Apple

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer Company in Los Altos, California. Wayne soon left, but Jobs and Wozniak launched the Apple I, a hand-built personal computer.

Apple introduced the Macintosh with a legendary Super Bowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott. The Macintosh popularized the graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse-driven computing for consumers.

Apple acquired NeXT, bringing Steve Jobs back as interim CEO. Jobs revitalized the company with the iMac in 1998, a boldly designed all-in-one that restored Apple's financial health and brand identity.

Apple introduced the iPod, a portable music player with a 5 GB hard drive holding '1,000 songs in your pocket.' It transformed the music industry and established Apple as a consumer electronics powerhouse.

Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, a touchscreen smartphone combining a phone, iPod, and internet communicator. It revolutionized the mobile industry and became Apple's flagship product, making it the world's most valuable company.

Apple launched the App Store with 500 apps, creating a new software distribution model and the mobile app economy. It generated billions in developer revenue and became a central Apple service offering.

Apple introduced the iPad, defining the modern tablet category. It sold 300,000 units on launch day and went on to become the best-selling tablet, reshaping digital media consumption and education.

Tim Cook succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple following Jobs' resignation due to his battle with pancreatic cancer. Cook had previously served as Apple's Chief Operating Officer and was instrumental in building Apple's global supply chain. Under Cook's leadership, Apple expanded its services business, introduced new product categories like Apple Watch and AirPods, and became the first company to reach $3 trillion in market capitalization.

Apple released the Apple Watch, its first wearable device and the first major new product category under Tim Cook's leadership. The Apple Watch integrated fitness tracking, health monitoring, and communication features into a smartwatch with a focus on health and wellness. It became the best-selling wearable device globally, establishing Apple's dominance in the smartwatch market and driving the health-tech ecosystem.

Apple released its wireless Bluetooth earbuds, AirPods, on December 13, 2016, after a delay from their September announcement alongside the iPhone 7. The AirPods featured the custom-designed W1 chip for seamless pairing and audio switching across Apple devices. Within two years, AirPods became Apple's most popular accessory, defining the truly wireless earbud category.

Apple launched the iPhone X on November 3, 2017, marking the tenth anniversary of the iPhone with a radical redesign. The device introduced an edge-to-edge OLED display, eliminated the home button, and replaced Touch ID with Face ID facial recognition. The iPhone X set the design template for all subsequent iPhones and established gesture-based navigation as the standard.

Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization on August 2, 2018. The landmark valuation reflected the success of the iPhone ecosystem, the growth of Apple's services business, and strong financial performance under CEO Tim Cook. Apple's stock surpassed the $207 per share threshold to achieve the milestone during intraday trading.

Apple launched its original-content streaming service Apple TV+, entering the competitive streaming wars with original programming. The service marked Apple's major push into original content production and a new services revenue stream, debuting with flagship series like The Morning Show, See, and For All Mankind.

Apple announced the M1 chip, the first Apple-designed system-on-a-chip for Mac computers, marking the transition from Intel processors to Apple Silicon. The M1 delivered breakthrough performance-per-watt, enabling thinner, cooler, and longer-lasting Macs. This transition unified Apple's hardware architecture across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, giving Apple full control over its computing roadmap.

Apple became the first publicly traded company to reach a $3 trillion market capitalization, driven by its services growth, iPhone ecosystem, and successive hardware innovations including the Apple Silicon M-series chips.

Apple launched the Vision Pro, its first spatial computer and first major new product category since the Apple Watch. Priced at USD 3,499, the headset introduced visionOS with spatial computing controlled by eyes, hands, and voice. The launch marked Apple's entry into mixed reality and spatial computing, though initial sales were limited by the high price point and niche positioning.

At WWDC 2024, Apple announced Apple Intelligence, its personal intelligence system integrating generative AI across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The company partnered with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Siri and system-wide writing tools. Apple Intelligence introduced on-device and cloud-based AI for text generation, image creation, and contextual awareness, marking Apple's formal entry into the consumer AI race.

Apple released the first consumer features of Apple Intelligence, including writing tools, notification summaries, and a redesigned Siri, in iOS 18.1. The phased rollout marked the company's entry into generative AI features, though the most advanced Siri capabilities slipped to later releases.

Apple announced a plan to spend more than USD 500 billion in the United States over four years, including a new server factory in Houston, expanded silicon production in Arizona, and a manufacturing academy in Michigan. It was one of the largest corporate investment commitments in US history.

Apple delayed the more personalized, app-aware Siri features it had previewed at WWDC 2024, acknowledging they needed more time than expected. The setback drew criticism and US lawsuits over advertising claims, and reset Apple's AI roadmap ahead of WWDC 2025.

The European Commission fined Apple 500 million euros for breaching the Digital Markets Act by restricting developers from steering users to offers outside the App Store. Apple said it would appeal, and the ruling pressured later App Store policy changes in the EU.

Apple introduced the iPhone 17 lineup, including the ultra-thin iPhone Air, alongside A19 chips and a revised camera system. The Air established the hardware direction that preceded the foldable iPhone Duo, and early demand outpaced supply for the thin model.

In his final WWDC keynote as CEO, Tim Cook unveils a completely rebuilt Siri powered by a custom Google Gemini model (~1.2T parameters) in a landmark partnership reportedly worth B/year. Apple also announces iOS 27, a new homeOS platform, and the transition of Cook to executive chairman with John Ternus succeeding as CEO — marking the end of the Cook era.

Apple briefly touched a market capitalization of USD 5 trillion for the first time on July 28, 2026, becoming only the second publicly traded company to cross the threshold after Nvidia. Shares reached an intraday high of USD 342.89. The milestone underscores Apple's transition into a services-and-AI powerhouse alongside its core hardware business, driven by robust demand for the iPhone, growing services revenue, and investor confidence in Apple's AI strategy following its partnership with Google Gemini at WWDC 2026.

Apple trained a proprietary AI model for the China market with support from Alibaba, marking a significant shift in its China AI strategy amid regulatory restrictions that prevent US models like ChatGPT from operating in the country. The China-focused large language model was registered with Chinese regulators in July 2026, and Apple became the first US company approved to offer a proprietary AI model in China. The move positions Apple to compete more directly with Huawei and other domestic smartphone makers that have made AI central to their products, while illustrating how geopolitical fragmentation is creating separate technology stacks for different markets.

Apple laid off more than 200 employees across its Vision Pro, Siri, and AI teams in late August 2026, including its Vision Pro gaming and immersive video units, as the company reprioritized toward smart glasses, foldable devices, and AI. The cuts marked a retreat from the Vision Pro spatial computing line launched in 2024 and came as John Ternus prepared to take over as CEO.

Tim Cook announced he will step down as CEO of Apple on September 1, 2026, after 15 years in the role, becoming Executive Chairman. John Ternus, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering who led Apple Silicon development, becomes only the fourth CEO in Apple history. The handoff marks the first CEO transition since Cook took over in 2011 following Steve Jobs.

Apple introduced the M6, its first 2-nanometer chip, alongside the M5 Ultra, its first quad-die architecture, powering the refreshed Mac mini and Mac Studio. The M6 pairs a 12-core CPU and Dual 16-core Neural Engine, while M5 Ultra delivers 1.2TB/s unified memory bandwidth for large on-device AI models. The launch landed amid a wave of orders from AI labs -- OpenAI alone bought tens of thousands of Mac minis and Studios for reinforcement-learning agent training -- driving Mac revenue up 29 percent and making Apple desktop silicon a second AI compute supply chain beside GPUs.

At its Surprise and Shine event in Cupertino, Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone, alongside the iPhone 18 lineup with 2nm A20 Pro chips, marking the companys entry into the foldable category it had avoided for nearly a decade. The USD 2,000 device was the first major product keynote led by new CEO John Ternus, who succeeded Tim Cook in August, and prices across the lineup rose by USD 200 to 300. The launch was Apples answer to Samsung and Chinese rivals that had dominated foldables, and a test of whether Ternus can sustain Apples USD 5 trillion trajectory.

Apple released its biggest software update in years across iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, introducing Siri AI -- a rebuilt, conversational assistant with personal context understanding, onscreen awareness, and systemwide app actions. The release capped Apple's AI reset after years of criticism that Siri had fallen behind rivals, rolling out first in English with additional languages in October. The same wave brought Safari 27 with an MCP server letting coding agents control the browser, and overhauled parental controls across platforms.