Apple at 50: the good and the bad
3/31/20261 hr 29 min
It's Apple 50 week, so we've got an Apple-filled podcast. First, longtime Apple journalist Jason Snell joins the show to talk about the state of the company as a hardware maker, a software maker, a force for good in the world, and more. Then, blogger and entrepreneur Anil Dash explains why he's worried about the rise of video podcasts, and the role Apple could play to make it better. Finally, The Verge's Allison Johnson helps answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about swapping your phone for a watch. And a tablet. And some other things. Further reading: Rank the 50 best Apple Products Apple in 2025: The Six Colors report card Apple turns 50: celebrating five decades of the tech giant Apple II Forever! “Wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement. Why Apple’s move to video could endanger podcasting's greatest power Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDavid Pierce· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of video podcasts. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here with The Verge's Apple products ranker. If you haven't tried this yet, theverge.com/apple50, it gives you a whole system for ranking the 50 best products Apple has ever made, and boy is it complicated. [laughs] A lot of them are very easy. A lot of times you end up with two sort of inconsequential things that it's hard to figure out how to put them in order, and then you run into, like, is the original Macintosh one of the most influential computers ever? It started the GUI. It was a big reason the mouse became really popular. More important than the iMac G3, the first thing that Steve Jobs made when he came back that effectively in so many ways saved Apple. Which of those is a better product? I, I don't, I, I don't know. I have sat here for hours trying to split hairs on decisions like this, and it is slowly making me lose my mind. But this is what we're doing here. It's the 50th anniversary of Apple this week. Go do the ranker. We're gonna come back on Friday's show, and Nilay and I are gonna both unveil our own rankings and debate whether all of you got it right. Right now there is some, some true chaos happening, and some people are very angry about it, and I just want you to know that if you, like Nilay and like John Gruber, think that the Apple Extended Keyboard 2 deserves more shine, it's up to you to go in and fix it. Anyway, we're gonna talk about Apple on this show today, but from kind of a different perspective. Basically, we're gonna do two things. Jason Snell,