‘A genuine masterpiece’: The 15 best Apple gadgets of the last 50 years, according to you | Tech Radar

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‘A genuine masterpiece’: The 15 best Apple gadgets of the last 50 years, according to you

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We're celebrating Apple's 50th birthday with a week of content about the tech giant. It covers everything from personal recollections from our writers to the greatest — and worst — Apple gadgets as voted by you, and you can read it all on our 50 years of Apple page.

Apple is 50 years old on April 1, having been founded all the way back in 1976 — so we thought it was an appropriate time to poll the Tech Radar readership on what the greatest Apple gadget has been across those five decades.

And there are a lot to choose from — starting with the Apple I (a computer designed and hand-built entirely by co-founder Steve Wozniak) in 1976, and going all the way to the Mac Book Neo that made its debut in March 2026.

We know Tech Radar readers are a smart bunch, and after we put out a call on the Tech Radar Whats App channel, here's how you voted.

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I’ve used Macs in every decade since the 1980s and they still feel magical

What we said in 2015: "An expensive convenience gadget"

Do you remember the original Apple Watch? The battery life wasn't great, and several key apps were missing, but it was a sales hit and played a big part in driving smartwatches towards what they are today — snappy, sleek, and packed with health and fitness sensors.

Our review talked about a lightweight and comfortable fit, and an appealing OLED display, though we were rather confused about what exactly the device was for. Today's models are much more useful and powerful, and give a much better answer to that question.

What they said in 2002: 'Flat-out powerful and pretty' (USA Today)

The i Mac G4 (Image credit: Getty Images / Dan Krauss)

On to the i Mac G4 from 2002, and the design alone earns this desktop computer a place on the list: its flat-panel 15-inch display was innovative enough, but then Apple stuck it on an adjustable metal arm attached to a white dome base — a truly iconic Mac design.

The computer came with a Power PC G4 processor inside, as well as either 128MB or 256GB of RAM, and storage of up to 60GB. This was still the era of optical drives as well, and indeed Apple pushed the i Mac G4 as a central hub for music, photos, and DVD movies.

Read more: Liquid Glass on i Mac G4 is the mashup I didn't know I needed

What they said in 1998: "The New VW Beetle of Computers" (San Francisco Chronicle)

The i Mac G3 (Image credit: Photology 1971 / Shutterstock)

Before the i Mac G4 we had the i Mac G3, and the older Mac gets a higher spot on our list. The distinctive colored CRT display (designed by a young Jony Ive), the easy internet connectivity, and the bold decisions (no floppy drive) all combined to create a classic.

Before this point, computers had largely been boring, beige boxes, but the i Mac G3 changed all that. It helped put Apple back in the public's attention as a manufacturer of electronics, and as a company that was willing to push the boundaries of its technology.

What they said in 1977: "We're here for the hobbyist" (Steve Jobs)

An Apple II (Image credit: Getty Images / Science & Society Picture Library)

Not the first Apple computer — as you can tell by its name — but the one that really put Apple on the map for the first time. In 1977, ready–to-use consumer computers barely existed, so the Apple II marked a genuine breakthrough expansion for the technology.

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This was a computer that could be used by people who weren't hobbyists or IT techs, and the subsequent additions of the Disk II floppy drive and of course Visi Calc – the first spreadsheet program – helped to consolidate the Apple II's place in history.

What we said in 2021: "An invaluable and easy-to-use tool"

Apple often arrives in a new product category with a device that's simple and elegant enough to surpass what other manufacturers had previously been doing, and so it was with the Air Tag: it instantly became the best Bluetooth tracker (for Apple users, at least).

It's affordable, lightweight, waterproof, easy to use, and precise in its operations, and it comes with a variety of neat optional accessories too — even if it's now been succeeded by the Air Tag 2. A perfect example of how Apple can quietly disrupt the market for a device — although in this case it did have to push out an 'anti-stalking' firmware update.

What we said in 2021: "A mightily impressive creative laptop"

The Apple Mac Book Pro line hasn't always met with universal acclaim since its inception in 2006, but the 2021 model got just about everything right: it ditched the butterfly keyboard, and the Touch Bar, and the legacy ports, and made the Mac Book Pro a great laptop again.

This model also marked the debut of the M1 Pro and M1 Max, showing Apple really getting into its stride with chipsets, and balancing superb performance with top-tier battery life. There was the introduction of the notch too — and we've all got used to that now.

Delve deeper: Read our Apple Mac Book Pro 14-inch (2021) review

What they said in 2003: 'Simply the best-designed MP3 player we've seen" (CNET)

The 3rd-gen i Pod (Image credit: Getty Images / Kim Kulish)

You may not remember the 3rd-gen i Pod, but it was a significant launch: it introduced a fully touch-sensitive interface with no moving parts, and the 30-pin dock connector (replacing Fire Wire), and is the only i Pod ever with four distinct buttons under the screen.

With the launch of i Tunes for Windows later in the same year (note the background in the image above) and support for USB 2.0, this was also the i Pod that opened up the iconic music player to users outside of Apple's ecosystem. You could say it was the i Pod that really helped the device to go mainstream.

What they said in 2004: "It’s difficult to believe that there’s a hard drive in there" (Macworld)

The i Pod mini (Image credit: Getty Images / Justin Sullivan)

The i Pod mini built on the success of the 3rd-gen model with a smaller form factor and some funky colors, and it struck a chord with music fans — while it lacked some of the features of its rivals (no FM radio!) it made up for it in terms of style and user interface.

Just about anyone who owned one of these i Pods back in the day will speak fondly of it (and about that time in popular music, too). It was a music player for the masses, and it introduced the click wheel that would later be adopted by the larger i Pod as standard.

Read more: 10 years of i Pod, the gadget that put Apple in your pocket

What they said in 1984: "I was hooked. Apple has a winner" (Los Angeles Times)

The original 1984 Macintosh (Image credit: Pinot Dita / CC BY-NC-ND)

This is the original Mac, trailed by the '1984 advert' directed by Ridley Scott that aired at the Super Bowl, and the first personal computer with a graphical user interface to actually grab mainstream attention. It's fair to say the first Mac changed computing, and Apple — it was a genuine masterpiece.

The all-in-one design, the mouse peripheral, the 3.5-inch floppy disk drive — the 1984 Macintosh was a true trailblazer in so many ways, and its influences can still be seen today, 40 years on. And it's a testament to Apple as a company that it's only seventh on our list...

Read more: The 'mac OS' of 2016 vs the 'Mac OS' of 1984

What we said in 2017: "The closest to smartphone perfection Apple has ever got"

Few i Phone launches have attracted as much buzz and attention as the i Phone X in 2017 — the 10th anniversary of the i Phone, of course. After the original Apple i Phone reimagined what a phone could be in 2007, the i Phone X went and did it again a decade later.

OLED instead of LCD, a display notch that we didn't even know we needed, Face ID, and the removal of the Home button for the first time. The i Phone X would set the template for phones for years to come, and we were very impressed by this "huge gamble" from Apple.

What we said in 2020: "Its M1 chip is a real game-changer"

Steve Jobs may have pulled the original Mac Book Air out of a manilla envelope to general amazement in 2008, but it was the 2020 revamp of the laptop that realized its full potential: a super-slim laptop that excelled in terms of performance and battery life.

This laptop also ushered in the Apple Silicon era, which has proved so successful for the company's computers. As we wrote at the time, it showed that Apple couldn't just match what Intel and AMD were doing with their own processors, it could actually surpass them.

What we said in 2010: "We liked nearly everything on the i Phone 4"

(Image credit: Sean Locke Photography / Shutterstock)

There's no doubt the i Phone 4 is one of the most significant Apple phones in history: it had a premium feel (moving away from the curved plastic of its predecessors), a sharp, high-res Retina display, Apple's own custom silicon, and a front camera for the first time.

Just as important was the launch of i Phone OS 4 that accompanied the i Phone 4. With support for multitasking for the first time, it meant apps could run in the background, and of course the phone was also the first device that Face Time was ever demoed on. Even some reception issues (dubbed 'Antennagate') didn't stop us from awarding it 4.5 stars back in 2011.

What they said in 2007: "For this price, it's a steal" (CNET)

You could argue that the i Pod Classic, launched six years after the original i Pod, was when the music player found its ultimate form. It boasted an all-new metal enclosure, up to 160GB of storage (enough room to fit 40,000 songs), and up to 40 hours of battery life.

It maintained the color screen and the video playback of its immediate predecessors, and while the sleeker and more modern-looking i Pod Touch arrived at the same time, this was the model that serious audiophiles relied on to hold their music libraries for years.

Delve deeper: I found my old i Pod Classic in a shoe-box

What they said in 2001: "The world's coolest – and dare we say best – MP3 player" (PCMag)

The original i Pod (Image credit: Shutterstock / Marley Pug)

Apple wouldn't be where it is today without the i Pod. You could say that about several of its products, but this music player transformed digital music, portable electronics, and media consumption, and helped to set the stage for the first i Phone that would follow.

Yes, the 1st-gen model only worked with Macs, and didn't initially sell in huge volumes — but it showed how slick and polished a portable music player could be, with the scroll wheel and the '1,000 songs in your pocket' tagline both ingenious touches from Apple.

Read more: (Almost) every i Pod ranked from best to worst

What we said in 2007: "What the i Phone does right, it does outstandingly"

The very first i Phone (Image credit: Getty Images / Shaun Curry)

Yes, it's the first i Phone, a device you could very reasonably argue changed the world. It wasn't the first smartphone to launch, but it redefined what a smartphone could be, and set the template that almost all mobile handsets are still following some 20 years later.

The multitouch screen (a mere 3.5 inches in size), the software keyboard, and true mobile internet were revolutionary for the time, and once the App Store launched the year after ("there's an app for that"), the i Phone's prominent place in Apple history was assured.

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on Tech Radar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, Pop Sci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.

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• ‘A genuine masterpiece’: The 15 best Apple gadgets of the last 50 years, according to you