Apple celebrates its 50th year — from scrappy startup to tech giant : NPR

In his new book, Apple: The First 50 Years, author David Pogue includes a story about 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 we can pack those components.'”

Launched in 2001, the iPod kick-started Apple’s rise to corporate and cultural dominance in the 21st century.

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Jobs took one look at the digital music player and chucked it into a nearby fish tank in his office, where it sank to the bottom and started to emit air bubbles.

The story goes that Jobs then said: “If there’s air bubbles in there, there’s still room. Make it smaller!”

But Pogue added that there’s a caveat to this compelling bit of Apple lore: It never actually happened. It’s just one more Apple myth.

Of pirates and perfectionists 

Few multinational corporations have inspired as much mythologizing as Apple Inc. (Apple is a financial supporter of NPR.)

Dozens of websites, books and films are devoted to telling the company’s story, from the longtime 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 contribute to the aura surrounding the company as a force for revolutionary change. Apple CEO Tim Cook referenced the 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 really matter whether the stories swirling around Apple are fact or folklore. The tech giant continues to exert a strong pull on the collective cultural psyche 50 years after its April 1, 1976, founding. “Apple was always placing itself in that role of being countercultural, claiming that they want to make the world a better place,” Snell said.

Apple’s famous 1997 “Think Different” ad campaign, with its celebration of “the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels,” encapsulates this idealized self-image.

Not all marketing

The renegade spirit isn’t all clever marketing.

Computer History Museum curator Hansen Hsu said it truly was baked into Apple’s products from the start, as well as into its culture. “They famously flew a pirate flag over their building,” said Hsu of the company’s first headquarters, in Cupertino, California.

At the time, computers were mostly to be found in corporate offices. Hsu said Apple’s early bestsellers, like the 1984 Macintosh desktop computer, helped democratize technology. “That original Macintosh stood for creativity, individual expression, iconoclasm,” Hsu said.

And Apple continued to stand for these things as it launched one culture-upending technology after another in the 21st century, such as the iPod, the iPhone and the App Store.

The iPhone changed the communication, information and entertainment landscape.

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“That single gesture launched entire industries — Uber, DoorDash, Tinder, Airbnb,” said Pogue of the App Store, which was introduced in 2008.

Where “think different” falls down

But Pogue added that this massive explosion of content and connectivity came with severe consequences, especially after streaming took off around 2015. Suddenly, people had a computer, a camera and a television/movie screen with them all the time, every day.

“The increase in screen time does seem to correlate with young people’s sense of isolation and depression,” Pogue said.

The company has responded to growing concerns regarding issues associated with smartphone addiction. In a March interview with Good Morning America, Apple’s current CEO, Tim Cook, voiced his opposition to mindless scrolling.

“I don’t want people looking at the smartphone more than they’re looking in someone’s eyes,” he said.

Apple still wants the world to perceive it as a force for revolutionary change. Cook’s recent statement celebrating Apple’s 50th anniversary resurfaced its familiar “think different” catchphrase. But Apple Inc. has come a long way since its roots. Today, it’s one of the world’s most profitable companies and doesn’t always “think different” when it comes to corporate behavior.

Apple has been taking a lot of flak for Cook’s cozying up to the Trump administration, such as his $1 million personal donation to the president’s second inauguration.

Apple CEO Tim Cook shakes hands with President Trump during an event in the White House’s Oval Office on Aug. 6, 2025.

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Win McNamee/Getty Images

When quizzed on this and other matters concerning his relationship with Trump, Cook told Good Morning America that he’s not political. “I focus on policy,” Cook said. “And so I’m very pleased that the president and the administration is accessible to talk about policy.”

The “Teflon” effect

Regardless, Apple’s competitors usually face far greater backlash for their unpopular actions than Apple does.

“I personally have not seen any ‘I’m canceling Apple TV’ principled stand in the same way that people canceled Disney+ and Hulu for Jimmy Kimmel being sidelined,” said Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi. “There’s something about Apple that I think keeps it ‘Teflon’ from these types of critiques.”

Digital artist Kyt Janae’s San Francisco studio is packed with Apple laptops and desktops. She says she uses these machines in all her creative projects.

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Chloe Veltman/NPR

“I don’t see Apple as a brand the same way that I would look at any other tech company or clothing brand or anything else,” said Kyt Janae, a renowned visual artist and technologist based in San Francisco. She said she uses Apple products for all her creative projects, such as her work on the animated series Rick and Morty.

Janae said she understands that Apple is a megacorporation that prioritizes its shareholders. But the creativity and risk-taking that the brand represents to her — as it did to its customers five decades ago — overrides all other concerns. “I’m, like, locked in lifelong, no matter what happens,” Janae said.

Jennifer Vanasco edited the audio and digital versions of this story. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.