Apple Inc., is an American multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing consumer electronics and closely related software products. Established in Cupertino, California on April 1, 1976, Apple develops, sells, and supports a series of personal computers, portable media players, mobile phones, computer software, and computer hardware and hardware accessories. As of September 2007, the company operates 194 retail stores in the United States, and more in the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, and Italy, and online stores where hardware and software products are sold.

The iTunes Store provides music, audiobooks, iPod games, music videos, episodes of television programs, and movies which can be downloaded using iTunes on Mac or Windows, and also on the iPod touch and the iPhone. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of personal computers, the iPod line of portable media players, and the iPhone. Apple's software products include the Mac OS X operating system, the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity software, and Final Cut Studio, a suite of professional audio- and film-industry software products.

The Intel Generation:
In the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote address on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs officially announced that Apple would begin producing Intel-based Mac computers beginning in 2006. On January 10, 2006, Apple released its first Intel chip computers, a new notebook computer known as the MacBook Pro and a new, though cosmetically identical, iMac with purportedly two to three times faster performance compared with its predecessor. Both used Intel's Core Duo chip technology. Through 2006, Apple transitioned the entire Mac product line to Intel chips, retaining the enclosure design while replacing its internal components. The Power Mac brand was retired, with Mac Pro being its successor. Apple also introduced a new piece of software called Boot Camp that helps users install Windows XP on their Intel Mac alongside Mac OS X.

Apple's success during this period, beginning in 1997 (the first year the company turned a profit after losses through 1995 and 1996), but accelerating between 2003 to 2005, was evident in its skyrocketing stock. Between early 2003 and January 2006, the price of a share of Apple's stock increased more than tenfold, from a little more than US$6 per share (split-adjusted) to more than US$80 per share. On January 13, 2006, Apple's market cap surpassed that of Dell. Nearly ten years prior, in 1997, Dell's CEO, Michael Dell, had asserted that if he ran Apple he would "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."