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Apple turns 50: half a century of thinking different
From a Californian garage to a global giant, the Cupertino company reflects on five dizzyingly creative decades
CALIFORNIA: It began in a garage. It ends, fifty years later, as one of the most valuable companies on earth. Apple is turning 50, and if that sounds like a midlife crisis waiting to happen, the Cupertino firm is having absolutely none of it.
Founded on 1 April 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has marked its golden anniversary with a letter from chief executive Tim Cook and a promise to keep doing what it has always done: irritate the status quo until something brilliant falls out.
The company announced it will spend the coming weeks celebrating its milestone with its global community of customers, developers, and employees, reflecting on the products and ideas that have, over five restless decades, managed to reshape entire industries.
And what a list of reshaping it is. The Apple II brought the personal computer into living rooms. The Macintosh made it loveable. The iPod put a thousand songs in your pocket and made the music industry very nervous indeed. Then came the iPhone, which did to mobile phones what the Mac had done to computing, and changed daily life so thoroughly that it is now difficult to remember what boredom felt like. The iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Vision Pro followed, each one arriving with the same quiet confidence that it was, obviously, the future.
The services have quietly become just as essential. The App Store, Apple Music, iCloud, Apple Pay, and Apple TV now form the digital scaffolding of millions of daily routines, the kind of infrastructure you only notice when it is gone.
In his anniversary letter, Cook struck a deliberately human note, steering away from the language of market caps and quarterly earnings. The most meaningful chapters, he wrote, are written not by Apple but by the people who use its technology. The nurse who kept in touch with patients. The parent who caught their toddler’s first steps on an iPhone. The writer who finished the book. The runner who crossed the finish line.
“In your hands, the tools we make have improved lives, and sometimes even saved them,” Cook wrote, in one of the letter’s more striking lines. It is a bold claim, though not an unfounded one, given Apple Watch’s now well-documented history of detecting irregular heart rhythms and alerting wearers who had no idea anything was wrong.
Cook, who has led the company since Jobs stepped down in 2011, was careful to credit everyone except himself. The letter thanks Apple’s global teams, its developer community, and the millions of customers who have been, in the company’s preferred parlance, thinking different alongside them.
The anniversary announcement also offered a quiet signal about Apple’s current preoccupations. Alongside the expected nods to privacy and environmental responsibility, Cook specifically mentioned Apple Intelligence, the company’s on-device artificial intelligence platform, as a sign of where the next chapter is headed. If the past fifty years were about putting powerful tools in people’s hands, the next chapter appears to be about making those tools think.
The letter closes with a passage lifted, with only a small tweak, from the original 1997 “Think Different” advertisement, that famous roll-call of the misfits, the rebels, and the round pegs in square holes. It remains, even now, one of the most effective pieces of brand storytelling ever written. Whether it still fits a company with a two-trillion-pound valuation is a question Apple is presumably choosing not to ask itself on its birthday.
Celebrations are expected to continue through the spring, with details to be announced in the coming weeks. For now, the garage in Los Altos, California, where it all began, remains a modest historical footnote. The company it spawned is anything but.
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Maharashtra panel orders Lodha to refund Rs 5 crore to homebuyers
Consumer court flags unfair practices in long-running property dispute case
MUMBAI: In a sharp rebuke to one of India’s biggest real estate players, the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has directed Macrotech Developers to refund nearly Rs 5 crore to a senior citizen couple, Uttam and Anindita Chatterjee. The ruling, delivered on March 13, 2026, calls out the developer for “deficiency in service” and “unfair trade practices”, bringing closure to a dispute that has stretched over a decade.
The case traces back to 2015, when the couple booked a 3-BHK flat at World Towers in Lower Parel for Rs 12.22 crore, with possession promised within a year. What followed was a series of changes that complicated matters. After deciding to exit the project, they were persuaded to shift to a 4-BHK in another development priced at Rs 8 crore, with delivery scheduled for 2018. However, within months, the price was allegedly increased to Rs 10 crore. After demonetisation reshaped the market, similar flats were reportedly being offered at lower prices, but the couple were not given the benefit.
Despite paying over Rs 2.83 crore, the couple neither received possession nor clarity. Instead, in 2018, the developer unilaterally cancelled the booking, retained part of the amount as earnest money, and argued that the buyers were investors rather than consumers. The commission rejected this claim, observing that casual references to “investment” do not take away consumer rights when the purchase intent is residential.
The bench also held that the developer could not penalise buyers for payment delays while failing to meet its own delivery commitments. It noted the lack of formal documentation for revised terms and termed the prolonged retention of funds without delivering a home as exploitative.
As part of its order, the commission directed the developer to refund Rs 2.83 crore paid by the couple, along with interest at 10 per cent per annum, amounting to around Rs 2.12 crore. In addition, Rs 1 lakh has been awarded for mental agony and Rs 50,000 towards litigation costs, taking the total payout to over Rs 5 crore. The developer has been asked to comply within two months.
For now, the ruling serves as a reminder that in real estate, shifting terms and delayed promises can carry a significant cost.
