What if Apple, Inc. NEVER EXISTED?

It's an interesting concept... just like the idea of what would happen if you kill a butterfly in the past... though this would be much more major as Apple is a industry leader and pioneer in many fields... so a few things that would get effected would be those popularized, standardized, or invented by Apple or companies that broke off from Apple:

1. Apple II 1977, first mainstream and popularized Personal Computer. Even though others like RadioShack had computers themselves, it was the Apple II that truly got the PC industry going.

2. Apple Lisa 1981: Bill Atkinson, a brilliant person created many of the modern UI elements people use each and every day for the Apple Lisa during 1978-1981. A few inventions of his include: The Menu bar, marching ants, scroll bars, HyperCard (inspiring many features of the World Wide Web like the HTTP protocol, JavaScript, and Java), He also invented the context based graphics refresh technique that only refreshes part of the screen that needs an update rather than the entire screen, speeding up rendering. This would later be reused and is still in use in every single modern GUI. His' LisaGraph and later QuickDraw API and technology would be used by many different OSes, including Windows up to Windows XP for drawing the UI. He's the reason why the title bar of windows stretches the entire length, why there's a title on the Window, why scroll bars are on the right, etc etc.

3. Macintosh 1984: The Mac was an utter failure when first launched. It was designed for Small business, education, and high end consumer markets. However, it started a revolution, a revolution similar to Apple's iOS platform today.. and even back then people were iffy on the idea of a GUI and mouse based user input:

   The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a “mouse”. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I don’t want one of these new fangled devices. - John Dvorak 1984, Review of the Macintosh

4. NeXT and Pixar, 1986: if Steve hadn't founded Apple, he would not have left it, falling into a deep depressive and even suicidal state eventually leading to a new computer company called NeXT and his $10 million dollar purchase of George Lucas' CGI devision and founding Pixar. Pixar is an industry leading R&D and motion picture company, they started doing commercials like the classic Life Saver ads, began working with Disney on projects like Beauty and the Beast, and their rendering technology being used on StarTrek and Terminator II. Today virtually all blockbuster films containing CGI use Pixar's RenderMan technology. NeXT was a pioneering company that invented many things we take for granted today such as right click contextual menus, software based shutdown, plug and play, composited based window managers, Component based object oriented environments (this would later lead to others like Microsoft creating Component Object Model, or COM), they even were the ones who originally used the iconic "X" for closing windows. NeXTstep, the OS was used as the platform in creating the World Wide Web on as it was an enterprise and network / interpersonal based system. Today we know NeXTstep as Mac OS X.

5. PDA, 1992: Apple coined the term PDA at CES 1992 for the Newton based MessagePad 100. It was a revolutionary device that lead to many others. Palm, who had many people, including it's first CEO, come from Apple was a very close partner until the early 2000s, In 2000 Apple was on the verge of buying Palm for it's IP in the use of the rumored iPhone at the time (iPhone rumors had begun in 1999 when Apple registered the iphone.org domain name). To create the Newton platform and device, Apple, Acron, and VLSI Technology co-founded a new company called ARM inc. There Apple created the ARM6 architecture for the Newton, the ARM6 is still in use today and is the primary choice for mobile devices including Apple's own iPhone - iPhone 3GS.

6. OnStar: OnStar is a cloud based service based on an older technology that comes from a company called General Magic. General Magic wanted to create a cloud based device in which everything, even computation was done on a server and the device would simply be the graphical interface to it. It originally started out as a small project at Apple, before it broke off due to high tensions with the Newton team. General Magic later fell apart, it's IP was given to Microsoft and it's cloud based service / technology was sold to General Motors.

There's a small tidbit of stuff that would dramatically change.

I could live without Windows but I think Apple, basically I would probably have one of those rubbish Sony or Samsung MP3 players and Windows would look rubbish because Windows used some of Apple's ideas, like search and so on.

So to conclude all this, if there was no such thing as Apple then I would basically not be living, no iPhone's, iPods or anything. Right now this site would look really different because Windows platform applications can't make this kind of site.

I probably would have never of exsisted.. wow thats a crazy thought

Since demand drives innovation, if apple never existed, some one else would have created something very similar to what apple has created.

If there is a demand for something, there will always be someone who is willing to invent/provide it.

Without Apple, Microsoft would have never created Windows. We'd still be using MS-DOS.

Apple revolutionized the world of technology. If Apple never existed, we would be sent flying back to the early 70's.

if apple was not there another company would be. we may not have the ipod as we know it now but we would have some thing similar.

If apple never exist we would have no iphone,ipad,mac,laptop,netbook,and ipod touch.

nobody would buy segways because the other steve(woz)would not be around.

we would all die. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh we can't live with out the world of apple.