use broadband, and a wireless keyboard, which was sold optionally up until the 2000s. The MSN TV service lasted for 18 years, shutting down on September 30, 2013, and allowing subscribers to migrate their data well before that date arrived. The original WebTV network relied on
2940-490: A hard disk to allow users to record shows for later viewing. It could simultaneously play back video while recording as well. DishPlayer users could also control playback of programs recorded onto the set top box. DishPlayer made use of software and hardware developed by WebTV Networks to provide the user interface and features. Because of this, it was also capable of connecting to the WebTV Plus service, allowing it to browse
3087-444: A large screen, tablet-like media device known as the iPad on January 27, 2010. The iPad ran the same touch-based operating system as the iPhone, and all iPhone apps were compatible with the iPad. This gave the iPad a large app catalog on launch, though having very little development time before the release. Later that year on April 3, 2010, the iPad was launched in the U.S. It sold more than 300,000 units on its first day, and 500,000 by
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#17327827820533234-403: A leaked Microsoft document. In February 2006, Chris Wade analyzed the proprietary BIOS of the MSN TV 2 set top box, and created a sophisticated memory patch which allowed it to be flashed and used to boot Linux on it. An open-source solution to enabling TV output on the MSN TV 2 and similar devices was made available in 2009. There were also recorded attempts to make use of unused IDE pins on
3381-583: A more modern approach. This led to the Pink project in 1988, A/UX that same year, Copland in 1994, and evaluated the purchase of BeOS in 1996. Talks with Be stalled when the CEO, former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée , demanded $ 300 million in contrast to Apple's $ 125 million offer. Only weeks away from bankruptcy , Apple's board preferred NeXTSTEP and purchased NeXT in late 1996 for $ 400 million, retaining Steve Jobs . The NeXT acquisition
3528-803: A power struggle between Steve Jobs and CEO John Sculley , who had been hired away from Pepsi two years earlier by Jobs saying, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?" Sculley removed Jobs as the head of the Macintosh division, with unanimous support from the Apple board of directors. The board of directors instructed Sculley to contain Jobs and his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from leadership. Jean-Louis Gassée informed Sculley that Jobs had been attempting to organize
3675-512: A preferential rate. This visit influenced Jobs to implement a GUI in Apple's products, starting with the Apple Lisa . Despite being pioneering as a mass-marketed GUI computer, the Lisa suffered from high costs and limited software options, leading to commercial failure. Jobs, angered by being pushed off the Lisa team, took over the company's Macintosh division. Wozniak and Raskin had envisioned
3822-428: A price. As often happens in computing, increased storage efficiency sometimes comes at the price of decreased performance. Large numbers of nodes making demands on the same server simultaneously can slow down everyone's experience. However, this can be mitigated by installing large amounts of RAM on the server (which speeds up read operations by improving caching performance), by adding more servers (which distributes
3969-806: A shared disk image, because each client writes to its own cache. All the modern diskless nodes systems can also use a 1:1 Client-to-DiskImage relationship, where one client "owns" one disk image and writes directly into said disk image. No write cache is used then. Making a modification in a shared disk image is usually made this way: The use of central disk storage also makes more efficient use of disk storage. This can cut storage costs, freeing up capital to invest in more reliable, modern storage technologies, such as RAID arrays which support redundant operation, and storage area networks which allow hot-adding of storage without any interruption. Further, it means that losses of disk drives to mechanical or electrical failure—which are statistically highly probable events over
4116-614: A signal and the television cable could be the conduit. A Silicon Valley startup, WebTV Networks was founded in July 1995. Perlman brought along co-founders Bruce Leak and Phil Goldman shortly after conceiving the basic concept. The company operated out of half of a former BMW car dealership building on Alma Street in Palo Alto, California , which was being used for storage by the Museum of American Heritage . WebTV had been able to obtain
4263-469: A similar configuration, with some or all applications stored remotely but executed locally—again, for manageability reasons. However, these are not diskless nodes if they still boot from a local hard drive . Diskless nodes process data , thus using their own CPU and RAM to run software , but do not store data persistently—that task is handed off to a server. This is distinct from thin clients , in which all significant processing happens remotely, on
4410-600: A situation where a diskless node would be useful is in a possibly hazardous environment where computers are likely to be damaged or destroyed, thus making the need for inexpensive nodes, and minimal hardware a benefit. Again, thin clients can also be used here. Diskless machines may also consume little power and make little noise, which implies potential environmental benefits and makes them ideal for some computer cluster applications. Both thin client and diskless node architectures employ diskless clients which have advantages over fat clients (see above), but differ with regard to
4557-942: A specific client to the virtual disk are dismissed when said client is rebooted, and yet, user data can remain persistent if recorded in user (roaming) profiles or home folders (that are stored on remote servers). The two major commercial products (the one from Hewlett-Packard , and the other one from Citrix Systems ) that allow the deployment of Diskless Nodes that can boot Microsoft Windows or Linux client OS use such write caches. The Citrix product cannot use persistent write cache, but VHD and HP product can. Windows 3.x and Windows 95 OSR1 supported Remote Boot operations, from NetWare servers, Windows NT Servers and even DEC Pathworks servers. Third party software vendors such as Qualystem (acquired by Neoware ), LanWorks (acquired by 3Com ), Ardence (acquired by Citrix Systems ), APCT and Xtreamining Technology have developed and marketed software products aimed to remote-boot newer versions of
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4704-570: A television screen. WebTV closed its first round of financing, US$ 1,500,000, from Marvin Davis in September 1995, which it used to develop its prototype set-top box , using proprietary hardware and firmware . The company also used the financing to develop the online service that the set-top boxes connected to. WebTV leveraged their limited startup funds by licensing a reference design for the appliance to Sony and Philips . Eventually other companies would also become licensees and WebTV would profit on
4851-599: A ten-year license agreement for current and future patents between the two companies. It is predicted that Apple will make US$ 280 million per year from this deal with HTC. In May 2014, Apple confirmed its intent to acquire Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine 's audio company Beats Electronics —producer of the "Beats by Dr. Dre" line of headphones and speaker products, and operator of the music streaming service Beats Music —for US$ 3 billion, and to sell their products through Apple's retail outlets and resellers. Iovine believed that Beats had always "belonged" with Apple, as
4998-479: A threat to public safety. He was subsequently sentenced to serve six months in prison, followed by six months of home detention, as well as paying restitution to Microsoft. With the first generation of the WebTV/MSN TV service, the main protocol used for the majority of service communication was WTVP, or the WebTV Protocol. WTVP is a TCP-based protocol that is essentially a proprietary version of HTTP 1.0 with
5145-462: A timeframe of years, with a large number of disks involved—are often both less likely to happen (because there are typically fewer disk drives that can fail) and less likely to cause interruption (because they would likely be part of RAID arrays). This also means that the nodes themselves are less likely to have hardware failures than fat clients . Diskless nodes share these advantages with thin clients . However, this storage efficiency can come at
5292-450: Is centralized computing . Thin clients and text terminals can both require powerful central processing facilities in the servers, in order to perform all significant processing tasks for all of the clients. Diskless nodes can be seen as a compromise between fat clients (such as ordinary personal computers) and centralized computing, using central storage for efficiency, but not requiring centralized processing, and making efficient use of
5439-533: Is based on NeXTSTEP , OpenStep , and BSD Unix , to combine the stability, reliability, and security of Unix with the ease of use of an overhauled user interface. Second, in May 2001, the first two Apple Store retail locations opened in Virginia and California, offering an improved presentation of the company's products. At the time, many speculated that the stores would fail, but they became highly successful, and
5586-633: Is the largest manufacturing company by revenue , the fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales , the largest vendor of tablet computers , and the largest vendor of mobile phones in the world. Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $ 1 trillion in 2018, and, as of June 2024 , is valued at just over $ 3.2 trillion. Apple has received criticism regarding its contractors ' labor practices, its relationship with trade unions , its environmental practices , and its business ethics, including anti-competitive practices and materials sourcing. Nevertheless,
5733-474: The Android cell phone OS, and Joe Britt . Both men would later be founders of Danger, Inc. (originally Danger Research). WebTV Networks' business model was to license a reference design to consumer electronics companies for a WebTV Internet Terminal , a set-top box that attached to a telephone line and automatically connected to the Internet through a dial-up modem. The consumer electronics companies' income
5880-590: The Apple II series was discontinued. It was expensive to produce, and the company decided it was still absorbing sales from lower-cost Macintosh models. After the launch of the LC, Apple encouraged developers to create applications for Macintosh rather than Apple II, and authorized salespersons to redirect consumers from Apple II and toward Macintosh. The Apple IIe was discontinued in 1993. Apple experimented with several other unsuccessful consumer targeted products during
6027-523: The General Magic logo) was often found roaming the WebTV building late into the night while the engineers were working—although WebTV actually received inquiries from real research groups conducting similar studies and seeking to exchange data. The company hired many engineers and a few business development employees early on, having about 30 total employees by October 1995. Two early employees of Artemis were from Apple Inc : Andy Rubin , creator of
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6174-505: The Lisa in 1983 and the Macintosh in 1984, as some of the first computers to use a graphical user interface and a mouse . By 1985, internal company problems led to Jobs leaving to form NeXT, Inc. , and Wozniak withdrawing to other ventures; John Sculley served as long-time CEO for over a decade. In the 1990s, Apple lost considerable market share in the personal computer industry to
6321-518: The Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the renaming of Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple Inc., because the company had broadened its focus from computers to consumer electronics. This event also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV . The company sold 270,000 first-generation iPhones during the first 30 hours of sales, and the device was called "a game changer for
6468-534: The Power Macintosh , the first of many computers with Motorola's PowerPC processor. In the wake of the alliance, Apple opened up to the idea of allowing Motorola and other companies to build Macintosh clones . Over the next two years, 75 distinct Macintosh clone models were introduced. However, by 1996, Apple executives were worried that the clones were cannibalizing sales of its own high-end computers, where profit margins were highest. In 1996, Spindler
6615-526: The Power Macintosh G3 desktop and PowerBook G3 laptop for professionals, and the iMac desktop and iBook laptop for consumers. Jobs said the small product line allowed for a greater focus on quality and innovation. Around then, Apple also completed numerous acquisitions to create a portfolio of digital media production software for both professionals and consumers. Apple acquired Macromedia 's Key Grip digital video editing software project which
6762-481: The SoundJam MP audio player software from Casady & Greene . Apple renamed the program iTunes , and simplified the user interface and added CD burning. In 2001, Apple changed course with three announcements. First, on March 24, 2001, Apple announced the release of a new modern operating system, Mac OS X . This was after numerous failed attempts in the early 1990s, and several years of development. Mac OS X
6909-521: The TRS-80 and Commodore PET , because of its character cell-based color graphics and open architecture . The Apple I and early Apple II models use ordinary audio cassette tapes as storage devices, which were superseded by the 5 + 1 ⁄ 4 -inch floppy disk drive and interface called the Disk II in 1978. The Apple II was chosen to be the desktop platform for the first killer application of
7056-567: The Windows product line: Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98 were supported by Qualystem and Lanworks, Windows NT was supported by APCT and Ardence (called VenturCom at that time), and Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7 are supported by Hewlett-Packard (which acquired Neoware which had previously acquired Qualystem) and Citrix Systems (which acquired Ardence ). With essentially a single OS image for an array of machines (with perhaps some customizations for differences in hardware configurations among
7203-654: The chief operating officer . Gassée left the company later that year to set up a rival, Be Inc. The company pivoted strategy and, in October 1990, introduced three lower-cost models: the Macintosh Classic , the Macintosh LC , and the Macintosh IIsi , all of which generated significant sales due to pent-up demand. In 1991, Apple introduced the hugely successful PowerBook with a design that set
7350-539: The iLife suite. At the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on June 6, 2005, Jobs announced that Apple would move away from PowerPC processors, and the Mac would transition to Intel processors in 2006. On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006, Apple made the transition to Intel chips for
7497-473: The iTunes Store , launching the " Think different " advertising campaign, and opening the Apple Store retail chain. These moves elevated Apple to consistently be one of the world's most valuable brands since about 2010. Jobs resigned in 2011 for health reasons, and died two months later; he was succeeded as CEO by Tim Cook . Apple's current product lineup includes portable and home hardware such as
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#17327827820537644-401: The third- and fourth-generation iPads , which featured Retina displays ; and the iPad Mini , which featured a 7.9-inch screen in contrast to the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. These launches were successful, with the iPhone 5 (released September 21, 2012) becoming Apple's biggest iPhone launch with over two million pre-orders and sales of three million iPads in three days following the launch of
7791-551: The 1990s, including QuickTake digital cameras , PowerCD portable CD audio players, speakers , the Pippin video game console, the eWorld online service, and Apple Interactive Television Box . Enormous resources were invested in the problematic Newton tablet division, based on John Sculley's unrealistic market forecasts. Throughout this period, Microsoft continued to gain market share with Windows by focusing on delivering software to inexpensive personal computers, while Apple
7938-535: The App Store could become a billion-dollar business for Apple. By October 2008, Apple was the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone. On January 14, 2009, Jobs announced in an internal memo that he would be taking a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple until the end of June 2009 and would spend the time focusing on his health. In the email, Jobs stated that "the curiosity over my personal health continues to be
8085-476: The Apple II division and stating that the company had "been going in the wrong direction for the last five years". Wozniak remained employed by Apple as a representative, receiving a stipend estimated to be $ 120,000 per year. Jobs and Wozniak remained Apple shareholders following their departures. After the departures of Jobs and Wozniak in 1985, Sculley launched the Macintosh 512K that year with quadruple
8232-655: The Classic and Plus clients were restricted to dialup access, their subscriber count began to drop. Because the WebTV client was subsidized hardware, the company had always required individual subscriptions for each box, but with the subsidies ended, MSN started offering free use of MSN TV boxes to their computer users who subscribed to MSN as an incentive not to depart for discount dialup ISPs. In 2001, Rogers Cable partnered with Microsoft to introduce "Rogers Interactive TV" in Canada. The service enabled Rogers' subscribers to access
8379-487: The I/O workload), or by adding more disks to a RAID array (which distributes the physical I/O workload). In any case this is also a problem which can affect any client-server network to some extent, since, of course, fat clients also use servers to store user data. Indeed, user data may be much more significant in size and may be accessed far more frequently than operating systems and programs in some environments, so moving to
8526-409: The MSN TV 2 model, they adopted standard PC architecture and used a customized version of Windows CE as the operating system. This allowed MSN TV 2 to more easily and inexpensively keep current. By late 2009, MSN TV hardware was no longer being sold by Microsoft, although service continued for existing users for the next four years. Attempting to go to the "Buy MSN TV" section on the MSN TV website at
8673-411: The MSN TV 2's motherboard and supply a hard drive, most likely to add extra storage beyond the 64 MB given by the default CompactFlash storage. Diskless workstation A diskless node (or diskless workstation ) is a workstation or personal computer without disk drives , which employs network booting to load its operating system from a server . (A computer may also be said to act as
8820-421: The Macintosh as a low-cost computer with a text-based interface like the Apple II, but a plane crash in 1981 forced Wozniak to step back from the project. Jobs quickly redefined the Macintosh as a graphical system that would be cheaper than the Lisa, undercutting his former division. Jobs was also hostile to the Apple II division, which at the time, generated most of the company's revenue. In 1984, Apple launched
8967-583: The Macintosh, the first personal computer without a bundled programming language . Its debut was signified by " 1984 ", a US$ 1.5 million television advertisement directed by Ridley Scott that aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. This was hailed as a watershed event for Apple's success and was called a "masterpiece" by CNN and one of the greatest TV advertisements of all time by TV Guide . The advertisement created great interest in Macintosh , and sales were initially good, but began to taper off dramatically after
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#17327827820539114-478: The PC-sized web pages to fit the 560-pixel width of a United States NTSC television screen became less satisfactory. The WebTV browser also translated HTML frames as tables in order to avoid the need for a mouse. When the MSN TV 2 released, Microsoft had decided to forgo reformatting pages and added sideways scrolling as well as the ability to resize text on web pages with buttons on the MSN TV keyboard. Starting in
9261-556: The RAM, and introduced the LaserWriter , the first reasonably priced PostScript laser printer . PageMaker , an early desktop publishing application taking advantage of the PostScript language, was also released by Aldus Corporation in July 1985. It has been suggested that the combination of Macintosh, LaserWriter, and PageMaker was responsible for the creation of the desktop publishing market. This dominant position in
9408-1057: The Spring of 1999, Japanese WebTV subscribers also had the option of utilizing Sega's Dreamcast video game console, which came with a built-in modem, to access the WebTV service. This was possible as Sega and Microsoft collaborated to create a port of the WebTV technology on the Dreamcast, using the Windows CE abstraction layer supported on the console and what's believed to be a version of the Internet Explorer 2.0 browser engine. The Japanese service ended some time in March 2002. As an ease-of-use design consideration, WebTV early on decided to reformat pages rather than have users doing sideways scrolling. As entry-level PCs evolved from VGA resolution of 640x480 to SVGA resolution of 800x600, and web site dimensions followed suit, reformatting
9555-622: The Web via their TV sets, create their own websites, shop online, chat, and access e-mail. This initiative was the first broadband implementation of MSN TV. In late 2004, Microsoft introduced MSN TV 2. Codenamed the "Deuce", it was capable of broadband access, and it introduced a revamped user interface and new capabilities. These include offline viewing of media (so long as a user had already logged in prior), audio and video streaming (broadband only), Adobe Reader, support for viewing Microsoft Office documents (namely Microsoft Word ), Windows Media Player,
9702-529: The WebTV set-top box was a dedicated web-browsing appliance that did not need to be based on a standard operating system , the cost of licensing one could be avoided. All WebTV and original MSN TV boxes featured a 32-bit MIPS RISC CPU , boot ROM, storage, RAM, and a smart card reader, which was not significantly utilized. The web browser that ran on the set-top boxes was developed in-house, but compatible with both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer standards. The WebTV set-top boxes leveraged
9849-412: The ability to access Windows computers on a home network to function as a media player, and even the ability the use of a mouse. MSN TV 2 also later introduced features originally seen in the first generation of MSN TV, such as its Beatnik MIDI engine and the ability to play background music while surfing the web. MSN TV 2 used a different online service from the original WebTV/MSN TV, but it offered many of
9996-455: The ability to serve both standard web content and specialized service content to WebTV/MSN TV users. It also introduced its own protocol extensions, which include but aren't limited to 128-bit RC4 -based message encryption, ticket-based authorization, proprietary challenge–response authentication to both verify clients logging in to the service and to supply them session keys used for message encryption, and persistent connections. This protocol
10143-598: The air via satellite broadcast on satellite units. The set-top boxes were also designed so that at a specified time, it would check to see if there was any email waiting for the user. If there was, it would illuminate a red LED on the front of the box so the consumer would know it was worth connecting to read their email. The first WebTV Classic set-top boxes from Sony and Philips in 1996 had a 33.6k modem, 2 MB of RAM, 2 MB of boot ROM, and 2 MB of flash ROM. They also contained an ASIC named FIDO, designed by WebTV Networks and manufactured by NEC, which handled graphics processing that
10290-518: The boxes still worked with Dish Network service well into the mid-2000s. UltimateTV was a satellite-based DVR made for DirecTV that made use a dual satellite tuner to allow a user to watch or record two shows at once. It would take advantage of new hardware to achieve this, using an upgraded version of the Solo ASIC named SOLO2. This version of the ASIC has the ability to process several video streams at
10437-582: The business world: VisiCalc , a spreadsheet program released in 1979. VisiCalc created a business market for the Apple II and gave home users an additional reason to buy an Apple II: compatibility with the office, but Apple II market share remained behind home computers made by competitors such as Atari , Commodore , and Tandy . On December 12, 1980, Apple (ticker symbol "AAPL") went public selling 4.6 million shares at $ 22 per share ($ .10 per share when adjusting for stock splits as of September 3, 2022 ), generating over $ 100 million, which
10584-414: The combination of network data transfer latencies (physically transferring the data over the network) and contention latencies (waiting for the server to process other nodes' requests before yours) can lead to an unacceptable degradation in performance compared to using local drives, depending on the nature of the application and the capacity of the network infrastructure and the server. Another example of
10731-482: The company has a large following and enjoys a high level of brand loyalty . Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, by Steve Jobs , Steve Wozniak , and Ronald Wayne as a partnership . The company's first product is the Apple I , a computer designed and hand-built entirely by Wozniak. To finance its creation, Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus , and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator. Neither received
10878-688: The core of its computer offerings. The next month, in August 1997, Steve Jobs convinced Microsoft to make a $ 150 million investment in Apple and a commitment to continue developing Mac software. This was seen as an "antitrust insurance policy" for Microsoft which had recently settled with the Department of Justice over anti-competitive practices in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case. Around then, Jobs donated Apple's internal library and archives to Stanford University , to focus more on
11025-428: The current shape for almost all modern laptops. The same year, Apple introduced System 7 , a major upgrade to the Macintosh operating system, adding color to the interface and introducing new networking capabilities. The success of the lower-cost Macs and PowerBook brought increasing revenue. For some time, Apple was doing very well, introducing fresh new products at increasing profits. The magazine MacAddict named
11172-402: The desktop publishing market allowed the company to focus on higher price points, the so-called "high-right policy" named for the position on a chart of price vs. profits. Newer models selling at higher price points offered higher profit margin , and appeared to have no effect on total sales as power users snapped up every increase in speed. Although some worried about pricing themselves out of
11319-505: The desktop publishing market and estranged many of its original consumer customer base who could no longer afford Apple products. The Christmas season of 1989 was the first in the company's history to have declining sales, which led to a 20% drop in Apple's stock price. During this period, the relationship between Sculley and Gassée deteriorated, leading Sculley to effectively demote Gassée in January 1990 by appointing Michael Spindler as
11466-488: The device: Brian Salter, Michael Pukish and Peter Drescher. In addition to Igor, Thomas Dolby 's audio technology company Beatnik (then known as Headspace) also composed music for the device. This led to Beatnik acquiring Igor and its SoundMusicSys engine, which later became the Beatnik Audio Engine. Dolby considered the usage of sequenced audio to be saving physical space within the devices, while satisfying
11613-404: The end of the first week. In May 2010, Apple's market cap exceeded that of competitor Microsoft for the first time since 1989. In June 2010, Apple released the iPhone 4 , which introduced video calling using FaceTime , multitasking , and a new design with an exposed stainless steel frame as the phone's antenna system. Later that year, Apple again refreshed the iPod line by introducing
11760-514: The entire Mac product line—over one year sooner than announced. The Power Mac, iBook, and PowerBook brands were retired during the transition; the Mac Pro , MacBook , and MacBook Pro became their respective successors. Apple also introduced Boot Camp in 2006 to help users install Windows XP or Windows Vista on their Intel Macs alongside Mac OS X. Apple's success during this period was evident in its stock price . Between early 2003 and 2006,
11907-788: The financing after being told that Sony had backed out, WebTV would have gone bankrupt and Perlman would have lost everything. Brentwood decided to proceed with the financing despite losing Sony's involvement, and further financing from Paul Allen 's Vulcan Ventures soon followed. WebTV then proceeded to close a non-exclusive WebTV set-top box distribution deal with Philips, which provided competitive pressure causing Sony to change its mind, to resume its relationship with WebTV and also to distribute WebTV. The company Igor Software Laboratories, founded by Steve Hales and Jim Nitchals, licensed its SoundMusicSys engine to WebTV, allowing it to play music in formats such as MIDI . Igor contracted three additional musicians to create original music and sound effects for
12054-510: The first consumer devices to incorporate hard disks, including the WebTV Plus, and the WebTV Digital Video Recorders. Gates' interest was piqued, and negotiations between Microsoft and WebTV rapidly proceeded to closure, with both sides working around the clock to get the deal done. Negotiation time was so short that the hour lost due to the change to Daylight Saving Time the night before the planned announcement, which
12201-504: The first of more than 500 stores around the world. Third, on October 23, 2001, the iPod portable digital audio player debuted. The product was first sold on November 10, 2001, and was extremely successful, with over 100 million units sold within six years. In 2003, the iTunes Store was introduced with music downloads for 99¢ a song and iPod integration. It quickly became the market leader in online music services, with over 5 billion downloads by June 19, 2008. Two years later,
12348-564: The first satellite Digital Video Recorders (the DishPlayer for EchoStar 's Dish Network and UltimateTV for DirecTV ), Microsoft's cable TV products, the Xbox 360 hardware, and Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV platform. In May 1999, America Online announced that it was going to compete directly with Microsoft in delivering Internet over television sets by introducing AOL TV . In June 1999, Steve Perlman left Microsoft and started Rearden,
12495-399: The first three months as reviews started to come in. Jobs had required 128 kilobytes of RAM, which limited its speed and software in favor of aspiring for a projected price point of $ 1,000 (equivalent to $ 2,900 in 2023). The Macintosh shipped for $ 2,495 (equivalent to $ 7,300 in 2023), a price panned by critics due to its slow performance. In early 1985, this sales slump triggered
12642-492: The first year, WebTV had no other distribution partner in place, and just before WebTV was to close venture capital financing from Brentwood Associates , Sony sent WebTV a certified letter stating it had decided not to proceed with WebTV. It was a critical juncture for WebTV, because the Brentwood financing had been predicated on the expectation of a future relationship with Sony, and if Brentwood had decided to not proceed with
12789-411: The first-generation service to Microsoft accounts and to migrate any favorites and other data they had on their MSN TV accounts to SkyDrive. Once September 30, 2013 finally arrived, the WebTV/MSN TV service fully closed. Existing customers were offered MSN Dial-Up Internet Access accounts with a promotion. Customer service was available for non-technical and billing questions until January 15, 2014. Since
12936-440: The following year. It was renamed Apple Inc. in 2007 as the company had expanded its focus from computers to consumer electronics. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue , with US$ 391.04 billion in 2024. The company was founded to produce and market Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Its second computer, the Apple II , became a best seller as one of the first mass-produced microcomputers . Apple introduced
13083-446: The form of first hand accounts from people who worked for or collaborated with WebTV Networks to develop games for it, and a leak that occurred in August 1998 where the WebTV hacking scene discovered a games section on an internal WebTV server that offered options to download WebTV Plus ports of Doom and You Don't Know Jack. Two revisions of the Solo ASIC are known to have been used in the WebTV Plus throughout its lifespan: SOLO1 and SOLO3,
13230-771: The framework for the original Microsoft TV platform. In 2001, EchoStar sued Microsoft for failing to support the WebTV DishPlayer. EchoStar subsequently sought to acquire DirecTV and was the presumptive acquirer, but EchoStar was ultimately blocked by the Federal Communications Commission. While EchoStar's lawsuit against Microsoft was in process, DirecTV (presumptively acquired and controlled by EchoStar) dropped UltimateTV (thus ending Microsoft's satellite product initiatives) and picked TiVo's DirecTV product as its only Digital Video Recorder offering. Hackers eventually figured out ways to exploit
13377-529: The full selling price but in total earned $ 1,300 (equivalent to $ 7,000 in 2023). Wozniak debuted the first prototype Apple I at the Homebrew Computer Club in July 1976. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard with CPU , RAM , and basic textual-video chips—a base kit concept which was not yet marketed as a complete personal computer. It was priced soon after debut for $ 666.66 (equivalent to $ 3,600 in 2023). Wozniak later said he
13524-534: The hardware to allow the new TV-based features to be possible and enhance the set top box's graphical capabilities. Named "Solo", it was announced to have support for 3-D transformations, compositing, on-the-fly image decompression, anti-aliasing, and translucency. The enhanced graphics capabilities of the Solo also allowed WebTV Networks to experiment with the idea of making WebTV Plus a platform for video gaming alongside web browsing, which currently only has confirmation in
13671-458: The iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad (released November 3, 2012). Apple also released a third-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display and new iMac and Mac Mini computers. On August 20, 2012, Apple's rising stock price increased the company's market capitalization to a then-record $ 624 billion. This beat the non-inflation-adjusted record for market capitalization previously set by Microsoft in 1999. On August 24, 2012,
13818-518: The iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch , Mac , and Apple TV ; operating systems such as iOS , iPadOS , and macOS ; and various software and services including Apple Pay , iCloud , and multimedia streaming services like Apple Music and Apple TV+ . Apple is one of the Big Five American information technology companies; for the most part since 2011, Apple has been the world's largest company by market capitalization , and, as of 2023 ,
13965-465: The iTunes Store was the world's largest music retailer. In 2002, Apple purchased Nothing Real for its advanced digital compositing application Shake , and Emagic for the music productivity application Logic . The purchase of Emagic made Apple the first computer manufacturer to own a music software company. The acquisition was followed by the development of Apple's consumer-level GarageBand application. The release of iPhoto that year completed
14112-562: The iTunes Store, effective in May 2007. Other record labels eventually followed suit and Apple published a press release in January 2009 to announce that all songs on the iTunes Store are available without their FairPlay DRM. In July 2008, Apple launched the App Store to sell third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch . Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and registered an average daily revenue of $ 1 million, with Jobs speculating in August 2008 that
14259-432: The incorporation of Apple. During the first five years of operations, revenues grew exponentially, doubling about every four months. Between September 1977 and September 1980, yearly sales grew from $ 775,000 to US$ 118 million, an average annual growth rate of 533%. The Apple II , also designed by Wozniak, was introduced on April 16, 1977, at the first West Coast Computer Faire . It differs from its major rivals,
14406-408: The industry". In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the iTunes Store without digital rights management , thereby allowing tracks to be played on third-party players if record labels would agree to drop the technology. On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in
14553-620: The internet, send e-mail, and access other WebTV services. DishPlayer was also the only WebTV-based box to officially have games released for it, which were downloaded and updated over satellite. Three games were offered on the DishPlayer: Doom , You Don't Know Jack (a port of the Netshow version), and Solitaire . Two models of the DishPlayer were released: the 7100 and 7200, which had 8.6 GB and 17.6 GB of hard disk space respectively. EchoStar stopped selling DishPlayer boxes in 2001, but
14700-502: The late 90s, WebTV Networks produced reference designs of models incorporating a disk-based personal video recorder and a satellite tuner for EchoStar 's Dish Network and for DirecTV . These would be named the DishPlayer and UltimateTV respectively. DishPlayer launched in late 1999 and was touted as "the world's first interactive satellite TV receiver". The DishPlayer is the first satellite-based DVR from Dish Network, and used
14847-556: The latter mainly being used in the New Plus revision of the model. Around Fall 1998, plans for a "Derby" revision of the WebTV Plus were announced, which was rumored to have a faster CPU and more memory. Circa late 1998 or early 1999, only one Derby unit was produced by Sony as a silent revision of their INT-W200 Plus model, but no substantial changes were made to the hardware outside of the CPU being upgraded with no change in clock speed, and
14994-416: The local dial-up access number on victims' boxes to 911 . This number would be dialled the next time the WebTV/MSN TV box had to dial in. It was sent to 18 MSN TV users through an attachment in an email, and disguised itself by showing an interface for a "tool" that could change the colors and fonts of the MSN TV user interface. It was supposedly forwarded to 3 other users by some of the initial victims, making
15141-576: The location of processing. Apple Inc Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered and incorporated in Cupertino, California , in Silicon Valley . It is best known for its consumer electronics , software , and services . Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Company by Steve Jobs , Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne , the company was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc.
15288-505: The lower-priced Wintel duopoly of the Microsoft Windows operating system on Intel -powered PC clones . In 1997, Apple was weeks away from bankruptcy . To resolve its failed operating system strategy, it bought NeXT, effectively bringing Jobs back to the company, who guided Apple back to profitability over the next decade with the introductions of the iMac , iPod , iPhone , and iPad devices to critical acclaim as well as
15435-487: The market, the high-right policy was in full force by the mid-1980s, due to Jean-Louis Gassée's slogan of "fifty-five or die", referring to the 55% profit margins of the Macintosh II . This policy began to backfire late in the decade as desktop publishing programs appeared on IBM PC compatibles with some of the same functionality of the Macintosh at far lower price points. The company lost its dominant position in
15582-506: The modem being changed to a softmodem. As chip prices dropped, later versions of the Plus used an M-Systems DiskOnChip flash ROM instead, alongside increasing RAM capacity to 16 MB. In Japan, WebTV had a small run starting around December 1997, with a couple "Classic" Japanese units being released at launch, which came with hard drives, the same amount of RAM as an Old Plus, and two times more boot ROM than American Classic and Old Plus units. In
15729-663: The monthly service fees. By the spring of 1996 WebTV Networks employed approximately 70 people, many of them finishing their senior year at nearby Stanford University , or former employees of either Apple Computer or General Magic . WebTV had started negotiating with Sony to manufacture and distribute the WebTV set-top box, but negotiations had taken much longer than WebTV had expected, and WebTV had used up its initial funding. Steve Perlman liquidated his assets, ran up his credit cards and mortgaged his house to provide bridge financing while seeking additional venture capital. Because Sony had insisted upon exclusive distribution rights for
15876-418: The most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world. In June 2011, Jobs surprisingly took the stage and unveiled iCloud , an online storage and syncing service for music, photos, files, and software which replaced MobileMe , Apple's previous attempt at content syncing. This would be the last product launch Jobs would attend before his death. On August 24, 2011, Jobs resigned his position as CEO of Apple. He
16023-621: The needs of television viewers wanting audio to accompany the internet. WebTV was announced on July 10, 1996, generating a large wave of press attention as not only the first television-based use of the World Wide Web, but also as the first consumer-electronics device to access the World Wide Web without a personal computer. After the product's announcement, the company closed additional venture financing, including investments from Microsoft Corporation , Citicorp , Seagate Technology , Inc., Times Mirror Company , and other companies. WebTV
16170-527: The nodes), installing software and maintaining installed software can be more efficient. Furthermore, any system changes made during operation (due to user action, worms, viruses, etc.) can be either wiped out when the power is removed (if the image is copied to a local RAM disk) such as Windows XP Embedded remote boot or prohibited entirely (if the image is a network filesystem). This allows use in public access areas (such as libraries ) or in schools etc., where users might wish to experiment or attempt to "hack"
16317-541: The parties had neglected to factor into their schedule, almost left them without enough time to finish the deal. On April 6, 1997, 20 months after WebTV's founding, and only six weeks after negotiations with Microsoft began, during a scheduled speech at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas, Nevada , Craig Mundie announced that Microsoft had acquired WebTV. The acquisition price
16464-505: The period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh. The success of lower-cost consumer Macs, especially the LC, cannibalized higher-priced machines. To address this, management introduced several new brands, selling largely identical machines at different price points, for different markets: the high-end Quadra series, the mid-range Centris series, and the consumer-marketed Performa series. This led to significant consumer confusion between so many models. In 1993,
16611-399: The powerful processing power of even the slowest of contemporary CPUs, which would tend to sit idle for much of the time under the centralized computing model. The operating system (OS) for a diskless node is loaded from a server, using network booting . In some cases, removable storage may be used to initiate the bootstrap process, such as a USB flash drive , or other bootable media such as
16758-451: The present and the future rather than the past. He ended the Mac clone deals and in September 1997, purchased the largest clone maker, Power Computing . On November 10, 1997, the Apple Store website launched, which was tied to a new build-to-order manufacturing model similar to PC manufacturer Dell 's success. The moves paid off for Jobs; at the end of his first year as CEO, the company had
16905-420: The price of Apple's stock increased more than tenfold, from around $ 6 per share ( split-adjusted ) to over $ 80. When Apple surpassed Dell's market cap in January 2006, Jobs sent an email to Apple employees saying Dell's CEO Michael Dell should eat his words. Nine years prior, Dell had said that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders". During his keynote speech at
17052-417: The requests were coming from the account holder or not. Hackers also found a way to connect to internal WebTV services and discovered WebTV content that was previously unknown to the public, including a version of Doom for WebTV Plus units that could be downloaded from one of these services at one point. WebTV/MSN TV was also victim to a virus written in July 2002 by 43 year old David Jeansonne, which changed
17199-404: The same services, such as chatrooms, instant messaging, weather, news, aggregated "info centers", and newsgroups, and like that service, still required a subscription to use. For those with broadband, the fee was US$ 99 yearly. For inexpensive devices, the cost of licensing the operating system is substantial. For Microsoft, however, it would be actualizing a sunk cost , and when Microsoft released
17346-467: The same time and included a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to allow digital content to be displayed on analog television sets. While the user interface and internet service for UltimateTV are similar to WebTV/MSN TV's, the UltimateTV software now uses Windows CE as its underlying OS as opposed to a custom one like the standard WebTV and MSN TV firmware used. This Windows CE–based OS would be used as
17493-402: The server—the only software that runs on a thin client is the "thin" (i.e. relatively small and simple) client software, which handles simple input/output tasks to communicate with the user, such as drawing a dialog box on the display or waiting for user input. A collective term encompassing both thin client computing, and its technological predecessor, text terminals (which are text-only),
17640-402: The service's security with vulnerable URLs, resulting in access to internal sections of the production WebTV service such as "Tricks," which hosted several pages designed to troubleshoot the WebTV box and service; the ability to remotely change the settings of a subscriber's box; or even remotely performing actions on any account, including deleting them, which the service did not verify on whether
17787-425: The service's server-side caching proxy which reformatted and compressed web pages before sending them to the box, a feature generally unavailable to dial-up ISP users at the time and as such, had to be developed by WebTV Networks. Given the fact that WebTV's thin client software was stored in non-volatile memory , upgrades could be downloaded from the WebTV service onto set-top boxes over a phone line, as well as over
17934-435: The set-top box. The television feed could be viewed in full screen, in a PIP (Picture-In-Picture) window, or used to capture video stills as a JPEG that could then be uploaded to a WebTV/MSN TV discussion post, email, or a "scrapbook" on a user's account for later use. WebTV Plus also allowed one to schedule a VCR in a manner like TiVo allowed several years later. The Plus upgraded to a 167 MHz R4640 processor, included
18081-502: The space for very low rent, but it was suboptimal for technology development. Before incorporation, the company referred to itself as Artemis Research to disguise the nature of its business. The info page of its original website explained that it was studying " sleep deprivation , poor diet and no social life for extended periods on humans and dwarf rabbits". The dwarf rabbit reference was an inside joke among WebTV's engineers – Phil Goldman's pet house rabbit Bowser (inspiration for
18228-504: The strong encryption, and shortly thereafter, laws concerning export of cryptography in the United States were changed to generally permit the export of strong encryption. In February 1997, in an investor meeting with Microsoft, Steve Perlman was approached by Microsoft's Senior Vice President for Consumer Platforms Division, Craig Mundie. Despite the fact that the initial WebTV sales had been modest, Mundie expressed that Microsoft
18375-413: The system. However, it is not necessary to implement network booting to achieve either of the above advantages - ordinary PCs (with the help of appropriate software) can be configured to download and reinstall their operating systems on (e.g.) a nightly basis, with extra work compared to using shared disk image that diskless nodes boot off. Modern diskless nodes can share the very same disk image, using
18522-434: The time resulted in the following message being shown: "Sorry, MSN TV hardware is no longer available for purchase from Microsoft. Microsoft continues to support the subscription service for existing WebTV and MSN TV customers." On July 1, 2013, an email was sent out to subscribers stating that the MSN TV service would be shutting down on September 30, 2013. During that time, subscribers were advised to convert any accounts on
18669-500: The time. Because WebTV was widely distributed in consumer electronic stores under the Sony and Philips brands for only US$ 325, its munitions classification was used to argue that the US should no longer consider devices incorporating strong encryption to be munitions, and should permit their export. Two years later, in October 1998, WebTV obtained a special exemption permitting its export, despite
18816-492: The total victim count 21. At least 10 of the victims reported having the police show up at their homes as a result of their boxes dialing 911. There are also claims of the virus having the ability to mass-mail itself, although this was not properly confirmed at the time the virus was prevalent. Jeansonne was eventually arrested in February 2004, and pled guilty on the charges of intentionally causing damage to computers and causing
18963-480: Was US$ 19.95 per month for unlimited Web surfing and e-mail. There was little difference between the first Sony and the Philips WebTV set-top boxes, except for the housing and packaging. The WebTV set-top box had very limited processing and memory resources, housing a 112 MHz R4640 MIPS CPU, 2 megabytes of RAM, 2 megabytes of ROM, and 1 megabyte of Flash memory. The device relied upon a connection through
19110-537: Was US$ 503 million, but WebTV was so young a company that most of the employees' stock options had yet to be vested . As such, the vested shares at the time of the announcement amounted to US$ 425 million, and that was the acquisition price announced. Each of the three founders received $ 64 million from the sale. Subsequent to the acquisition, WebTV became a Silicon Valley–based division of Microsoft, with Steve Perlman as its president. The WebTV division began developing most of Microsoft's television-based products, including
19257-429: Was a way of bringing computers to average people. Co-founder Steve Perlman is credited with the idea for the device. He first combined computer and television as a high-school student when he decided his home PC needed a graphics display. He went on to build software for companies such as Apple and Atari . While working at General Magic , the idea of bringing TVs and computers together resurfaced. One night, Perlman
19404-402: Was browsing the web and came across a Campbell's soup website with recipes. He thought that the people who might be interested in what the site had to offer were not using the web. It occurred to him that if the television audience was enabled by a device to augment television viewing with receiving information or commercial offers through the television, then perhaps the web address could act as
19551-474: Was capable of video output to NTSC and, reportedly, PAL, as well as handling system logic for IR and controlling the LEDs on the front of the box. Future models would start using 56k modems and introduce increased RAM and storage capacity. A second model, the WebTV Plus, was introduced a year after the release of the original boxes. This model featured a TV tuner and composite inputs to allow watching television from
19698-480: Was delivering a richly engineered but expensive experience. Apple relied on high profit margins and never developed a clear response; it sued Microsoft for making a GUI similar to the Lisa in Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. The lawsuit dragged on for years and was finally dismissed. The major product flops and the rapid loss of market share to Windows sullied Apple's reputation, and in 1993 Sculley
19845-490: Was derived from selling the WebTV set-top box. WebTV's income was derived from operating the WebTV Service, the Internet-based service to which the set-top boxes connected and for which it collected a fee from WebTV subscribers. The service provided features such as HTML-based email, and proxied websites, which were reformatted by the service before they were sent to set-top box, to make them display more efficiently on
19992-458: Was finalized on February 9, 1997, and the board brought Jobs back to Apple as an advisor. On July 9, 1997, Jobs staged a boardroom coup that resulted in Amelio's resignation after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses. The board named Jobs as interim CEO and he immediately reviewed the product lineup. Jobs canceled 70% of models, ending 3,000 jobs and paring to
20139-659: Was impressed with WebTV and saw significant potential both in WebTV's product offering and in applying the technology to other Microsoft consumer and video product offerings. Microsoft offered to acquire WebTV, build a Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley around WebTV, and establish WebTV as a Microsoft division to develop television-based products and services, with Perlman as the division's president. Discussions proceeded rapidly, involving Bill Gates , then CEO of Microsoft, personally. Gates called Perlman at his home on Easter Sunday in March 1997, and Perlman described to Gates WebTV's next generation products in development, which would be
20286-598: Was launched as Final Cut Pro in April 1999. Key Grip's development also led to Apple's release of the consumer video-editing product iMovie in October 1999. Apple acquired the German company Astarte in April 2000, which had developed the DVD authoring software DVDirector, which Apple repackaged as the professional-oriented DVD Studio Pro , and reused its technology to create iDVD for the consumer market. In 2000, Apple purchased
20433-519: Was launched on September 18, 1996, within one year after its first round of financing, with WebTV set-top boxes in stores from Sony and Philips, and WebTV's online service running from servers in its tiny office, still based in the former BMW dealership. The initial price for the WebTV set-top box was US$ 349 for the Sony version and US$ 329 for the Philips version, with a wireless keyboard available for about an extra US$ 50. The monthly service fee initially
20580-582: Was more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956. By the end of the day, around 300 millionaires were created, including Jobs and Wozniak, from a stock price of $ 29 per share and a market cap of $ 1.778 billion. In December 1979, Steve Jobs and Apple employees, including Jef Raskin , visited Xerox PARC , where they observed the Xerox Alto , featuring a graphical user interface (GUI). Apple subsequently negotiated access to PARC's technology, leading to Apple's option to buy shares at
20727-500: Was on January 19, 2012, when Apple's Phil Schiller introduced iBooks Textbooks for iOS and iBook Author for Mac OS X in New York City. Jobs stated in the biography Steve Jobs that he wanted to reinvent the textbook industry and education. From 2011 to 2012, Apple released the iPhone 4s and iPhone 5 , which featured improved cameras, an intelligent software assistant named Siri , and cloud-synced data with iCloud;
20874-581: Was replaced as CEO by Gil Amelio , who was hired for his reputation as a corporate rehabilitator. Amelio made deep changes, including extensive layoffs and cost-cutting. This period was also marked by numerous failed attempts to modernize the Macintosh operating system (MacOS). The original Macintosh operating system ( System 1 ) was not built for multitasking (running several applications at once). The company attempted to correct this by introducing cooperative multitasking in System 5, but still decided it needed
21021-607: Was replaced as CEO by Michael Spindler . Under Spindler, Apple, IBM , and Motorola formed the AIM alliance in 1994 to create a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform or PReP), with IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind and thus counter the dominance of Windows. That year, Apple introduced
21168-472: Was replaced by Cook and Jobs became Apple's chairman. Apple did not have a chairman at the time and instead had two co-lead directors— Andrea Jung and Arthur D. Levinson —who continued with those titles until Levinson replaced Jobs as chairman of the board in November after Jobs's death. On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs died, marking the end of an era for Apple. The next major product announcement by Apple
21315-467: Was still grossing US$ 150 million per year in revenue with 65% gross margin. Because WebTV utilized strong encryption , specifically the 128-bit encryption (not SSL) used to communicate with its proprietary service, upon launch in 1996, WebTV was classified as " munitions " (a military weapon) by the United States government and was therefore barred from export under United States security laws at
21462-554: Was supported by all WebTV and original MSN TV clients and the Sega Dreamcast release of WebTV up until the September 2013 discontinuation of the entire service (March 2002 for those in Japan). Another protocol used by the original service is dubbed "Mail Notify", a UDP-based protocol that would track online clients and send periodic datagrams directly to clients to notify them of new e-mail. Its existence has only been confirmed in
21609-541: Was unaware of the coincidental mark of the beast in the number 666, and that he came up with the price because he liked "repeating digits". Apple Computer, Inc. was incorporated in Cupertino, California , on January 3, 1977, without Wayne, who had left and sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $ 800 only twelve days after having co-founded it. Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $ 250,000 (equivalent to $ 1,257,000 in 2023) to Jobs and Wozniak during
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