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And in the first few years of the 21st century, the Cupertino company's iPod digital music player has revolutionized how we listen to, buy and tote around our music.

As Apple's 30th anniversary approaches Saturday, it is no doubt working on the next innovation it hopes can repeat the staggering success of the iPod.

The company that set out to build computers that, as co-founder Steve Wozniak says, ``I would want to use,'' finds itself in a position to revolutionize digital video, too.

Apple's chic and minimalist iPods define tech fashion and dominate the digital music player market. The legal music download market, meanwhile, has exploded since Apple launched its online iTunes Music Store in 2003.

Still, in looking forward, the question looms: Does Apple still want to be a computer company, or is it morphing into an entertainment and consumer electronics company?

Apple seems poised to make such a leap. It sells a gadget that tens of millions of people use daily to listen to music and, increasingly, to watch TV shows and movies. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has sold his digital animation company, Pixar, to Walt Disney and will serve on the entertainment giant's board as its largest individual shareholder. And Apple's computers are evolving into digital entertainment centers, seamlessly organizing and connecting people's music, video, photos and online lives.

After all, the iPod frenzy won't last forever. Like the law of gravity, the Law of Silicon Valley demands that there be a ``next generation.'' An ``upgrade.'' Something shiny and new that we can't live without.

At the center of the Apple empire is its iconic co-founder and chief executive. The darkest era in Apple's history began when he was forced out in 1985, and while the 51-year-old shows no signs of slowing down, can Apple groom a successor and survive without him?

Apple is renowned for its ability to keep secrets, and closely guards its product strategy. The company's campus on Infinite Loop in Cupertino is a cross between sleek tech campus and Area 51-like top-secret military base, both of which make speculating what the company will do next just that -- speculation.

But it appears ready to roll out new products that will place it in every room of the home and perhaps even become the 21st century's digital distributor for Hollywood.

Observers have long suspected Jobs and Co. are cooking up some sort of device that will merge the home computer and television. At the same time, Jobs has become a Hollywood mogul with his breakthrough ability to sell music and TV sitcoms through iTunes. Jobs' seat on the Disney board could further transform how people watch movies, from the big screen to the home screen to the mobile screen. Apple said Jobs would not be interviewed for this report.

Whether the quirky company can continue its successful march into the lives, and wallets, of consumers will depend on many factors, including continued vision from Jobs and the ability -- or failure -- of competitors to match the ease of use and ``cool'' factor of Apple's iPod.

So far, Apple's obsessive attention to innovation and elegant design has paid off. The iPod-iTunes partnership is a study in simplicity: one click to download music from iTunes, one click to move it to your iPod and a one-click spinwheel to play it.

But it placed its bet on making the experience better. The same is true of its iTunes Music Store. Downloading music has been possible for years (think Napster), but Apple made the deals with music executives to make it simpler -- and legal.

During the downturn in 2000 and 2001, a time when many companies were laying off workers, Apple began pumping more resources into innovation. The company revamped its Macintosh operating system, opened retail stores and developed new software focused on digital music, video and photos.

Apple also made another strategic bet -- it opened its iTunes software, which lets people effortlessly manage their digital music and buy song downloads from the online store, to users of Microsoft Windows computers -- about 95 percent of the computing world.

Still, Apple has kept its iPod ecosystem closed; iPod owners cannot use their players to listen to music downloads bought from competing music services. Apple may someday have to adjust that strategy or face the wrath of consumers who want more control over the tunes and videos they buy through iTunes. The same music executives who made iTunes possible could find other distributors. Amazon is reportedly working on a music download service, and the record labels have become increasingly disenchanted with Apple's insistence on selling all songs for 99 cents per download, preferring more flexibility in pricing or a subscription-based model.

New products are unveiled with opening-night panache after bloggers post endlessly about what could come next. The rollouts feature stars, such as Bono and Madonna, and sometimes attract celebrities in the audience -- Robin Williams, Gregory Hines, Muhammad Ali. If there is such a thing as a rock star CEO, it is Jobs, whose un-geek trademark jeans and black mock turtleneck are more Hollywood than high tech.

In February, some 250 reporters and analysts -- attended to by Apple PR people in art-house black -- filed into the company's Town Hall auditorium to witness Jobs announce the company's latest offerings: a high-quality stereo system for the iPod and the latest generation of its ``low-cost'' computer, the Mac mini (the mini starts at $599, and doesn't come with a monitor, keyboard or mouse). Each product was placed on a pedestal and covered with a black cloth before the ritual unveiling.

That year, Jobs was able to sell 50 of the computers to the Byte Shop in Mountain View before Wozniak, a self-trained electrical engineer, had even built them.

In 1977, the Apple II was the first PC to reach the mainstream. Apple moved into buildings in Cupertino and became one of the fastest-growing corporations in U.S. history. Two years later, Jobs discovered the first ``graphical user interface,'' or GUI, developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. The breakthrough made the computer much easier to master for the average person, who could simply click on a file to view it, rather than typing in commands. It became the foundation for the Macintosh, introduced in 1984.

Apple has been on a 30-year roller-coaster ride that has been endlessly chronicled -- Jobs losing a power struggle to John Sculley and his subsequent ouster; Sculley's relentless focus on the Newton, a predecessor to today's handheld devices, which in turn led to his demise; the company's minute share of the PC market in the face of Windows-based computers; and of course, Jobs' triumphant return to the company.

But longtime Apple watchers say it has learned from its history -- witness the company's recent record revenues of $5.75 billion over the holiday season.

Even Jobs' investment in Pixar gave him insight into how technology and entertainment, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, can come together. At Macworld in 2001, Jobs introduced his vision of the Macintosh being the center of a person's digital lifestyle. But Wozniak says Jobs actually was thinking about this in the mid-'90s, before the Internet became ubiquitous.

Nevertheless, a small army of companies -- Intel, Cisco, AT&T, Microsoft, to name a few -- are trying to stake their claim in your living room, and Apple's spot is far from guaranteed.

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