In the 1970s, Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer revolution in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Now in late 2003, Apple has launched its lastest versions of its pocket sized iPods, which are linked to Apples iTunes Music Store. Steve Jobs revealed in January 2004 at the MacWorld Expo in California that two million iPods had been sold since its launch in 2002. The iPod is being hailed by the music industry as the most promising legal digital consumer music service to date. At the same event, Jobs also revealed a deal with HP (Hewlett Packard) to produce a HP-branded version of the iPod and preinstall Apple iTunes software on all HPs customers PCs and notebooks. According to Jobs, Apples goal is to get iPods and iTunes into the hands of every music lover around the world. Jobs is the original comeback kid. He was only 13 when he teamed up with Steve Wozniak to invent the worlds first PC in Jobs stepfathers garage. The rest is history. Jobs left Apple in 1986 to set up a new computer company to do it all again. The alternative version is that Jobs was booted out because Apple was a managerial mess. He called his company NeXT. Although it was not successful, Jobs other development was Pixar Studios. He returned to Apple as chief executive in 1997 at the request of a board desperate for innovation and for someone to salvage their fortunes. Jobs new gamble is taking Apple into digital music. It is considered to be both hugely risky and highly profitable for someone who can get it right. He faces competition from Dell, Wal-Mart and Microsoft. It also depends on Jobs, and anyone else in the business, understanding the fickle tastes of teenagers and college students. Jobs loves music and is a big fan of Bob Dylan and the Beatles. However, today Apple is a midget compared to Microsoft. For all Jobs undoubted creative talent, Apple has not amounted to much in fiscal terms. In 2003 it reported sales of $6.3 billion, most of it from the sales of computers. The company that started the PC revolution is a lowly ninth behind competitors such as Dell, HP and IBM.

Innovate, an unshaven Jobs bellowed from the stage to a gathering of French elite at a swell party in the Muse dOrsay in Paris in September 2003. Thats what we do we innovate. Of course, he is right and that may be the trouble. It is possible to innovate pointlessly. Darwin and others described the virtues of creative destruction. At Apple, it may have an evil twin: destructive innovation.