Apple at 50: The tech giant’s best, worst, and weirdest ideas

Founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple officially incorporated on April 1, 1976. The company helped usher in the era of personal computing, pairing meticulous design with tight hardware–software integration and a simple promise: “It just works.” Its history has been anything but linear. There were early breakthroughs, a near-collapse in the 1990s, and a dramatic revival after Jobs returned, followed by a run of mass-market hits beginning with the iPod and accelerating with the iPhone. All told, Apple has over five decades launched category-defining products, shelved its share of misfires, and pushed some genuinely odd ideas. These are the clearest examples of each.

Apple’s best

iPod Mini: While the original iPod transformed music consumption and kicked off Apple’s ascent as a consumer tech brand, 2004’s iPod Mini introduced the click wheel that we all now associate with Apple’s portable music player. It was the ultimate expression of what the iPod could be, and its lower price helped put Apple hardware into more people’s pockets.

The App Store: The iPhone gets most of the credit for the smartphone revolution, but the App Store is what really brought it to life. Being able to download apps for free or cheap transformed the iPhone from a neat gadget into a real computing platform, and it foreshadowed Apple’s pivot from a hardware company to services business.

iPad 2: If Apple’s goal with the iPad was to provide a minimal sheet of glass that turns into anything—an e-book reader, a video player, a gaming machine—the second-gen iPad was the first product to nail it. The dramatically thinner design helped it become Apple’s most-used tablet, even for years after the arrival of newer models.

2010 MacBook Air: Steve Jobs pulling the original MacBook Air from an envelope is an all-time great product reveal, but the 2010 revisions are what brought the concept to the masses. With a much lower starting price of $999 for the 11-inch model (versus $1,799 for the original 13-incher) and speedy solid state storage as a standard feature, it established the Air as Apple’s mainstream laptop for years to come.

M1 chip: Announced in 2020, the M1 was Apple’s first Mac chip designed in-house. Built on a 5-nanometer process with 16 billion transistors, it powered the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. The result was a noticeable jump in speed and efficiency, with machines that ran faster, cooler, and longer on a single charge.

iMessage: Apple’s real innovation with iMessage was to automatically supersede standard text messaging between iPhone users. With no effort, the limitations of regular texting—tiny images, barely-watchable videos, group chat size limits—went away, and Android users were sadly singled out, giving Apple a built-in marketing advantage that persists today.

Apple II: As Apple’s first pre-assembled computer, and its first with color graphics, the Apple II help kickstart personal computing at home. Perhaps as importantly, it launched Apple’s longstanding foothold in education, and seeded countless childhood memories of playing Oregon Trail on school computers.

AirPods Pro: The first-generation AirPods were one-size-fits-all, which worked for some people but not others. The 2019 AirPods Pro changed that. They were Apple’s first earbuds to create a proper seal in the ear canal, using silicone tips in multiple sizes. That alone improved passive noise isolation, and the active noise cancellation was solid too. A Transparency mode let in outside sound when you needed it.

MagSafe for iPhone: Apple’s magnetic connector might not have seemed like a big deal when it arrived with the iPhone 12 in 2020, but it quickly kickstarted a vast ecosystem of interesting accessories, from snap-on power banks and wallets to car dashboard mounts and docking stations. Five years later, most Android phones still haven’t caught up.

GarageBand: Apple’s free music-making software is remarkable for how easily it accommodates a wide range of skills. A child can spend hours fiddling with GarageBand’s ready-made beats and loops, yet it’s surprisingly robust and extensible for multi-track recording with real instruments.

iPhone 4: Released in 2010, the iPhone 4 added a front-facing camera, enabling FaceTime video calls. It also introduced the Retina display and a redesigned stainless steel body, making it the thinnest smartphone at the time.

App Tracking Transparency: With App Tracking Transparency in 2021, Apple drew a clear line on user privacy, requiring apps to explicitly ask permission before tracking activity across other apps and websites. The change came at a steep cost to the mobile ad industry, costing companies like Meta tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue.

iTunes Plus: Apple achieved a real breakthrough when it started selling DRM-free music in 2007, allowing users to play their songs on any device using any software they wanted. Within two years, DRM had disappeared from the entire iTunes catalog, and users could liberate their existing copy-protected tracks for 30 cents apiece. It was a rare taste of actual digital content ownership that has sadly disappeared in the streaming age.

Time Machine: Even in the age of cloud storage, owning a physical backup of your data is still pretty important, and Time Machine continues to make it easy for Mac owners. Just plug in a hard drive and click a few buttons, and you’ll have a full copy of your computer for when things go wrong. Why doesn’t Windows have this?

AirPlay: The great thing about AirPlay is how it bypasses all the vagaries of Bluetooth when you just want to play music on some speakers. Being able to route any audio app to one or more AirPlay speakers—even across multiple rooms—is sneakily one of the best parts of the Apple ecosystem.

Hide My Email: Apple’s arguably doing more than any other major tech company to keep email addresses private. Anyone who uses the “Sign in with Apple” button in an app or web site can sign in with a randomized email address that forwards to their real address, keeping the latter hidden, and iCloud+ subscribers can also generate more masked email addresses on-demand. It’s an easy way to keep an important piece of personal information away from marketers and control who’s allowed to email you.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The biggest selling point for Apple’s 2009 Mac software update was that it had “zero new features,” as former software engineering head Bertrand Serlet announced at the time. This wasn’t entirely true, and its implied elimination of bugs was a bit overblown, but Apple’s commitment to slowing down and making under-the-hood improvements was a breakthrough in its own way. It’s why Mac enthusiasts keep pining for a modern Snow Leopard equivalent after years of MacOS feature bloat.

Shortcuts for iOS: Apple gave a real gift to power users by letting them set up complex automations and routines on their iPhones. No single software feature has done more to advance what’s possible with iOS, even if most users never touch it.

HyperCard: Released in 1987, HyperCard let users build interactive stacks of linked text, images, and sound using a simple scripting language. It was an early form of hypermedia, predating the web and influencing technologies like HTTP and JavaScript.

Live Photos: Apple’s idea to capture not just the exact moment of a photo, but a second or two of video around it, has made revisiting old memories more engaging and allowed iPhone users to get better stills than what they actually took. It’s no surprise the feature was quickly copied by practically every Android phone.

Apple Pay: In 2014, Apple Pay used the iPhone 6’s Touch ID to enable contactless payments in stores and apps. More than a million credit cards were registered in the first three days, making it the largest mobile payment system in the U.S. at the time. The feature expanded to the Apple Watch the following year, letting users pay with a tap of the wrist.

Apple’s Worst

iTunes for Windows: If you ever want to witness some pure expressions of primal technology rage, try searching the web for something like “itunes windows bad.” You will find countless forum threads and blog posts bemoaning the sluggish, unreliable, crash-prone mess that Apple clearly never cared all that much about. Sadly, the response to the Apple Music app that succeeded it hasn’t been much better.

Motorola ROKR E1: Sure, it wasn’t an Apple product, but the first attempt to integrate iTunes with a mobile device (two years before the iPhone) still ended up being a dud, with a measly 100-song limit and slow file transfers. Even Steve Jobs seemed unenthused while announcing it.

Apple Maps: Apple set out to replace Google Maps on the iPhone with its own mapping app. Led by Scott Forstall, the company launched Apple Maps with iOS 6 in 2012. But users quickly ran into inaccurate directions, missing landmarks, and bizarre visual glitches. Tim Cook issued a public apology, and Forstall was reportedly pushed out after refusing to sign the apology letter.

First-generation Siri remote: Apple’s attempt to bring touchpad-like controls to the Apple TV streaming box was a great way to frustrate anyone who happened to be visiting. While swiping with your thumb was helpful for gliding through lengthy menus, fine-grained controls became needlessly difficult. The current remote retains the swipe support but grounds them in a normal-looking directional pad.

Siri: Speaking of Siri, Apple acquired the fledgling personal assistant in 2010 and launched it on the iPhone 4 a year later, giving the company an early lead in voice assistants. But the product never evolved fast enough. It remained limited and inflexible, eventually falling behind competitors from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Butterfly Keyboard: Introduced in 2015, the butterfly keyboard used a low-travel mechanism to make MacBooks thinner. It also made them fragile. Dust and debris frequently caused stuck keys, repeated characters, and full keyboard failures.

Macintosh TV: In 1993, Apple tried to combine a computer with a cable TV. The catch: it couldn’t do both at once. The product lasted just four months.

Apple III: Apple’s first attempt to build a business computer in 1980 was a disaster from the start, with notoriously loose component connections and a motherboard prone to overheating due to Steve Jobs’ demands for a fanless design. Apple had to replace thousands of faulty machines across two product revisions, and gave up on the entire product line in 1984 after selling only 65,000 units.

Songs of Innocence: As a gift to all 500 million of its iTunes users, Apple dropped a copy of U2’s latest album into all of their music libraries without permission. The stunt went over so poorly that it prompted an apology from U2 frontman Bono, while Apple had to release an additional software program to extricate the album from users’ collections.

Liquid Glass: Apple’s iOS 26 redesign leaned heavily on translucent layers and fluid animations. Many users found the interface harder to read and slower on older devices.

Third-Generation iPod Shuffle: In 2009, Apple removed all onboard controls from the iPod Shuffle, moving them to the headphone cable. The change made the device harder to use and incompatible with third-party headphones.

Macintosh Portable: While Apple billed its first battery-powered Mac as a “no-compromise machine” in 1989 it was quite clearly compromised by its 16-pound weight, $7,499 price tag, and weaker processor than the non-portable SE/30. Apple discontinued it in 1991 to make way for the far superior PowerBook 100.

Apple’s Weirdest

Apple Vision Pro: It’s not like Apple these days to release experimental products for bleeding-edge early adopters, which is why the Vision Pro is so puzzling. While the mixed reality technology is impressive, the bulky design and $3,500 price tag makes Vision Pro feel more like a developer kit than a fully fleshed-out product.

Mac Pro Wheels Kit: For creative professionals who desired the most powerful Mac possible, the $6,999 Mac Pro made some sense. But $700 for a set of wheels that don’t even lock in place—or $400, for those willing to forgo the Mac Pro’s standard feet—seems like a bit much. Apple just discontinued the Mac Pro last week, taking the wheels down with them.

Apple Watch Edition (1st generation): Yes Jony, we get it, the Apple Watch is a luxury timepiece, as indicated by the option to spend $10,000 (or more) on an 18-karat gold version. But we also knew that, unlike a real luxury watch, this product would soon become obsolete. Apple dispensed with the gold from the Series 1 onward.

iPod Socks: A set of colorful knit sleeves released in 2004 to protect iPods. Functional, but undeniably odd.

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