Apple at 50: Still ripe!

Apple’s $150 billion in cash, a massive ecosystem, and decades of comebacks suggest the company may still have the last laugh

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April 1, 1976: Apple $AAPL is incorporated. It’s April Fool's Day, of course — which is either the universe trolling fanboys or the most accurate founding date in corporate history. The joke is that everyone keeps falling for the same trick: declaring Apple dead, only to watch it… not be dead.

The company has now spent half a century accumulating obituaries and outlasting them, while the list of people who have confidently predicted Apple's demise is long, tacky with top-shelf credentials, and yet still plain wrong. Think: Wall Street analysts, tech journalists, Bill Gates (sort of), and a succession of its own CEOs, including Jobs himself, who once said Apple was “90 days from bankruptcy” — a situation he inherited when, after some years in the wilderness, he regained the post in ‘97. Since then, Apple has become the first company to hit $1 trillion in market capitalization, then $2 trillion, then $3 trillion, manufacturing a level of customer devotion that actual cults envy and behavioral economists actually, definitely study.

Siri, what’s Apple’s next “rumors of my death” chapter? Probably the company’s stumbling entrance into the AI era. But don’t get too comfortable, because betting against the comeback has never worked........

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