Apple relevance is even more important now than years ago, but if you look back you will find a bit of Apple in all major stuff that transform our life, wanna see?

1. WWW:
Tim Berner Lee worked in NeXT Computers to created the www, because its superiority in point–click.

The NeXT interface was beautiful, smooth and consistent,” Berners-Lee wrote in his book, Weaving the Web. “It had great flexibility and other features that would not be seen on PCs till later, such as voice email and a built-in synthesiser.”

source: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/features/2129861/computer-cool-wasn-enough

2. Hotmail:
Created by two formers Apple employees, the two came up with the concept of a web-based database entitled Javasoft. While pursuing this idea, they subsequently realised the potential of a web-based e-mail system and thus decided to create one called HoTMaiL (the uppercase letters spelling out HTML – the language used to write the base of a webpage). In order to attract attention, the e-mail service was provided for free and revenue was obtained through the advertising on the website. Draper Fisher Ventures invested $300,000 on the project and the service was launched on July 4, 1996.

In less than six months, the website attracted over 1 million subscribers. As the interest in the web-based email provider increased, Microsoft eventually took notice and on December 30, 1997, Hotmail was sold to Microsoft for a reported sum of $400 million.

3. WebTV: Created by Steve Perlman, a former Apple employee.
WebTV Networks, Inc was incorporated on June 30, 1995. Primary design criteria were ease of use and low cost.
WebTV Networks conserved their financial and managerial resources by providing licensed consumer electronics manufacturers with a reference design, allowing them to manufacture and market the client. Their profits were derived from operating the online service. They paid a fee to manufacturers for each new subscriber, allowing the manufacturers to sell the clients at a lower price.

By the spring of 1996 WebTV Networks employed approximately 70 people, many of whom were finishing their senior year at nearby Stanford University, or were former employees of either Apple Computer or General Magic. They were desperate to obtain business deals with either Sony or Philips in order to have a product on the store shelves for Christmas 1996. However, it wasn’t until they told Sony that there was a deal with Philips that Sony came back to the discussion and asked to be part of the platform. As a result, the company offered the complete package (service and box) on September 18, 1996 to the American market.

Perlman’s Company Rearden spun off Moxi, set top based TV Service used by Adelphia, Charter and Comcast, Moxi is now owned by Paul Allen’s company Digeo. Paul Allen was a Microsoft co-founder.

4. Palm
Founded by Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky, Donna Dubinsky worked for Apple and for Apple subsidiary Claris.

The inventors of the Pilot were Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, who founded Palm Computing. The original purpose of this company was to create handwriting recognition software for other devices, named Graffiti, but their research convinced them they could create better hardware as well. Before starting development of the Pilot, Hawkins is said to have carried a block of wood, the size of the potential pilot, in his pocket for a week. Palm was widely perceived to have benefited from the notable if ill-fated earlier attempts to create a popular handheld computing platform by Go Corporation and Apple Computer.

Now two ex-apple employees, Jonathan Rubinstein and Fred Anderson, will take control of Palm future.

5. BeOS:
Excellent and powerfull Operating System that almost replace NeXT in what is Mac OS X now. Palm Inc. bought the remains of BeOS.

Gassée worked for Hewlett Packard before becoming head of Apple France. Later, Apple’s CEO John Sculley personally appointed Gassée to Steve Jobs’ old position as head of Macintosh development. Gassée introduced several Macintosh products on-stage in the late 80s including the Macintosh Portable in 1989, and also the Macintosh IIfx. In his product introductions, he was often very comical.

In 1991 Gassée started a new venture, Be Inc., with the ambitious goal of creating an entire new computer platform, hardware and software, from the ground up. A number of Apple employees left with him, including Steve Sakoman, the developer of the Apple Newton. Be developed a new operating system, optimized for multiple CPUs and multithreaded applications, which became known simply as “the Be Operating system,” or BeOS.

6. NeXT:
By mid-1986, it was clear that no existing operating system (OS) would be able to meet their tentative specification for an object-oriented programming environment and user interface. This forced a major change in the business plan: not only would NeXT create an object-oriented programming environment, they would need to build hardware and a Unix-like Mach-based OS on which the toolkit would run.A team led by Avie Tevanian, one of the Mach engineers at Carnegie Mellon University who had since joined the company, were to develop the operating system, whilst the hardware division led by Rich Page, one of the cofounders who had previously led the Apple Lisa team, were to develop and design the hardware. The name of the company was changed to NeXT Computer, Inc..

A NeXTcube with the built-in magneto-optical drive and magnesium enclosure.
NeXT’s workstation was named simply the “NeXT Computer” and featured a distinctive case designed by frogdesign[19] which led to its nickname of “the Cube”. It was based on the new 25 MHz Motorola 68030 Central processing unit (CPU). The Motorola 88000 RISC chip was originally considered, but the needed quantity was not available at the time.

7. Fotonauts.com
A bunch of ex Apple employees, led by Jean-Marie Hullot created Fotonauts.com, a image collaboration site that promises to change the way we all interact with images on the web, it is a Flickr + Full Creative Commons + Collaboration. Fotonauts.com is a france based project.

“Fotonauts’ mission is to enable the creation of the definitive pool of images for everyone to contribute to, discover, use and enjoy, covering all areas of human interest.

fotonauts will deliver the world’s best tools or individuals to discover, organize, enrich, share and collaborate with images, wherever they are stored”.

8. Garage.com + Alltop.com
Guy Kawasaki, the most famous ex Apple employee and founder of Garage.com, a consulting firm, but wait, this guy is a machine, he founded Acius, the publisher of 4th Dimension, founded Fog City the creators of Claris Emailer and he is a co-founder of www.alltop.com. Want more?

9. Pixo
Pixo was a company that developed infrastructure for wireless systems. Paul Mercer left Apple in 1994 to found Pixo. The company developed a system software toolkit in C++ which was later adopted by Apple for use in the iPod. Apple continues to use Pixo OS technology in currently shipping models. The use of the Pixo OS in the iPod was never formally announced, although the first-generation iPod’s “About iPod” display includes a mention of Pixo, and a Connectix biography of their VP of engineering Mike Neil mentions his role as “lead architect on the Pixo OS that is used in … the Apple iPod”. Apple acquired the Pixo OS shortly after shipping the iPod and removed mention of Pixo from the “About iPod” display with a firmware update to the first-generation iPod. In 2003 Sun Microsystems bought Pixo inc.

10. Connectix – VirtualPC
Eric Traut is a software engineer and software emulation pioneer. Traut graduated from Stanford University in 1992. From 1993 to 1995 he worked for Apple Computer, creating a Mac 68K emulator to be used in PowerPC-based Macintoshes. His work on this project led to a patent on a form of dynamic recompilation.

Traut went on to join Connectix, where he developed successful commercial emulators such as Virtual PC and Virtual Game Station. He became Connectix’s Chief Technical Officer in 2001.
Traut became a Microsoft employee after the company purchased Connectix in 2003. He currently works for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington as a Distinguished Engineer, leading Microsoft’s virtualization technology efforts.

This list will be growing by time, check back soon to see a more detailed one.

Source:
Wikipedia.org
Google.com
Microsoft.com