GoKawiilApproaching a retrospective of Apple's first 50 years is like looking up at a waterfall. You can see its shape and where it begins and ends, but if you stand under the cascade, you risk being washed away by the water's force and volume.
When I began assembling a list of notable Apple products to commemorate the company's 50th anniversary, it kept growing. There's the original Apple II and Macintosh, but also Quadras and Power Macintoshes from the 1990s with barely remembered number designations. And those were all before Steve Jobs returned to the company and reinvigorated it with the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Instead of touching on every model and revision -- heck, or even entire product families, apologies to my beloved StyleWriter II -- I've put together a list of 13 Apple products that CNET has reviewed and featured over the years. Although Apple was incorporated on April 1, 1976, and CNET didn't come around until 1992, our story archives contain a large swathe of Apple's history.
This Apple-1 personal computer launched in 1976 and sold for $387,750 in a Christie's online auction in 2013. Christie's
I was repeatedly struck by Apple's milestones on its path to success, as well as by how the company changed the computing industry. Though computers existed before the Apple II, that chunky beige wedge found its way into homes and sparked interest among the same kids who later grew up to design successive waves of products.
And though portable music players had existed before Apple's iPod, the combination of its small size and huge storage (and amazing advertising) meant it wasn't long before people everywhere were dangling those signature white earbuds from their ears.
Apple has created massively successful products, and instead of coasting on its success, the company looked for the next thing, again and again, for over 50 years.
Bearing fruit: The early Apple foundations
A working Apple-1 shown in 2013. Daniel Terdiman/CNET
In 1976, when Steve Wozniak invented the Apple-1 computer (later referred to as Apple I) and Steve Jobs saw the potential to sell it, that homebrew personal computer would be the foundation of everything the Apple Computer Company has achieved since.
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