As legend has it, to finance the development of the Apple I personal computer kit Steve Jobs sold a Volkswagen bus and Steve Wozniak an HP-65 calculator. This is how Apple was born, in the garage of a Californian house on April Fool’s Day 1976. Fast forward to today, and the company is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Reportedly, Jobs eventually replaced the bus with supercars as Apple rapidly grew into a consumer tech giant, making him a millionaire in his early 20s. That fortune was made through the consistent development of groundbreaking products – a feat Apple has continued long after his passing in 2011.
And so, today, we can look back through five decades of innovation – across computing hardware, software, mobile devices, and MP3 players – and see a company that has made creating culturally significant products its business. Here, the ITPro team talks about their own favourite Apple products.
Jane McCallion
This is a really hard choice for me, as I’ve had so many Apple products in my life – many or even most of which I have enjoyed. I’m going to go back to where it all began, though, and pick the Apple Macintosh Performa 630. This desktop computer arrived in my childhood home in about 1994, taking up residence between the dining table and the window to the back garden. Until that point, my main interaction with computers had been at school using BBC Micros and perhaps the odd Acorn Archimedes, so the Performa 630 was quite the revelation.
The Macintosh System Software (as the Macintosh OS was called at the time) GUI was a big change compared to even the Windows PCs I’d come across, let alone the school computers. It proved an entry point for word processing and databases, courtesy of Claris Works, as well as desktop publishing via QuarkXpress. Sitting at my iMac 32 years later, I can’t help but think this may have helped steer my adult life in a certain direction…
Rory Bathgate
I’m in a bit of a different position than my colleagues, having come very late to the Apple ecosystem. Apart from the iPod Touch I was gifted in my early high school years – which was equal parts Temple Run and Linkin Park machine – I was a 100% Windows and Android user until coming to work at ITPro.
Much has changed in the intervening years. My reaction to being given a MacBook in my first corporate job was one of surprise and worry, which quickly gave way to joy as I realized the simple brilliance of macOS. Indeed, I increasingly found myself frustrated with the relative clunkiness and DIY reality of using Windows, and my opinion of it further soured with the switch to Windows 11.
All of this led me to purchase an M4 Mac Mini at the end of 2025. I’d previously had the opportunity to review the M2 Mac Mini for ITPro and had been thoroughly charmed by the small but mighty output of this pint-sized device. My partner can attest to the numerous times that, wandering around an Apple store while out in Central London, I would linger at the Mac Mini section and comment on just how little seems to faze it.
Having now adopted the M4 variant, which is even smaller than its predecessors, there’s no looking back for me. In my personal time, I love photography and video editing, and so far I’ve found the Mac Mini can handle software like DXO PhotoLab and DaVinci Resolve with no grumbles (literally – it’s eerily silent).
Recent crazes like OpenClaw have run down stocks of the Mac Mini, as AI enthusiasts look to put the affordable device to work automating away their daily tasks. But if you can get your hands on one and use it manually, you won’t look back either.
Ross Kelly
My family home was most certainly an Apple shop as a teenager, and still is as I approach my mid-30s. My mother couldn’t be separated from her iconic U2-branded iPod, and my brother and I were seldom found without our iPod Nanos – in different colors to avoid mix-ups, of course.
With the iPhone, the situation is no different. My first proper smartphone was the iPhone 3GS, and it felt like a taste of the future. No more clunky buttons, just a sleek touchscreen device that had everything you needed: calls, texts, music, it was all wrapped up in one.
During the launch ceremony for the device in 2009, Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of worldwide product marketing, noted the ‘S’ stood for ‘Speed’ – and he wasn’t wrong.
The device was markedly faster than its predecessors, up to twice the speed, and boasted a longer battery life. Storage options (16GB and 32GB) were also fantastic for the time.
Looking back, the iPhone 3GS set a high bar for smartphone performance, and while it pales in comparison to what the company offers now it certainly was a pioneering device.
Performance was only one part of the equation though. Ease of use, the built-in camera, and the convenience of downloading whatever app you wanted through the App Store made it the perfect digital companion.
A brief period with a BlackBerry was enough to convince me that iPhones were the only viable option when it came to a mobile device. From the 3GS to the brick-like 4G, right through to my current iPhone, the 15 Pro, I’ve been all-in on Apple, and it won’t change any time soon.
Bobby Hellard
As the ITPro reviews editor, I’ve had the privilege to review many of its laptops and mobile devices. But for me, it is the consumer products that leave a bigger mark on the world.
Steve Jobs didn’t promise to put “1,000 songs in your pocket” to his daughter; that’s just sentimental fiction from the 2015 Danny Boyle film about Jobs. He did, however, say the line on stage during the announcement for the first iPod in 2001. The slogan was powerful as a great marketing gimmick and a somewhat skewed truth in the legacy of Jobs. I quickly burned all my favourite songs into the original iPod. I’ve gone on to use the Shuffle, the Nano, and, of course, many iPhones in my time. Often taking for granted the sheer innovation behind having my whole music library with me, wherever I go.
The US comedian Bill Burr has a funny line on Jobs and the iPod. It plays on the fact that Jobs famously wasn’t a coder or a technician. He merely delegated ideas to people. So at some point during the new millennium, Jobs turned to Apple engineers, led by Jon Rubinstein, and told them to build a device that could fit in your pocket but hold all your songs. Reportedly, size was the key. There’s a story about Jobs plunging a prototype into a fish tank to show that bubbles emerging from the device highlighted space that could be removed.
Nothing, for me, quite highlights the lore of Jobs at Apple like the iPod. But also, given that this feat only took a year and comprehensively changed consumption of music, film, TV, and culture, it’s an example of Apple at its very best.
