1970 to 1979: Computers and Software Begin Creating Wealth - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 138

is probably the first “clone” that was advertised as being plug-compatible with the
Altair 8800.
Apple Computer
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak finished building the famous Apple 1 computer on
April 1, 1976, and incorporated Apple on January 3, 1977, in Cupertino, Califor-
nia. Apple would grow to become one of the world's wealthiest corporations.
En route to this milestone, Apple would adopt Objective C as its main program-
ming language; pioneer elegant and popular devices such as the iPod, iPhone, and
iPad; and develop scores of innovative software applications.
Other popular technologies by Apple would involve creating the most success-
ful online music business, creating a set of popular Apple stores throughout the
world, and in general innovating across a broad range of computer and software
technologies.
Readers interested in the deeper history of Apple can read Walter Isaacson's
book Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography , published by Simon and Schuster. This
book is a fascinating biography of a brilliant but decidedly erratic individual.
Baan
The Baan Corporation was created in 1978 by Jan Baan in the Netherlands. It star-
ted as a consulting company, but Jan and his brother Paul soon built an interesting
software application in the ERP sector.
For a while, Baan grew rapidly and acquired many other software companies.
It had a good technical reputation for its fast and capable database and ERP pack-
ages. Baan became a public company in 1995 and was listed on NASDAQ.
In 1998, Baan got into financial trouble and began to lose its market share.
After a string of consecutive losing quarters, Baan was acquired in 2000 by a
British company named Invensys. One of the reasons for the sale was that Baan
had been accused of exaggerating sales volumes, which lowered its reputation and
value.
Computer Associates (CA)
CA was founded in 1979 by Charles Wang and Russell Artzt in Islandia, New
York. CA was a pioneer in the business-to-business (B2B) software domain. CA
specialized in a variety of business software applications such as accounting, fin-
ance, order entry, and the like.