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Apple was born 50 years ago this coming Wednesday (1 April), and it's no mere hyperbole to say that the tech world would be a very different place without it.
Sure, we would have reached the same end point without the Cupertino company; computers would still have been made, smartphones would have existed, someone else would have popularized wireless earbuds. After all, Apple is rarely, if ever, first to the party.
But would we have had a laptop as beautifully crafted as the MacBook Air? A desktop as distinctive as the iMac G3? Would we have had the highs of the iPhone 4 and iPad Pro, or a game-changing device like the iPod? We'll never know for sure — but either way, it's a legacy worth celebrating.
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