Apple Inc.

Apple, the quirky Silicon Valley company that became an icon of personal computing, has risen to its greatest heights in the decade since Steven P. Jobs returned to its helm and opened horizons beyond the desktop.

Founded in 1976 by Mr. Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple came of age as one of a wave of firms -- including Atari, Radio Shack and Texas Instruments -- that were looking for ways to transform the digital computer into a home appliance. Of that first personal computing generation, it is Apple and the charismatic Mr. Jobs that have consistently found a way to touch the zeitgeist. Apple’s microprocessor-based consumer products have found expanding consumer markets around the world, beginning with the Apple II computer, widely adopted in education during the 1970s.

In 1979, Mr. Jobs made a legendary visit to Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, where he saw a prototype personal computer called the Alto. He took away a range of ideas about computer design and graphical user interface and developed two families of computers, the Lisa and the Macintosh. Aiming to make Apple’s products “insanely great,” Mr. Jobs was convinced that they could change the world.