Last month, on March 13, Apple kicked off celebrations for its 50th anniversary with a special performance by 17-time Grammy Award-winning artist and producer Alicia Keys at Apple Grand Central in New York City. Keys delivered an incredible set of her timeless songs from the venue’s iconic steps.
According to Apple, milestone celebrations continued throughout the month in cities around the world, with each event highlighting human creativity and ingenuity in action (as well as showcasing the remarkable things people can do when they have the right Apple products in their hands, wink, wink). The celebration culminated on March 31, when Sir Paul McCartney brought the festivities to a close with a special performance at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. The musician, songwriter, and former Beatle has long served as a source of inspiration and embodies the innovation that still guides Apple today.
The legendary musician, songwriter, and former Beatle has reportedly been a longtime user of Apple’s products. He’s captured riffs and song fragments in the Voice Memos app on his iPhone, some of which became full-blown songs on his last solo album, McCartney III. That album was also the topic of an Apple Music interview between McCartney and Zane Lowe. Before that, McCartney starred in an animated iTunes and iPod ad in 2007 that featured his song “Dance Tonight,” and iTunes offered an exclusive pre-order of his album Memory Almost Full. At the time, Steve Jobs commented, “Paul McCartney is one of the greatest musicians of all time.”
As a source of inspiration for Jobs himself – the originator of “Think Different” – the impact of McCartney and his Beatles bandmates cannot be overstated. In 2003, Jobs famously declared in an interview, “My model of business is the Beatles. They were four very talented guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. And that’s how I see business. Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people… and we’ve got that at Apple as well.”
Having McCartney perform at Apple Park, the ring-shaped headquarters that Jobs envisioned as a monument to human creativity and innovation, was seen by all as a fitting grand finale for Apple’s 50th anniversary celebrations.
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