In the early 1970s, the idea of an ordinary person owning a computer sounded absurd. Computers back then were more like aircraft carriers or nuclear power plants than household appliances - vast machines housed in data centres operated by teams of specialists, serving governments, universities and large corporations.
Then came Apple.
Founded on April 1 1976 by "college dropouts" Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the Silicon Valley startup did not invent computing. What it did was arguably more important: it helped turn computing into a personal technology.
Before Apple, computers were largely sold in kit form. Jobs saw that people wanted them pre-assembled and ready to run. The earliest Apple I units, featuring handmade koa wooden cases, now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As an early Apple adopter and app developer, here's my selection of the company's (and Jobs's) most significant technological achievements over the last 50 years.
Apple II - beige yet distinctive
Early personal computers were more curiosities than practical tools. The Apple II, launched in June 1977, introduced something new: style. Even its colour - beige! - was distinctive, contrasting with the black metal boxes common at that time.
The use of colour graphics was both new and exciting, and the keyboard felt satisfying to use. A simple speaker, with only a single-bit output, was ingeniously coaxed into producing tones and even speech-like sounds. The design revolution stretched as far as the packaging: Jerry Manock, Apple's first in-house designer, placed the machine in a moulded plastic case which looked sleek and professional.
The mouse - a whole new way of interacting
By 1979, the 24-year-old Jobs - sensing that tech giant IBM was catching up with Apple - went looking for the next big thing. The photocopier company Xerox, wanting pre-IPO shares in Apple, offered a visit to its nearby research labs as an inducement. Jobs realised that researchers such as Alan Kay at Xerox's Palo Alto research centre were creating the next generation of computing interfaces.
Central to this was a device invented by Kay's mentor, Douglas Engelbart, at Stanford University in the mid-1960s and nicknamed "the mouse". Engelbart's vision of computers as machines to augment the human mind inspired Kay and colleagues to create graphical displays in which users interacted with scrollbars, buttons, menus and windows.
Macintosh - dawn of the modern product launch
Jobs thought anyone should be able to use a computer. In January 1984, the first Apple Mac pushed this idea to new extremes. The traditional need for obscure computer commands (and manuals) vanished. Early adopters such as myself felt we just knew how to do everything.
But the Mac's launch was not just another technological leap for Apple. It also inspired the now-familiar cultural moment of the modern product launch. Following a teasing Super Bowl advert directed by Ridley Scott, Jobs used a 1,500-seat theatre on January 24 to create a stage performance centred on a single charismatic presenter. Jobs let a small, square and still-beige computer (then known as Macintosh) out of its bag - and it began speaking for itself, to rapturous applause.
iMac - a meeting of minds
After a failed attempt to develop a new operating system with IBM, Apple eventually bought Jobs's company NeXT. In September 1997, he returned to Apple as interim CEO with the company "two months from bankruptcy". The move, though welcomed by many Apple users, terrified some of its employees. Jobs quickly began firing staff and shutting down failed products.
During this restructuring, he visited Apple's design studio and immediately hit it off with young British designer Jony Ive. Their meeting of minds led to the 1998 candy-coloured translucent iMac. Essentially smaller, cheaper NeXT machines, iMac (the i stood for internet) also kicked off another Apple habit: abandoning ageing technology. The floppy disk drive was ditched in favour of a CD drive - a move heavily criticised at the time, but later widely copied.
Mac History.App Store's software revolution
By mid-2008, the iPhone enabled third-party developers the chance to to create a dizzying range of new applications. At the same time, the App Store - launched on July 10 2008 - addressed one of the most complex problems: how to distribute and commercialise these "apps". Historically, they were often copied and distributed freely. The App Store changed this, using strong encryption to ensure the copy sold could only be used by that specific user, thus eliminating software piracy.
By establishing the first (eponymous) App Store, Apple changed the way people discover and purchase software. This led to an explosion of apps and a simple but powerful idea: whatever you wanted to do, someone, somewhere, had already built it. Apple captured this shift in a slogan that became part of everyday language: "There's an app for that".
Time and again, this extraordinary company has anticipated the value of opening up computing to everyone. Happy birthday, Apple.
Nick Dalton, Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science, Northumbria University, Newcastle.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.