The best-known and most-loved computer company turned fifty this week. If you can still call Apple a computer company, given how much of its revenue and profit comes from just one device, a little game-changing smartphone called the iPhone.
Apple has sold some 3 billion iPhones since it launched in 2007, according to Counterpoint Research, bringing in an estimated $2.3 trillion in revenue.
More than anything, this large touchscreen device enabled the mobile world we find ourselves in. Perhaps “super-charged it” is more apt. Android’s rise to be the dominant mobile operating system was built on the early successes of Steve Jobs’ vision to have something so easy to use that it had just one button.
It’s easy to forget how revolutionary that alone was.
But what is a smartphone if not a smaller personal computer than the big beige boxes that first appeared on desks in the 1970s and 1980s? The Macintosh changed computing as much as the iPhone changed the mobile space.
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The first Mac incorporated existing technologies and fused them into a consumer-friendly package, including its then-innovative graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse. These were both pilfered from Xerox’s famous X lab, where Jobs saw them in action and realised they were being underutilised.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 when Nokia still sold two out of three feature phones. It used the available touchscreens and miniaturised hard drives, amongst other tech, and combined them into something so user-friendly it upended both the mobile and overall computing industries.
Smartphones are the predominant computer in the world now – all effectively copied from Jobs’ original design with Jony Ive.
And the newest Apple release has impressed us mightily at Stuff Towers.
We reckon the MacBook Neo is a game-changer that will introduce cheaper MacBooks to a broader audience. The Windows computer makers will be watching with keen interest as this slicker, more colourful, and decidedly Apple laptop introduces a whole new category of budget users to the Apple ecosystem.
Happy birthday, Apple.
