It so happened that my life is very closely tied to Apple. Long ago, at the beginning of my career, our paths crossed briefly, and a great deal of what has happened in my life came about precisely because of Apple and its products. So naturally, I couldn’t walk past such a significant milestone for the company — 50 years! Fifty! Years! I type this and immediately feel the urge to touch something physical — to take a vintage Mac off the shelf, plug in a keyboard, hear the startup chime. That’s what anniversaries do to people like me. They turn abstract numbers into objects.
Today, April 1, 2026, Apple turns 50, and the internet will predictably fill up with pieces about the iPhone, Steve Jobs, the trillion-dollar market cap, Vision Pro, and what comes next. All fair. All true. But I’d like to talk about the Macintosh 128K. It’s only 42 years old — Apple’s story didn’t begin with it, but I consider the very first Macintosh the product that defined what Apple is, and the one that allowed the company to reach this age. (You might say “What about the iMac / iPod / iPhone?” and there’s something to that too, but the Macintosh was still the more foundational one.)
