Lesson 2. IT organizations
Match each word to a suitable definition
1 | Provider | A | the making of goods or wares by manual labor, | 2 | Manufacture | B | an electronic document in which data is arranged in the rows and columns of a grid | 3 | Spreadsheet | C | information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc. which is used as a basis for improvement. | 4 | Feedback | D | a person who gives someone something they need. | 5 | Entertain (v) | E | provide (someone) with amusement or enjoyment. | 6 | Launch (v)
| F | all the people employed by a particular organization. | 7 | Staff | G | start or set in motion (an activity or enterprise). |
What is Apple?
Apple, based in Cupertino, CA, is one of the most valuable companies in the world. It produces popular digital gadgets, including Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads.
The company was founded in 1976 by two young hackers, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Its second product, the Apple II, was the first personal computer to achieve mass-market success. The Macintosh, released in 1984, introduced the modern graphical user interface to the mainstream.
Apple began to struggle after its board ousted Steve Jobs from the company in 1985. When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was close to bankruptcy. Then Jobs led a spectacular recovery, introducing the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010. The result: Apple earned almost $40 billion in profits in its 2014 fiscal year.
Jobs died of pancreatic cancer in 2011. Since then, the company has been led by Tim Cook, Jobs's longtime deputy.
Apple has been a Silicon Valley trend-setter for almost four decades. The Apple II, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad have all been widely emulated — if not outright copied — by Apple's competitors.
Apple's success is due in large part to its obsessive focus on the user experience. Apple is a designer-centric company that likes to build all parts of a product — hardware, software, and online services — itself. That approach has allowed Apple to build some of the most elegant and user-friendly products ever created.
What is a Macintosh?
The Macintosh, or Mac, is a line of personal computers Apple has sold since 1984. The original Macintosh was the first commercially successful computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI) based on a mouse. It cost $2495, or about $5700 in 2014 dollars.
The basic ideas of the Macintosh interface — windows, menus, icons, and the like — were developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s. But Xerox never made a serious effort to turn the technology into a commercial product. Steve Jobs secured a demo of Xerox's technology for his engineers, who began working on their own implementation.
The original Macintosh had significant limits. It had a tiny black-and-white display, no hard drive, and barely enough computing power to run its complex graphical software. But subsequent models were more powerful. Apple brought color to the Macintosh with the Macintosh II in 1987.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |