Apple is 50, bigger and stronger than ever. How does the company shape the world of 2026?

It’s half a century since Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, a tech-minded entrepreneur and a shy-minded computer engineer, emerged from the counter-cultural fug of San Francisco to found Apple Computer in the suburb of Palo Alto. With their shared passion for electronics, Dylan bootlegs and practical jokes, the two men pooled capital raised from the sale of an HP-65 calculator and a VW Bus to start Apple, with the official partnership agreement signed on 1 April 1976 in Mountain View, California.

From the outset, it was hardware that drove the Apple machine. The Apple 1, the personal computer designed by Wozniak and aggressively marketed by Jobs, was available as a kit ($50 for the main PCB) but also as a fully assembled machine, for $500 wholesale. Customers wanted the latter, which transformed Jobs’ house and garage in Palo Alto into a basic assembly line.

The rest is history, thoroughly burnished with retelling. The Apple 1, selling for $666.66 retail, was still rather ad-hoc, less polished and complete feeling than the rivals that started to emerge. It was time to step up. The Apple II, with a housing designed by local consultant Jerry Manock, was to be the first product from the new Apple Computer Co, officially incorporated in January 1977.

The computer was a runaway success, putting the nascent company on a firm financial footing and – crucially – served to reinforce Jobs’ belief that when it came to design, detail, and presentation, it was his way or the highway.

It’s salient to recall how many of the building blocks of the modern digital world have been laid by Apple, even if the company wasn’t always responsible for baking the bricks in the first place. Apple is a company of firsts and taking first dibs, from the graphical interface created at Xerox PARC that was to form the basis of Apple’s operating system and hence every icon-driven screen in the world (either a massive dropped ball by Xerox or a canny steal by Apple – according to his biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs described it as both) to the barely disguised homages to Dieter Rams and post-war minimalism ushered into the public realm by Jobs and Jony Ive.

Over 50 years, Apple has set physical and aesthetic standards that others have had no choice but to follow. Inspiration might be the jumping off point, but it has always been perspiration that takes Apple above and beyond.

Now, more than ever, the company’s influence is felt. When Apple has a new idea, the world still sits up and takes notice. When Apple makes a (rare) misstep, the commentariat churns out millions of words to examine exactly what went wrong.

Unsurprisingly, the half-century has been substantially focused on hits, rather than misses. Every Lisa or Vision Pro is countered by literally billions of other devices. The iPhone alone has sold three billion units over 50 variants since its introduction in 2007. The MacBook, first seen in 2006, has sold in the hundreds of millions, with the newly launched MacBook Neo looking set to expand that reach still further.

Depending on the data, the Californian giant sits comfortably in the top ten of global companies by value, nestling alongside other titans of tech like Amazon and Alphabet. But while the latter are better known for their services, Apple has managed to retain the lustre of physicality, with its products acting as the ambassadors for the brand.

Apple has consistently demonstrated an uncanny genius at shifting the cultural conversation and rewiring our consumer desires. From the democratising principle of the first 1984 Macintosh, and its irresistible alignment with culture and creativity, through to the creation of the PowerBook, iMac, MacBook, iPod, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, Siri, Apple TV and Apple Music and now the Neo.

All of this has been stewarded with impeccable precision, ruled first by the iron fist of Jobs, partnered with the eagle eyes of Ive, and latterly by Tim Cook, who became CEO in 2011.

Unlike the eco-systems developed by many of its peers, Apple’s walled garden has remained consistently appealing to consumers, an experience that perpetuates the silky smooth, friction-free experience Jobs was so determined to provide from the outset. Although failures are few, Apple has never been afraid to pivot away from a wayward bet or switch back to its core focus when distraction threatens.

The much-hyped and hugely amortised Apple car project, for example, or the technically astonishing but content-starved Vision Pro, any number of UI or hardware missteps or even the sub-par first iteration of Maps, have all been diplomatically dispatched yet also thoroughly absorbed into the lore; the company never makes the same mistakes twice. Apple’s relatively light involvement with AI, which was initially dismissed as being too little and too late, is looking smarter by the minute.

The seamless confluence of hardware and software, a rigid house style for presentation and graphics, packaging, architecture and retail environments, from the multi-billion dollar Apple Park to a recyclable iPhone box, the devil continues to inhabit the details.

On top of this is a steely determination, if not to win friends, certainly to influence people, from journalists to fanboys, rivals to challengers, suppliers to governments. It was Apple that reshaped the music industry, that initiated the tap-to-pay methods used around the world, that broke Silicon Valley hegemony by building its own award-winning chips, that gave the smartwatch industry a flagship to aspire to. It is also Apple that is providing a benchmark for sustainable manufacturing in the shape of the Apple 2030 plan.

Apple is a behemoth in every sense. In 2025, the App Store alone saw over 850 million average weekly users around the world. Since 2008, Apple says that developers have earned over $550 billion on this platform. Annual hardware unit sales in the tens of millions make stated carbon neutrality targets a tough reach, but the company’s dominance over its supply chain makes it better placed than almost any other manufacturer in history to affect meaningful change.

So what of the next 50 years? An American company with global reach and near-universal admiration, Apple is also representative of the tentacles that are tightly wrapped around the global network of material supply, manufacturing, distribution and sales.

Apple doesn’t just facilitate interpersonal connectivity but demonstrates how geopolitics are integral to our current way of life. In an era of enforced reactionary behaviour and international isolationism, could our continued desire for technology help drive a less destructive path?

Apple.com, Apple.com/store