Apple II’s success was not from Apple. It was a piece of software called VisiCalc — the first spreadsheet ever brought to market. VisiCalc worked only on the Apple II, and it was a revolution in itself. Millions of accountants, small businesses, or even private individuals that cared about their money, could now do in minutes calculations that would have taken them weeks to perform by hand. They rushed out to computer stores and bought Apple IIs en masse, making Apple one of the most profitable companies of its day. Only four years after it was started in a garage, the company was well on its way to fullfil Mike Markkula’s vision of belonging to the Fortune 500 elite of corporate America.

## Preparing for the future

Apple Computer was growing at an incredibly fast rate. The numbers were mind-blowing: from 2,500 Apple IIs sold in 1977, 8,000 were sold in 1978, and up to 35,000 in 1979. Remember there was no market for

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