50 years of Apple. Now, I think a lot of people might not realize, but I've been visiting Apple and have had the pleasure of joining Apple many, many times over the years. You're not a company that looks backwards much. I've been to a lot of rooms. I've been into the Steve Jobs Theater. You don't see old products. You don't see a museum. In fact, I think the only thing I've seen is like an original iPhone down in Steve Jobs Theater. Why is it important to recognize this milestone?
Yeah, it's a great question. We are not nostalgic people. We're just not. Again, that's the way Steve programmed us. You remember you didn't see a 20th anniversary or 25th or a 30th or 40th. We're built to work on things in the future to try to build tomorrow and to not lean on yesterday. At the same time, 50 is so special and quite honestly we had so many of our customers, our users who wanted to celebrate the 50th that we thought this is a special moment. This is worth taking just a moment, right? Because in the grand scheme of things, this is a moment to recognize it, but not just to recognize and pat ourselves on the back. It's really a celebration of the things that people have done with our products for 50 years. Because, you know, I think people have changed the world with the things they've done with our products and our products have had that sort of impact. And so it's a moment in time to acknowledge that 50 years of a pretty incredible legacy of products and users who have done amazing things with them.
Today, I think people, I guess, think of Apple or see Apple as just this iconic business, an iconic company, iconic products. But it's been a wild ride to get to 50 years. And I think that is also worth celebrating.
Yeah. Well, Trevor, I'll give you something you may not be aware. I've been here for 40 of the 50. So, I hit my 40th anniversary in just about two months. So, I have seen some of those wild times, you know, I've seen the company that came back from a very near-death experience to, you know, and then Steve had come back and created a basis for a company that, as we just talked about, has helped change the world. And it has been an incredibly wild ride. You know, Steve's famous saying the journey is the reward and I've had a pretty amazing journey and this company has had an incredible journey.
Steve and Steve were the OGs of Apple and it's funny when you think about the creativity of today and then you think about the even the original devices actually had that same power behind them. They were allowing people to do something that previously they couldn't do. It's a remarkable story for the ages.
It really is. You remember the original description of the Mac was a bicycle for your mind, right? It was the idea that allow your mind, your creativity, your capability to go much further, much faster, much easier than you could go than you would transport yourself without a bike, right? But this was freeing of your mind and taking your mind further. So yeah, that has been the ethos of the company for its entire time. How do you unleash, how do you take this human potential and take it further through the use of our products?
It'll be 15 years this year since we lost Steve Jobs, but I get the sense through almost every conversation I have with people at Apple from Tim all the way down that his spirit, his vision, his goals run deep within the company. You're sitting in Apple Park, an iconic place that he envisioned.
Absolutely. Yeah. No, look, we learned so much from Steve and as we just mentioned I mean we were almost out of business in 1996 and 97 and he came back in 1997 and the company was rebirthed. You just have to imagine this was a company that were really struggling if we were going to make payroll and he came back with the idea that look, the great companies fail because they forget about creating great products. And Apple had forgot about creating great products. So we were going to focus all of our efforts on how to create the greatest products in the world and how to tell people why they're great. And that began the journey with iMac and it led to iPod and iTunes and then the iPhone and App Store and iPad and eventually then Apple Watch, AirPods, you know, Apple Vision Pro, incredible services, iCloud, you know, all these things that came from this company that was nearly out of business. But the belief that if you create great products everything else will work out and it seems to be working.
You mentioned 40 years for yourself. That's an incredible tenure for anyone at any place. Are you able to reflect back on 40 years ago coming in, could you have ever imagined a journey at Apple would last this long and take you to this level?
No, not at all. I mean, I think that's one of the amazing things about so many of our journeys. I mean, as much as, for example, we were working on the iPhone, we knew we were working on something special. We knew we were working on something that was unlike anything the world had ever seen before. Even still, we could never have imagined it would be as world changing as it was and as it is. That it would change all of our daily lives and become the giant success it is. So yeah, so Jaws of 1986 coming in here with a mullet. I tell people I had a mullet, I had pink pants and I wore flip-flops in my first day of work. You know, it was quite a vision. And so yeah, I had no idea the incredible journey that lay in front of me, but it's been an amazing one.
Bring back the pink pants and the flip-flops for the 50th anniversary of your 40th anniversary for yourself.
There you go. That's a great idea, Trevor.
I want to see a photo. Do you have a favorite memory of your time at Apple?
