Apple turns 50

Founded in a garage on 1 April 1976 by Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne as Apple Computer Co., the tech giant, now Apple Inc. has just turned 50 and has been celebrating the anniversary with a series of events and performances at Apple facilities around the world, including a performance from singer-songwriter and pianist Alicia Keys (pictured here with current Apple CEO Tim Cook) at Apple Grand Central in New York.

Apple’s first product was the Apple I. But it was 1984’s launch of the Macintosh and then the Apple Desktop Publishing System that propelled the firm into the workplaces of print and repro companies around the world.

Today, Apple is the world’s second-most valuable business with a market capitalisation of USD$3.73trn. Apple employed around 166,000 people worldwide at the end of its last financial year, when it had sales of USD$416.16bn.

In a letter to mark the anniversary, titled ’50 Years of Thinking Different’, Tim Cook said the firm had spent five decades ‘rethinking what’s possible and putting powerful tools into people’s hands’.

“Through every breakthrough, one idea has guided us – that the world is moved forward by people who think different. That’s because progress always begins with someone – an inventor or scientist, a student or storyteller – who imagines a better way, a new idea, a different path. That spirit has guided Apple from the start.”

Cook said that Apple products ‘had improved lives and sometimes even saved them’ and the business was inspired by what people did with its technology.

Jobs, without doubt the firm’s most iconic leader, led a turnaround at the business when it was close to going bankrupt in 1997, publicly stating that ‘innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower’.

Meanwhile, reflecting on 50 years of Apple, Cook wrote:

‘If you’ve taught us anything, it’s that the people crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.So here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
Here’s to you.’

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