Apple 50th anniversary

If you’ve been green with envy watching those grainy fan clips of Paul McCartney lighting up Apple Park last month for the iPhone giant’s 50th anniversary, Sir Paul just gave the rest of us a proper consolation prize. McCartney posted a polished, three-minute, behind-the-scenes film to his YouTube channel Tuesday, offering an intimate look at his celebrated March 31 performance.

This week on the Cult of Mac podcast: The hoopla surrounding Apple’s 50th birthday makes us reflect on the company’s most important products of all time. Contrary to what you might think, most did not become hits right out of the gate.

Also on the Cult of Mac podcast:

• And then there are the personally most important Apple products. We reveal our first, transformative encounters with Apple computers.
• Griffin offers his first impressions of AirPods Max 2. Long story short, the headphones sound awesome, the hardware is interesting and yet perplexing, and the Smart Case is still a disaster.
• Apple killed the Mac Pro on the same day we published a roundup of the best Mac Pro setups. We hope the two events weren’t related.

Listen to this week’s episode of the Cult of Mac podcast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video version, embedded below.

Apple just finished its first 50 years, making this an ideal opportunity to look ahead to what we can expect from the next five decades.

Having watched the company progress from the Apple II to the iPhone, I’m as qualified as anyone to peer into the future of computing. Here’s what we can look forward to.

Visitors to Apple.com Wednesday saw something unlike anything the company has displayed in recent memory: a full-screen takeover on its homepage featuring the iconic six-stripe rainbow Apple logo, the words “50 Years of Thinking Different,” and a quiet, elegant animation befitting a company that has always let its design do the talking.

Apple started exactly 50 years ago, and most of the Cult of Mac staffers have been Mac users almost since the beginning. We have 170-plus years of experience!

Today’s milestone has us looking back on how we got started using Apple computers, from the original Macintosh to the first PowerBook to the early Mac mini.

April 1, 1976: The Apple Computer Company is founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. The trio sets out to sell the $666 Apple-1 computer.

Apple will not officially become a corporation until January 3 the following year. By that time, Wayne is no longer a part of the business.

Apple turned 50 on Wednesday, but the real party happened the night before. On Tuesday evening, Sir Paul McCartney took the rainbow stage at the heart of Apple Park and delivered a career-spanning performance for thousands of Apple employees.

It closed out weeks of global anniversary celebrations with one of the most storied voices in rock history — and a sky full of fireworks.

As Apple turns 50, it’s worth looking back on the company’s greatest accomplishments and lowest moments through history. If you don’t have time for David Pogue’s 600-page epic, Apple: The First 50 Years, maybe you can spare eight minutes to relive the single biggest piece of Apple news every year. 

You can watch 50 years of Apple announcements compressed into a single video. Or, keep reading below for a quick rundown.

April 1 marks a milestone: Apple turns 50. Half a century after Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne signed the papers in a California garage, Apple has become one of the most valuable companies on Earth — and one of the most design-obsessed in history.

And lucky for gear fans, some of its brilliant products inspired other companies to make some great retro-futuristic Apple accessories.

Apple produced an amazing string of hit products over its 50 years, but to paraphrase Napoleon the pig: Some are more important than others.

Here are the most important products in Apple’s 50-year history. And no, this list is likely not what you were expecting. They’re not necessarily the biggest or the most well-known.

Apple’s global 50th anniversary celebration is building to what might be its most memorable moment yet — and if the clues are right, it involves a Beatle performing at Apple Park this week. Or somebody else from the British Invasion that Steve Jobs loved.

Update: The rumor proved true: Paul McCartney played Apple Park on Tuesday night.

Apple’s history is often distilled into the “Jobs and Woz” garage origin story and the slick modern era of design legend Jony Ive and current CEO Tim Cook. But a group of critical, often overlooked contributors actually forged the company’s 50-year arc. Here are 16 unsung heroes from Apple’s first 50 years — some of the most important “geniuses” and original thinkers behind Apple’s success.

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do,” Steve Jobs once said. “We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

Looking back over Apple’s first 50 years, it’s clear what the company’s greatest talent is: turning rivals’ niche products into mainstream hits.

Apple proves adept at releasing new products in categories that looked like failures because customers simply lacked interest. But then Apple figured out what its competitors were doing wrong and released its own versions that quickly became iconic.

Here are five examples of Apple turning other companies’ fiascos into triumphs.

All over the world, Apple enjoys spending its milestone 50th anniversary month in the company of the artists and fans who have made the last five decades extraordinary, the company said recently of its worldwide birthday parties.

The festivities began on March 13 when Grammy Award-winning artist Alicia Keys took to the iconic steps of Apple Grand Central in New York City. Celebrations also rolled in China and South Korea, then London and Sydney, Australia. We’ve added new photos, below. 

Apple marks a remarkable milestone this April 1 — 50 years since Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded the company in a California garage on that date in 1976. To commemorate it, Apple said Thursday it will plan a series of global celebrations. And CEO Tim Cook published a personal letter on apple.com. It looks back on five decades of innovation while expressing gratitude to the billions of people who have made Apple what it is today.

“Thinking different has always been at the heart of Apple,” Cook said. “It’s what has driven us to create products that empower people to express themselves, to connect and to create something wonderful.”

Bestselling author David Pogue just published Apple: The First 50 Years, an ambitious book about the history of Apple.

The approximately 600-page, full-color book spans the company’s epic saga, from its founding by two college dropouts to its latest machinations with Apple Intelligence. It’s a fun and informative book, and an easy read despite being a doorstop.

I interviewed Pogue about his book and the wild ride that Apple’s been on for the last five decades.

Apple: The First 50 Years by David Pogue is a comprehensive retelling of the most influential tech company in history and the people behind it. The book covers the early hobby projects of teenage Steve Wozniak to Apple Intelligence, and the lifetime’s worth of everything in between, in about 600 pages.

It’s just the right amount of detail and depth to tell the whole story of Apple’s rocketing rise to power, years of tumult and insanely great turnaround. It’s an easy and highly entertaining read. You don’t need a technical or nerdy background at all. And there are hundreds of full-color pictures. 

Apple: The First 50 Years is now the definitive all-encompassing book I would recommend for anyone interested in the company that changed the world … at least three separate times. 

January 3, 1977: Apple Computer Co. is officially incorporated, with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak listed as co-founders. The Apple incorporation leaves out third founder Ron Wayne — who initially invested in the company — because he sold back his stake in Apple for $800.

The funding and expertise needed to turn Apple into a corporation is provided by a man named Mike Markkula, who becomes an important figure in the company’s history.

December 12, 1980: Apple goes public, floating 4.6 million shares on the stock market at $22 per share. The Apple IPO becomes the biggest tech public offering of its day. And more than 40 out of 1,000 Apple employees become instant millionaires.

As Apple’s biggest shareholder, 25-year-old Steve Jobs ends the day with a net worth of $217 million. However, the big payday triggers internal tensions as it highlights Cupertino’s class divide.

August 27, 1999: Apple Computer swaps out the striped, multicolored logo the company had used since 1977 for a new single-color version. The evolution of the iconic Apple logo from rainbow to monochrome shocks many longtime fans.

However, it is part of a sustained, company-wide overhaul led by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The makeover includes new products, the “Think Different” ad campaign and, eventually, the removal of the word “Computer” from the company’s name.

Sometimes, when Apple passes a major financial milestone, I’ll have a pang of regret at not having invested all the money I could lay my hands on on Apple back in the mid-1990s.

But that’s far from the worst missed opportunity involving Apple investment. A new article for Fast Company tells the story of seven early investors who sold their AAPL holdings on the day of the company’s IPO in December 1980.