Today in Apple history

January 12, 2005: Apple reports record earnings for the preceding three months. Impressive iPod sales during the holiday period, and demand for the latest iBook laptop, give the company a four-fold increase in profits.

Apple brags that it sold a total of 10 million iPods, and rightly so. The massive popularity of the portable music player drives Apple to its highest earnings yet.

“We are thrilled to report the highest quarterly revenue and net income in Apple’s history,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a press release. “We’ve sold over 10 million iPods to date and are kicking off the new year with a slate of innovative new products including iPod shuffle, Mac mini and iLife ’05.”

January 11, 2005: Steve Jobs introduces the iPod shuffle, an entry-level music player that lacks a display. The device randomly shuffles the audio files it holds, but lets users easily skip songs they don’t like.

The first iPod to use flash memory, the iPod shuffle plugs directly into a computer using USB 2.0 and comes in 512MB and 1GB configurations. It’s smaller than a pack of gum — and weighs less than an ounce!

January 10, 2006: Steve Jobs unveils the original 15-inch MacBook Pro, Apple’s thinnest, fastest and lightest laptop yet.

Building on the previous PowerBook G4 laptop, the new laptop adds dual-core Intel processors for the first time. The MacBook Pro immediately makes waves in the tech community. And did we mention its awesome MagSafe connector?

January 9, 2007: Apple CEO Steve Jobs gives the world its first look at the iPhone onstage during the Macworld conference in San Francisco. The initial reaction to that first iPhone demo is mixed. But Jobs is confident that Apple has created a product that people want — even if they don’t know it yet.

The palm-size device combines an iPod, a phone and a PDA. The iPhone unveiling excites many Apple fans but critics remain skeptical.

January 8, 2004: The clumsily named iPod+HP, a Hewlett-Packard-branded iPod, debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Shown off by Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the prototype device is blue, the color used for HP’s branding. By the time it arrives on the market later that year, however, the digital music player is the same shade of white as the regular iPod. The device doesn’t hang around for long, either.

January 7, 1997: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak returns to the company to participate in an advisory role, reuniting with Steve Jobs onstage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Woz’s homecoming is revealed at the end of the Macworld conference. With Jobs’ recent return to Apple (thanks to the NeXT acquisition), it marks the first time the two co-founders have been at Apple together since 1983. It’s a great way to celebrate Apple’s 20th anniversary. Unfortunately, the reunion won’t last.

January 6, 1998: After taking over a company on the verge of bankruptcy, Steve Jobs shocks attendees at San Francisco’s Macworld Expo by revealing that Apple is profitable again. An Apple comeback is on the way!

Referring to the company’s strategy since he took over as interim CEO in September 1997, the recently returned Apple co-founder says, “It’s all come together for us.”

Little did most of us know exactly how astonishing Apple’s rebound would be.

January 5, 1999: Apple introduces its revised Power Mac G3 minitower, nicknamed the “Blue and White G3” or “Smurf Tower” to separate it from the earlier beige model.

The first new Power Mac since the colorful plastic iMac G3 shipped, the pro-level machine borrows the same transparent color scheme. Unfortunately, it doesn’t hang around too long.

January 4, 1995: Apple signs a deal with third-party Mac accessory-maker Radius, allowing the company to build Macintosh clones that run on Mac OS.

Radius is the second company to license the Macintosh operating system. (Power Computing did the same thing a month earlier.) However, Radius will become the first licensee to bring a clone to market when its System 100 ships in March 1995.

January 3, 1977: Apple Computer Co. is officially incorporated, with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak listed as co-founders. The Apple incorporation leaves out third founder Ron Wayne — who initially invested in the company — because he sold back his stake in Apple for $800.

The funding and expertise needed to turn Apple into a corporation is provided by a man named Mike Markkula, who becomes an important figure in the company’s history.

January 2, 1979: Entrepreneurs Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston incorporate their company Software Arts to publish a program called VisiCalc. The first spreadsheet software for the Apple II, VisiCalc ultimately becomes personal computing’s first “killer app.”

The software, which sells for $100, helps transform personal computers from “cool to have” toys into “must have” business accessories.

January 1, 1983: Apple launches the Apple IIe, the third model in the Apple II series — and the last before the Macintosh will arrive a year later.

It proves a big seller, and proof positive of the Apple II brand’s sustained value.

December 31, 2012: App piracy hub Hackulous shuts down, bringing an end to two of its most popular apps, Installous and AppSync.

The iPhone jailbreak tool Installous allowed users to install “cracked” or pirated apps on their iOS devices, thereby avoiding paying purchase fees to Apple or developers. AppSync let users sync their cracked apps with iTunes.

December 30, 1999: Microsoft hits the height of its 1990s dominance and begins its early-2000s decline, clearing a gap at the top for Apple.

After hitting an all-time high of $53.60, Microsoft stock starts to fall. Less than a year later, MSFT shares will fall more than 60% in value to $20.

December 29, 1999: Apple starts shipping its unfathomably large 22-inch Cinema Display, the biggest LCD computer display available anywhere,

Apple’s all-digital flat panel is a far cry from the bulky cathode ray tube monitor of the popular iMac G3, which took the world by storm the previous year. The Cinema Display is also Apple’s first widescreen display — and the first to sport a digital video interface.

December 28, 2006: As the rest of the country enjoys a much-deserved holiday, Apple gets embroiled in a stock option “backdating” scandal.

The news, centered on the dubious awarding of stock options to CEO Steve Jobs, prompts Apple share prices to fall. Some people even suggest Jobs might need to step down as Apple’s leader. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen.

December 27, 2010: Almost four months after the second-gen Apple TV’s debut, Cupertino says it has sold 1 million of the streaming video devices.

The news shows that Apple’s set-top box is gaining momentum. However, Apple’s PR move — which included a preemptive press release issued on December 21 that said Apple “expects sales of its new Apple TV to top one million units later this week” — is also a low-blow shot at competitor Roku, which recently said it planned to hit the 1 million unit mark by the end of 2010.

December 26, 1982: Time magazine names the personal computer its “Man of the Year.”

It’s the first time a nonhuman entity wins the award, which was created in 1927. And the award devastates Steve Jobs — because he thought the accolade would go to him.

December 25, 1977: Steve Wozniak spends the holidays building a prototype of the Disk II, the Apple II computer’s revolutionary floppy disk drive.

“I worked all day, all night, through Christmas and New Year’s trying to get it done,” Wozniak would later recall in his autobiography, iWoz. “[Early Apple employee] Randy Wiggington, who was actually attending Homestead High, the school Steve and I had graduated from, helped me a lot on that project.”

Wiggington takes December 25 off. Woz does not.

December 24, 2009: As rumors of a possible Apple tablet reach the boiling point, word spreads online that the new device will be called the iSlate.

The news is based on the fact that Apple quietly acquired the domain name iSlate.com a few years earlier. Since Apple did the same thing for the iPhone back in the late 1990s, years before the iPhone actually debuted, it makes total sense that the company would follow suit with the naming of its tablet.

Of course, that didn’t end up happening.

December 23, 2005: Apple files a patent application for its iconic “slide to unlock” gesture for the iPhone.

At this point, the iPhone remains a secret research project. However, the ability to unlock the device by sliding your finger across it signifies Apple’s big ambitions for its smartphone. Cupertino wants the iPhone it’s racing to develop to be easy to use, intuitive and miles ahead of the competition technologically.

December 22, 2013: After months of false starts, Apple finally secures a deal with China Mobile to bring the iPhone to the world’s largest telecom company.

With 760 million potential iPhone customers in the offing, the deal shapes up as Apple’s most important yet for growing its brand in China. In fact, Apple CEO Tim Cook says the country soon will become the company’s biggest market.

December 21, 1994: Mac gamers get their hands on Marathon, a sci-fi first-person shooter designed as an answer to the massive success of PC title Doom.

Created by Bungie, the team that would later make the Halo games, Marathon introduces important features to the FPS genre. Just as importantly, it isn’t available on PC. Marathon quickly becomes a favorite among Mac gamers.

December 20, 1996: Apple Computer buys NeXT, the company Steve Jobs founded after leaving Cupertino a decade earlier.

The deal costs Apple $429 million. It’s a massive price to pay for the failing NeXT, a computer company that already saw its hardware division crash and burn. But the price is worth it when you consider what Apple gets as part of the deal: the return of Steve Jobs.

December 19, 2007: Apple settles a lawsuit with reporter Nick Ciarelli, resulting in the shuttering of Think Secret, his masssively popular Apple rumors website. Writing under the screen name Nick de Plume, the Harvard University student broke a number of Apple stories on the site, raising Cupertino’s ire.

The terms of Ciarelli’s settlement with Apple remain secret. In a statement, he says he will “be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits.”