Apple celebrates its 50th year — from scrappy startup to tech giant : NPR
Apple’s then-CEO Steve Jobs showed off new colors for the iPod Nano during a product announcement in San Francisco in September 2008.
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Paul Sakuma/AP
In his new book, Apple: the first 50 yearsauthor David Pogue recounts how the tech company’s late CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs pushed his team to perfect the iPod.
“Steve Jobs wanted it to be as small as possible,” Pogue said, recounting the anecdote in an interview with NPR. “So they brought him the prototype and then said, ‘This is it, Steve, as small as possible to package these components.'”
Launched in 2001, the iPod kicked off Apple’s rise to 21st century commercial and cultural dominance.
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Jobs took one look at the digital music player and threw it into an aquarium near his office, where it sank to the bottom and began emitting air bubbles.
The story goes that Jobs then said, “If there are air bubbles in there, there’s still room. Shrink it!”
But Pogue added that there was a caveat to this compelling piece of Apple history: It never actually happened. This is just another Apple myth.
Hackers and perfectionists
Few multinational corporations have inspired as many myths as Apple Inc. (Apple financially supports NPR.)
Dozens of websites, books and films are dedicated to telling the company’s story from its beginnings. news blog and fan site Cult of Mac to the 1999 TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. There’s even a Grammy Award-winning opera — The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs – from 2017.
Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” ad campaign helped solidify the aura surrounding the company as a force for revolutionary change. Apple CEO Tim Cook referenced this slogan in his recent statement celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary.
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Tech journalist and podcaster Jason Snell said it doesn’t matter whether the stories revolving around Apple are fact or folklore. The tech giant continues to exert a strong influence on the collective cultural psyche 50 years after its founding on April 1, 1976. “Apple has always placed itself in a counterculture role, claiming to want to make the world a better place,” Snell said.
Apple’s famous 1997 “Think Different” ad campaign, with its celebration of “crazy, outcasts, rebels”, summarizes this idealized self-image.
Not all marketing
The renegade spirit isn’t just clever marketing.
Hansen Hsu, curator of the Computer History Museum, said this technology was truly built into Apple’s products from the start, as well as its culture. “They raised a pirate flag above their building,” Hsu said of the company’s first headquarters, in Cupertino, California.
At the time, computers were mostly found in corporate offices. Hsu said Apple’s early bestsellers, like the 1984 Macintosh desktop computer, helped democratize technology. “This original Macintosh represented creativity, individual expression and iconoclasm,” Hsu said.
And Apple has continued to uphold these values by releasing one culture-changing technology after another in the 21st century, like the iPod, the iPhone, and the App Store.
The iPhone has changed the landscape of communication, information and entertainment.
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“This simple gesture launched entire industries: Uber, DoorDash, Tinder, Airbnb,” Pogue said of the App Store, launched in 2008.
Where “thinking differently” falls apart
But Pogue added that this massive explosion of content and connectivity had serious consequences, especially after streaming took off around 2015. Suddenly, people had a computer, a camera, and a TV/movie screen with them at all times, every day.
“Increased screen time appears to correlate with young people’s feelings of isolation and depression,” Pogue said.
The company responded to growing concerns about smartphone addiction issues. In an interview given in March to Hello Americacurrent Apple CEO Tim Cook has expressed his opposition to mindless scrolling.
“I don’t want people to look at their smartphone more than at someone’s eyes,” he said.
Apple still wants the world to see it as a force for revolutionary change. Cook’s recent statement celebrating Apple’s 50th anniversary resurfaced his familiar “think differently” slogan. But Apple Inc. has come a long way from its roots. Today, it’s one of the most profitable companies in the world and doesn’t always “think differently” when it comes to corporate behavior.
Apple has received widespread criticism over Cook’s closeness to the Trump administration, such as his personal donation of $1 million to the president’s second inauguration.
Apple CEO Tim Cook shakes hands with President Trump during an event in the Oval Office of the White House, August 6, 2025.
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Asked about this and other questions regarding his relationship with Trump, Cook said Hello America that it is not political. “I’m focused on politics,” Cook said. “And so I’m very happy that the president and the administration are accessible to talk about policy.”
The “Teflon” effect
Regardless, Apple’s competitors typically face much greater backlash than Apple for their unpopular actions.
“I personally haven’t seen any principled ‘I’m canceling Apple TV’ stance in the same way people canceled Disney+ and Hulu to get Jimmy Kimmel sidelined,” said Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi. “There’s something about Apple that I think Teflon-proofs it from this type of criticism.”
Digital artist Kyt Janae’s San Francisco studio is full of Apple laptops and desktops. She says she uses these machines in all her creative projects.
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“I don’t view Apple as a brand in the same way that I would view any other tech company, clothing brand or anything else,” said Kyt Janae, a renowned visual artist and technologist based in San Francisco. She has stated that she uses Apple products for all of her creative projects, such as her work on the animated series. Rick and Morty.
Janae said she understands that Apple is a megacorporation that puts its shareholders first. But the creativity and risk-taking that the brand represents for her – as for her customers fifty years ago – outweigh all other concerns. “I’m locked up for life, no matter what,” Janae said.
Jennifer Vanasco edited the audio and digital versions of this story. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.
