I've tracked Apple for nearly 50 years: How a garage rebel became a multitrillion-dollar empire

## Summary
You'd think this would be a celebration not only of the company and its many landmark products -- the Apple II, the Mac, and the iPhone -- but also of its legendary founders, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Also: Apple reportedly working on 'Ultra' lineup of devices - including this foldable iPhone Then, in 2001, came the iPod , the first time Apple slipped into your pocket. It's coming to older models too You can preorder Apple's new devices this week: iPhone 17, Watch 11, AirPods Pro 3 and more Why I'm sticking with my iPhone 12 for another year - and I'm not alone Apple Events live updates: iPhone 17, iPhone Air, AirPods Pro 3, and new wearables just unveiled Excited about Apple Watch 11's hypertension feature? It's coming to older models too You can preorder Apple's new devices this week: iPhone 17, Watch 11, AirPods Pro 3 and more Why I'm sticking with my iPhone 12 for another year - and I'm not alone Editorial standards Show Comments Log In to Comment Community Guidelines Related My favorite smart notebook for to-do lists is currently on sale Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro vs.

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I've tracked Apple for nearly 50 years: How a garage rebel became a multitrillion-dollar empire
Opinion: On Apple's 50th anniversary, here's a look at what the company gained - and lost - on its journey from a tech geeks' dream to a luxury device brand.
Written by
Steven Vaughan-Nichols,
Senior Contributing Editor
Senior Contributing Editor
March 31, 2026 at 9:31 a.m. PT
Justin Sullivan / Staff/Getty Images News via Getty Images
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ZDNET's key takeaways
Apple celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
Without Steve Jobs, there would be no Mac or iPhone.
Apple has launched no major new products since the Apple Watch.
Apple turns 50 on April 1, 2026. You'd think this would be a celebration not only of the company and its many landmark products -- the Apple II, the Mac, and the iPhone -- but also of its legendary founders, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
In neither
Apple's official 50th-anniversary announcement
nor
CEO Tim Cook's birthday
letter are either of the two founders mentioned. While Cook praises "The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently," he doesn't mention the original misfit pair that set Apple's course for its first 40 years. When asked about this oversight, Apple didn't reply. I hope Apple will correct it.
In my view, since the Jobs era, Apple's success has not come from thinking differently, but from two major factors. The first of these is its locked-in ecosystem, which keeps its users buying Apple products because they won't work with other devices and programs. Another major factor is its marketing, which has made it the only luxury technology brand.
But it didn't start that way. Apple began as a scrappy garage outfit selling bare circuit boards.
April 1, 1976
In the spring of 1976, the Jobs family garage in Los Altos was not yet a shrine. It was just a cramped workspace where Wozniak hunched over a workbench, hand-soldering logic boards while Jobs paced and plotted how to sell them.
As Jobs once described to me, the floor was littered with parts and paper. The air smelled of solder flux, sawdust, and the faint exhaust of the Volkswagen bus that he would soon sell to finance their new machine. The Apple I they built there was more promise than product. It was a naked motherboard meant for hobbyists who knew how to add their own keyboard, case, and display.
Also:
Remembering Bill Atkinson, the Mac visionary who revolutionized personal computing
Those early days were fueled by the same
Homebrew Computer Club
stories that now read like myth: engineers passing around schematics, arguing about
BASIC
interpreters, and dreaming of computers that fellow geeks could actually own. Or, as Wozniak put it, he hoped for a world where "everybody is going to have a computer in their home and
going to become technology geeks like us
."
Jobs probably already had other, bigger ideas.
Wozniak's brilliant, minimalist designs weren't meant to lock users out. They were meant to squeeze every bit of power out of every chip for an affordable PC. What was affordable? The original Apple II was priced at $1,298 with 4 KB of RAM. The top-of-the-line model, with 48K of memory, cost $2,638 or $15,120 in 2026 dollars. Today, if you find a working
Apple 1 in your attic, it would go for over half a million
.
Jobs, for his part, dragged prototypes around Silicon Valley, convincing a skeptical local retailer to take 50 Apple I boards on consignment. It was a make-or-break order for a company that technically didn't yet exist, for a market that was just getting started.
The Apple II generation
The Apple I was a proof of concept, and the
Apple II was the moment the dream went mainstream
. Introduced in 1977, it arrived not as a bare board, but as a full, beige computer with color graphics, sound, and a friendly design that looked just as at home on a child's desk as in a school computer lab.
Also:
How Apple and other tech brands are selling you on color in 2026 - and it's working
That proved very apt. For many Gen X kids who grew up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Apple II was their first computer. Classrooms became Apple's real market. School districts bought Apple II systems by the cart, rolling them into rooms so students could learn how to type with Mavis Beacon, play "Oregon Trail," or tinker with Logo turtles crawling across flickering CRTs.
For teachers, Apple's machines promised not just new lessons, but a new kind of literacy; for Apple, those carts built a generation of users whose first computing memories began with a bitten fruit sticker on the front of a noisy plastic box.
1984, the Mac, and the first fall
By the time the original
Macintosh launched in January 1984
, Apple had already tasted success and hubris. The famous
Apple Big Brother Super Bowl ad
cast Apple as the hammer-throwing rebel shattering the gray tyranny of Big Brother, aka IBM. Compu

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## Expert Analysis

### Merits
- You'd think this would be a celebration not only of the company and its many landmark products -- the Apple II, the Mac, and the iPhone -- but also of its legendary founders, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
- In my view, since the Jobs era, Apple's success has not come from thinking differently, but from two major factors.
- For teachers, Apple's machines promised not just new lessons, but a new kind of literacy; for Apple, those carts built a generation of users whose first computing memories began with a bitten fruit sticker on the front of a noisy plastic box. 1984, the Mac, and the first fall By the time the original Macintosh launched in January 1984 , Apple had already tasted success and hubris.
- Also: MacBook Neo review: My biggest concern with Apple's near-perfect budget laptop The Mac, however, was far from an overnight success.

### Areas for Consideration
- Also: MacBook Neo review: My biggest concern with Apple's near-perfect budget laptop The Mac, however, was far from an overnight success.
- Indeed, it cost so much that, between the Mac's market failure and the company's internal fighting, Apple fired Jobs in 1985 .

### Implications
- I hope Apple will correct it.
- Also: Remembering Bill Atkinson, the Mac visionary who revolutionized personal computing Those early days were fueled by the same Homebrew Computer Club stories that now read like myth: engineers passing around schematics, arguing about BASIC interpreters, and dreaming of computers that fellow geeks could actually own.
- School districts bought Apple II systems by the cart, rolling them into rooms so students could learn how to type with Mavis Beacon, play "Oregon Trail," or tinker with Logo turtles crawling across flickering CRTs.
- For most people, though, it was the Mac that took them into computing's once-and-future interface .

### Expert Commentary
This article covers apple, iphone, jobs topics. Notable strengths include discussion of apple. Areas of concern are also raised. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 1975.