Five Apple Anecdotes as iPhone Maker Marks 50 Years

A fan takes photos at an event in London to mark the 50th birthday of US tech giant Apple. JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP
A fan takes photos at an event in London to mark the 50th birthday of US tech giant Apple. JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP
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Five Apple Anecdotes as iPhone Maker Marks 50 Years

A fan takes photos at an event in London to mark the 50th birthday of US tech giant Apple. JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP
A fan takes photos at an event in London to mark the 50th birthday of US tech giant Apple. JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP

iPhone maker Apple celebrates its 50th anniversary on April 1, having marked pop culture and the tech industry like few other firms since its beginnings in 1976.

Here are five things you may not know about the history of the California giant.

Apple logo

Designer Rob Janoff said that Apple cofounder Steve Jobs gave him one terse instruction when he commissioned a new logo in January 1977: "don't make it cute".

"I just wanted to make the computer easy and fun to be around," Janoff told Forbes in 2018.

He included the bite mark for scale to set the apple apart from similar round fruit like cherries -- learning only later it was a homonym for the computer term "byte".

And belying urban legends, there was no link to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve or the death of computing pioneer Alan Turing.

Janoff added that the Apple job was "the only time in my entire career where I presented only one solution" to a client.

"But it was just so right".

'1984' ad

In a totalitarian sci-fi world, a hammer thrown by a young athlete smashes a "Big Brother" figure declaiming to brainwashed citizens from a vast screen.

Tens of millions of Americans saw director Ridley Scott's one-minute Apple advert during the Super Bowl on January 22, 1984.

Broadcast with an announcement of the release of the Apple computer, it was more than a little inspired by George Orwell's dystopian novel named for the year.

The ad's originality lay in the fact it did not directly show off the product, but instead promised a new world of emancipation for consumers thanks to home computers.

Bold colors

Apple's devices have over the years played with color to set themselves apart from more staid competitors.

Its first-generation iMacs, released in 1998, offered transparent shells in candy-like blue, green and more -- combining a pop of visual interest with a glimpse at the high tech workings within.

The iPod music player, at first available in metallic grey, quickly diversified into a whole spectrum of bright colors.

Later, the "rose gold" variant of the iPhone 6S in 2015, spawned many copycats, surfing a years-long trend dubbed "millennial pink".

09:41 photos

Anyone who has watched more than one Apple product announcement or browsed its website will see a remarkable coincidence: almost every screen appears to show the time as 9:41 am.

Australian game developer Jon Manning said he asked Scott Forstall, then-head of Apple's mobile operating system iOS, about the phenomenon when he bumped into him in California in 2010.

Forstall explained that the timing was down to Steve Jobs' preferred structure for announcements.

"We design the keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation," Forstall said.

"When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience's watches. But we know we won't hit 40 minutes exactly".

Apple's third man

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have gone down in history as the Apple co-founders.

In fact, a third man also signed the three-page contract that launched the company on April 1, 1976: Ronald Wayne.

According to Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, Wayne, an engineer at the Atari video game company, was in charge of hardware engineering and documentation in the fledgling business.

But while his two co-founders were throwing themselves into the business, Wayne feared losing what little savings he had if Apple failed.

Just 11 days later, he gave up his co-founder status, selling his 10 percent stake for two instalments of $800 and $1,500.

That 10-percent share of Apple would have been worth around $370 billion by 2026.



Australia Aims to Tax Tech Giants Unless They Pay News Outlets

A photograph taken during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 19, 2025, shows the logo of Meta, the US company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. (AFP)
A photograph taken during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 19, 2025, shows the logo of Meta, the US company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. (AFP)
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Australia Aims to Tax Tech Giants Unless They Pay News Outlets

A photograph taken during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 19, 2025, shows the logo of Meta, the US company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. (AFP)
A photograph taken during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 19, 2025, shows the logo of Meta, the US company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. (AFP)

Australia unveiled draft laws on Tuesday that would tax tech giants Meta, Google and TikTok unless they voluntarily strike deals to pay local outlets for news.

Traditional media companies around the world are in a battle for survival as readers increasingly consume their news on social media.

Australia wants big tech companies to compensate local publishers for sharing articles that drive traffic on their platforms.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said tech giants Meta, Google and TikTok would be given a chance to strike content deals with local news publishers.

If they refused, they faced a compulsory levy that amounted to 2.25 percent of their Australian revenue, he said.

"Large digital platforms cannot avoid their obligations under the news media bargaining code," Albanese told reporters.

"At this point the three organizations are Meta, Google and TikTok."

The changes aim to close a loophole under a previous media law which allowed organizations to avoid a levy if they removed news from their platforms.

The three firms were singled out based on a combination of their Australian revenues and large numbers of domestic users.

The draft laws have been designed to stop the tech giants from simply stripping news from their platforms -- something Meta and Google have done in the past.

"What we are encouraging is for them to sit down with news organizations and get these deals done," Albanese said.

When Canberra mooted similar laws in 2024, Facebook parent Meta announced that Australian users would no longer be able to access the "news" tab.

Meta had previously announced it would not renew content deals with news publishers in the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

- 'Only fair' -

Google has similarly threatened to restrict its search engine in Australia if forced to compensate news outlets.

Journalism needed to have a "monetary value attached to it", Albanese said.

"It shouldn't be able to be taken by a large multinational corporation and used to generate profits with no compensation."

Supporters of such laws argue that social media companies attract users with news stories and hoover up online advertising dollars that would otherwise go to struggling newsrooms.

Meta said the proposed laws were "nothing more than a digital services tax".

"News organizations voluntarily post content on our platforms because they receive value from doing so," a spokeswoman said in a statement to AFP.

"The idea that we take their news content is simply wrong."

Australia's University of Canberra has found that more than half the country uses social media as a source of news.

"People are increasingly getting their news directly from Facebook, from TikTok and Google," Communications Minister Anika Wells said.

"We believe it's only fair that large digital platforms contribute to the hard work that enriches their feeds and that drives their revenue."

The draft laws were presented for public consultation on Tuesday, which will close in May.

They would then be introduced into parliament later this year.


Google Breaks Ground on Indian AI Megahub

Google's logo during the CERAWeek energy conference 2026 in Houston, Texas, US, March 24, 2026. (Reuters)
Google's logo during the CERAWeek energy conference 2026 in Houston, Texas, US, March 24, 2026. (Reuters)
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Google Breaks Ground on Indian AI Megahub

Google's logo during the CERAWeek energy conference 2026 in Houston, Texas, US, March 24, 2026. (Reuters)
Google's logo during the CERAWeek energy conference 2026 in Houston, Texas, US, March 24, 2026. (Reuters)

Tech giant Google on Tuesday marked the ceremonial start of work on its largest artificial intelligence hub outside of the United States with a groundbreaking ceremony in India.

The firm promised in October 2025 to spend $15 billion over five years to construct the vast center in Visakhapatnam, a southeastern port in Andhra Pradesh state of around two million people, popularly known as "Vizag".

"Today marks the first concrete milestone in Google's largest commitment to India's digital future," Bikash Koley, Google's Vice President for Global Infrastructure, told the ceremony.

"This project represents a $15 billion blueprint to deliver a full stack AI ecosystem," he added.

"At its core is our gigawatt scale data center campus, purpose built for the immense computational demand of the AI era, powering services like Gemini and Google Search."

Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, said he was "excited as we embark on this journey to build India's most coveted AI and deep-tech hub".

Vizag is being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.

"By establishing Vizag as an international subsea gateway, we will add vital diversity from the existing landings, in Mumbai and Chennai, increasing the resilience of India's digital backbone and improving economic security," Koley added.

"New strategic fiber optic routes will further connect India with the rest of the world."

Globally, data centers are an area of phenomenal growth, fueled by the need to store massive amounts of digital data, and to train and run energy-intensive AI tools.

"This is a pivotal moment for India, Vizag, and for Google," Koley added.


Microsoft Cuts OpenAI Revenue Share in a Fresh Step to Loosen Their AI Alliance

FILE PHOTO: A Microsoft logo is seen next to a cloud in Los Angeles, California, US June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A Microsoft logo is seen next to a cloud in Los Angeles, California, US June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
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Microsoft Cuts OpenAI Revenue Share in a Fresh Step to Loosen Their AI Alliance

FILE PHOTO: A Microsoft logo is seen next to a cloud in Los Angeles, California, US June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A Microsoft logo is seen next to a cloud in Los Angeles, California, US June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

Microsoft said Monday it will no longer pay a share of its revenue to ChatGPT maker OpenAI, the latest move to untether a close partnership that helped unleash an artificial intelligence boom.

OpenAI relied exclusively on Microsoft's investments in cloud computing services to build the technology that helped make ChatGPT a household name. Microsoft, in turn, relied on OpenAI's technology to build its own AI assistant Copilot.

But the partnership has evolved as San Francisco-based OpenAI, founded as a nonprofit, has shifted to a capitalistic enterprise on a path toward an initial public offering on Wall Street and has balanced its reliance on Microsoft with other cloud partners like Amazon, Google and Oracle, The AP news reported.

OpenAI said Monday it will continue to pay Microsoft a share of its revenue through 2030.

The two companies said Microsoft remains the primary cloud computing partner for OpenAI, and products made by the AI company will ship first on Microsoft's cloud platform, called Azure, “unless Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities.”

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors Monday that the new agreement “puts OpenAI on a strong path forward to going public through IPO given its clearer opportunity in the cloud environment while reducing significant barriers from its original partnership with Microsoft.”

Ives said it's also important for Microsoft as it “looks to develop tech independence from OpenAI” in advancing Copilot's capabilities and partnering with other AI providers such as OpenAI rival Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude.