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Apple's First 50 Years Celebrated - Including How Steve Jobs Finally Accepted an 'Open' App Store (substack.com) 49

Posted by EditorDavid from the think-different dept.
Apple's 50th anniversary got celebrated in weird and wild ways. CEO Tim Cook posted a special 30-second video rewinding backwards through the years of Apple's products until it reaches the Apple I. Podcaster Lex Fridman noticed if you play the sound in reverse, "It's the Think Different ad music, pitched up." TechRadar played seven 50-year-old Apple I games on an emulator, including Star Trek, Blackjack, Lunar Lander, and of course, Conway's Game of Life.

And Macworld ranked Apple's 50 most influential people. (Their top five?)

5. Tony Fadell (iPhone co-creator/"father of the iPod")
4. Sir Jony Ive
3. Steve Wozniak
2. Tim Cook
1. Steve Jobs

One of the most thoughtful celebraters was David Pogue, who's spent 42 years of writing about Apple (starting as a MacWorld columnist and the author of Mac for Dummies, one of the first "...For Dummies" books ever published in the early 1990s.) Now 63 years old, Pogue spent the last two years working on a 608-page hardcover book titled Apple: The First 50 Years. But on his Substack Pogue, contemplated his own history with the company — including several interactions with Steve Jobs. Pogue remembers how Jobs "hated open systems. He wanted to make self-contained, beautiful machines. He didn't want them polluted by modifications."

The tech blog Daring Fireball notes that Pogue actually interviewed Scott Forstall (who'd led the iPhone's software development team) for his new book, "and got this story, about just how far Steve Jobs thought Apple could go to expand the iPhone's software library while not opening it to third-party developers." "I want you to make a list of every app any customer would ever want to use," he told Forstall. "And then the two of us will prioritize that list. And then I'm going to write you a blank check, and you are going to build the largest development team in the history of the world, to build as many apps as you can as quickly as possible." Forstall, dubious, began composing a list. But on the side, he instructed his engineers to build the security foundations of an app store into the iPhone's software-"against Steve's knowledge and wishes," Forstall says. [...]

Two weeks after the iPhone's release, someone figured out how to "jailbreak" the iPhone: to hack it so that they could install custom apps. Jobs burst into Forstall's office. "You have to shut this down!" But Forstall didn't see the harm of developers spending their efforts making the iPhone better. "If they add something malicious, we'll ship an update tomorrow to protect against that. But if all they're doing is adding apps that are useful, there's no reason to break that." Jobs, troubled, reluctantly agreed.

Week by week, more cool apps arrived, available only to jailbroken phones. One day in October, Jobs read an article about some of the coolest ones. "You know what?" he said. "We should build an app store."

Forstall, delighted, revealed his secret plan. He had followed in the footsteps of Burrell Smith (the Mac's memory-expansion circuit) and Bob Belleville (the Sony floppy-drive deal): He'd disobeyed Jobs and wound up saving the project.
In fact, the book "includes new interviews with 150 key people who made the journey, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers, and executives" (according to its description on Amazon). Pogue's book even revisits the story of Steve Jobs proving an iPod prototype could be smaller by tossing it into an aquarium, shouting "If there's air bubbles in there, there's still room. Make it smaller!" But Pogue's book "added that there's a caveat to this compelling bit of Apple lore," reports NPR.

"It never actually happened. It's just one more Apple myth."

Apple's First 50 Years Celebrated - Including How Steve Jobs Finally Accepted an 'Open' App Store More | Reply

Apple's First 50 Years Celebrated - Including How Steve Jobs Finally Accepted an 'Open' App Store

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  • Apple is no open environment. I hate it when the corporates decide for you that you should not use your software under the next incarnation of the operating system to make way for some unproductive Cloud storage scheme.

    I hope for the EU digital fairness Act to end these abusive practices.

    Otherwise I use Linux and I think it is ready for mainstream now.

    Fun fact: I knew a former apple lobbist who told me that Mac OS X was based on Linux. Which is not entirely correct.

    • Re:Go for Linux (Score:5, Informative)

      by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Sunday April 05, 2026 @04:58AM (#66078048)
      It is somewhat correct. For one like Linux, Darwin is open-source. Many of the commands in Mac OS are also linux commands (grep, cat, etc..). It is a POSIX like OS (both take inspiration from UNIX). Also, both use the same file driven layout. (same slashes, same . notation for hidden files, etc etc etc). It is certainly more like Linux than say, Windows.

    • I could live w/ Apple not being open, as long as they were properly customer-centric. Like Bryan Lunduke once pointed out, the old Apple computers were a joy to have, where one could configure any system any which way, and have all sorts of add-ons inside the computer, right upto a 486 add-on on which one could run Wintel programs from System 7

      Problem started after Jobs' return to Apple, where he did succeed in making the company profitable, which is important! However, he also did a lot of things like

  • Bad video (Score:3)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Sunday April 05, 2026 @04:25AM (#66078022)
    The video and its “old-school” effects from Tim Cook, meant to represent the different products since the beginning, does not do justice to Apple, let alone to Steve Jobs’ talent.

  • It seems to me that many people confuse "Apple Computer" with "Apple" since they have a similar logo, one with a rainbow apple, one with a plain apple, and worked in tangential areas, one sold computers, the other one sold computerized consumer products.

    I mean "Apple Computer" had an excellent reputation as treating their customers as equal, providing them with all necessary documentation for fixing and modifying their computers in any way. In contrast "Apple" today doesn't even let you run non-approved sof

    • True! I believe that the "Apple" that remained once "Computers" was dropped from the company name was a very different company from the original. Just like the SCO that existed after the acquisition of Caldera was completely different from Santa Cruz Operations

      Only thing one missed about the old Apple Computer Macs was the lack of pre-emptive multitasking. But in exchange for gaining that, the modularity of the Mac OS was lost: NEXTSTEP, great as it was, was nothing like System 7, and couldn't be, sinc

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kriston ( 7886 )

        Putting a MacOS-like skin over the proven UNIX-like NeXTSTEP was inevitable. There are many reasons that Copeland and Taligent/Pink failed.

        • They basically had the 'Classic' environment running under a Unix environment a decade before OSX with A/UX.

          MAE then eventually got ported to Solaris. Speculation at the time was that Sun (RIP) would buy Apple and merge the best bits of macOS with OpenStep, Jobs' cross-OS collaboration with them.

  • To this day many wonder whether a "security fix" is just that or an excuse to prevent jailbreaking.

    You know, the thing which was proven in court to be legal to do on your own device.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by teg ( 97890 )

      To this day many wonder whether a "security fix" is just that or an excuse to prevent jailbreaking.

      You know, the thing which was proven in court to be legal to do on your own device.

      One man's jailbreak is another man's severe security bug. If an actor with resources tries to break the phone- e.g. if ICE is used against "enemies of the state" (which Trump has branded Democrats already) - having all of those holes patched is good. This makes it harder for Cellebrite, three letter US agencies etc to get access to your data. It also makes it harder to resell stolen phones, so they're less attractive targets for criminals.

  • Not a lot against the guy, but he should be #5 .. he merely continued the trajectory set by the others.

    • Re:Tim Cook #2?? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Sunday April 05, 2026 @08:13AM (#66078174)

      Not a lot against the guy, but he should be #5 .. he merely continued the trajectory set by the others.

      For nearly 15 years.

      Jobs passed in 2011. Tim Cook has been at the helm for 15 years since then. Even if he was coasting, Apple has done remarkably well in those 15 years just coasting alone. Most companies falter and die out by then. Heck, after Apple ousted Jobs as CEO, they were struggling by the time Jobs came back and he wasn't gone nearly as long as he is now.

      Even if Tim Cook did absolutely nothing for the 15 years he was CEO, the fact that Apple is still around and still going strong is already a huge credit to his (non-)leadership in managing to keep the ship steady.

      Tell me how many other CEOs are like that - because history is littered with failed companies whose leadership wanted to make their mark and then their companies imploded. Like Apple nearly did 20 years ago.

      Tim Cook, by "doing nothing", managed to keep Apple on the up and up, and history reveals this isn't usually what happens.

      • he merely continued the trajectory set by the others

        for 15 years

        yet he merely continued the trajectory set by the others.

      • When Jobs left, the company didn't sell half the world's mobile phones. It's a lot easier to coast now when Apple already has a massively popular product that continues to sell without needing real changes.

    • I don't know about #5, but definitely not #2 - that I would have given to Woz, one of the co-founders. Cook did do things like morphing Apple into a media company, which was a part of the formula that made it incredibly rich, after decades of mediocre financials. But that's more of a corporate achievement than a revolution in computing, such as the iPhone, iPad, iPod and Watch that Jobs oversaw

      • Woz, despite his technical chops, had no influence after the Apple ][ days, so while he was initially influential, he hasn't been influential over most of Apple's history.

  • Tim Cook more influential than the Woz? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Sunday April 05, 2026 @06:00AM (#66078086) Homepage

    Ok, I don't mind Jobs being considered more influencial than the Woz - Apple would not be a success without either of those two, so even if I personally appreciate tech more than marketing, Jobs alone saved Apple in the 90s so that's fair. But Tim Cook higher than the Woz when any semi-competent CEO could have done about the same at the point he was put in charge?

  • Good PR opportunity and did nothing..... or re-design something. Bring back the 27" iMac. !!! Re-design the hockey puck mouse into a more ergo mouse like Logitech gaming mouse which I use.
  • They seriously ranked Tim Cook over Woz? Apple wouldn't exist without Woz.

    • They seriously ranked Tim Cook over Woz? Apple wouldn't exist without Woz.

      Apple wouldn't exist today if it were not for Jobs.

      Apple wouldn't exist at all without both of them.

      Arrogant childish gotta-rank-everything-and-everyone assumes they should have been ranked separately instead of together. They both own #1 as co-founders and the ones who planted both the technical and marketing seeds that grew it into the massive empire today.

      • Apple would not have existed w/o Jobs or Woz. It would have existed w/o Cook - someone else would have run the thing. How successfully is anyone's guess, but it would have been hard to go wrong after Jobs designed you a winning formula
    • Yeah, that one is asinine

  • Forstall and the secret Appstore ? (Score:3)

    by Mirnotoriety ( 10462951 ) on Sunday April 05, 2026 @07:23AM (#66078138)
    > .. Forstall, delighted, revealed his secret plan ..

    Art Levinson first lobbied Jobs to allow third-party native apps But Jobs vigorously resisted the idea. "I called him a half dozen times to lobby for the potential of the apps," says

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      You'd think with the successes of the original 16-bit Apple machines, then the Mac platform, full of third party software of every kind imaginable, it should have been self-evident that third party apps would be natural and beneficial. But people like Jobs just can't help themselves: their instinct is to control their platform and exclude everyone else. So they indulge the Reality Distortion Field hard enough to convince themselves that such a scheme is viable, all evidence of history to the contrary, and

  • When did Apple have an open app store?

    • When did Apple have an open app store?

      I think here "open" means "not limited to internally-generated apps." Yes there are rules and guidelines that have to be met in order to publish an app to the App Store, but any developer can get published.

      Whether you agree or disagree with those guidelines is a different question.

  • To venerate the givers of our digital sustenance .. to count the pantheon of the blessed ... like the ArchAngels of technology who surrounded the most holy Steve, and the wretched who jailbreak the sacred trust of those who know best ...

    Accidentally published on Easter Sunday? I think not.

    You may rise now and bring the good tidings to the vast unwashed Androids.

  • What!? No Amelio? (Score:3)

    by RUs1729 ( 10049396 ) on Sunday April 05, 2026 @09:45AM (#66078248)
    Who would have thunk.

  • And Macworld ranked Apple's 50 most influential people. (Their top five?)
    5. Tony Fadell (iPhone co-creator/"father of the iPod")
    4. Sir Jony Ive
    3. Steve Wozniak
    2. Tim Cook
    1. Steve Jobs

    As a computer neanderthal I found Robin Williams' "The Mac is Not a Typewriter" to be a breakthrough for people approaching computers as an everyday tool and not the magical box that one should worship and fear. One can't name everyone, but...

  • Job's bio (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kencurry ( 471519 ) on Sunday April 05, 2026 @12:21PM (#66078462)
    Given up for adoption, a bright kid, charismatic but rude at times, questioning everything, hippie mindset, picking apples at a commune, living in India, fruitarian diets. Really only took a few college courses and wound up obsessed with calligraphy. Would you look at this bio and think he would be responsible for so much of what is now modern culture? I wonder what he would think of social media, ubiquitous phones, and AI everywhere today?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kriston ( 7886 )

      Don't forget ignoring modern approaches to cancer care and dying of a mostly-curable cancer.

  • .. No Woz, No Apple. Full Stop.
  • As the guy who created the first Application Storefront—and sold it to Steve Jobs—I can tell you this: distribution was never the hard part. we solved that early. what broke the internet next was trust. Napster proved infinite access. iTunes proved verified is worth paying for. the App Store combined both—but at the cost of control, review, and liability. now we’re here again. distribution is infinite. creation is automatic. trust is the constraint. the next system doesn’t revi

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