Apple: 14 SHOCKING things you never knew about the world's most valuable company

Before the iPhone turned around the company's fortunes in 2007, Apple had a rich and checkered history as one of the first companies to make it big in Silicon Valley.

The most valuable company in the world is Apple and the tech giant just turned 40 years old last week Friday.

Before the iPhone turned around the company's fortunes in 2007, Apple had a rich and checkered history as one of the first companies to make it big in Silicon Valley.

In celebration of the company that has given us so much and changed the tech world, here are 17 things you probably never knew about Apple:

• Apple was founded on April 1 - April Fool's Day - in 1976. If you wondered where the company got its name, Steve Jobs' 2011 posthumous biography says the visionary founder of Apple had been on a "fruitarian" kick and just really liked apples (just lookat).

 

• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are not the only founders of Apple. There was a third cofounder named Ronald Wayne, who left the company less than a year later in 1977. Wayne designed the company's first logo and ended up selling his stake in Apple to Jobs and Wozniak for $800.

 

• Apple's first-ever computer was actually a DIY kit that required people to build their own case. It retailed for very evil $666.66 price.

 

• If you bought Apple stock of 100 shares for $22 each at its IPO in 1980, it would be worth about $600,000 today, according to Forbes' calculations.

 

• Steve Jobs led the design of the Apple Lisa, the first ever computer with a graphical user interface. It tanked though, due to its high price.

READ: 5 AMAZING things you should know about Apple's new iPhone SE

• Apple had a famous "1984" advert, which introduced the Macintosh computer, was directed by Ridley Scott - the same man who directed the movies Blade Runner, The Martian and Gladiator. It aired during the January 1984 Super Bowl XVIII. You can watch that video at the bottom of this article.

 

• In 1983, Microsoft bailed on making Macintosh software after it revealed its own Microsoft Windows operating system - a direct competitor to the Mac - hence kicking off the rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

• After Steve Jobs tried to rally Apple's board to remove Apple CEO John Sculley in 1985, the board instead strip Jobs of all his responsibility. He ended up quitting to start his own company, NeXT.

• When Mac sales were continually shrinking in the '80s and '90s, Apple tried making everything (seriously, everything)...

 

...from digital cameras like the Apple QuickTake...

 

...to video games consoles like the Apple Pippin

 

...to a clothing line (seriously, I am not kidding).

• In 1997, Steve Jobs went back to Apple as CEO but the company was in such bad shape that his first Macworld keynote speech included the news that Microsoft was investing $150 million in the company. "We need all the help we can get," said Jobs, even as the audience booed.

• By early 1998 though, at yet another Macworld Expo in San Fransisco, Jobs ended his keynote with the first soon-to-be-famous "one more thing" announcements - thanks to his efforts in refocusing the company on the Mac, and Microsoft's aid, Apple was profitable again.

• One of the first things Steve Jobs did when he returned to Apple was ban pets from the Apple campus. In return, he gave employees better food in the café.

 

• The "I" in the "iMac" of 1998 stands for "Internet" because it originally took just two steps to connect to the web, in case you didn’t know. That naming scheme would continue through the iPhone and iPad to this day.

 

• In 2011, Apple went viral after it announced that it had more cash in the bank than the entire US Treasury.