From a page of news
to Hello, hello.

The browser tab says Apple Computer, and the page reads like the front page of a company paper. A red sidebar lists sections (Product Information, Customer Support, Developer World) and 26 country and region sites, from Asia to the United States. The middle column is news: a New PowerBook Family, the Color LaserWriter 12/660 PS, the System 7.5.5 Update, a modem that now does 28.8 Kbps. Apple Fellow Guy Kawasaki will reveal the future of Macintosh as he sees it in an online chat on Tuesday, Oct. 22.

There is a HOT TIP on what a color laser print costs, and SUCCESS STORY #207: the Kansas State Legislature has networked 300 Macs, which replaced the non-memory, electric typewriters they formerly used.

Behind the page, the company is changing. In December 1996 Apple agreed to buy NeXT, Steve Jobs's company, and Jobs came back as an adviser.¹ The July 1997 homepage doesn't show it yet. It's even longer, over 600 words: pre-order Mac OS 8, win a PowerBook, an eMate 300 special for parents, t-shirts and backpacks from AppleDesigns, the Apple online department store, and Welcome to Mars: QuickTime VR movies from Sojourner, the brave six-wheeler of NASA's Pathfinder mission.

Then things move quickly. On September 16, 1997 the board named Jobs interim CEO.² By mid-October the top of the homepage belonged to a new ad campaign, Think different, with a QuickTime movie of the TV commercial everyone's talking about.³ Its pictures were lost too, which is why our timeline stays on the July page. And on November 10, 1997 Apple opened The Apple Store online.

The store ran on WebObjects, a technology from NeXT, the company Apple had just bought. According to Apple's own press release, the same technology had already built Dell's original online store.⁴ Apple's brand-new store shared its software with a rival's.

The Apple Store booked half a million dollars in orders in its first twelve hours.⁵

On May 6, 1998 Apple unveiled the iMac, the Internet-age computer for the rest of us, for $1,299.⁶ Two days later the homepage is unrecognizable. The news columns are gone. What's left is a large Apple wordmark, the iMac, and three small pictures labeled Pro., Go. and Whoa., under a strip that reads Pro. Go. Whoa. A Strategy as Simple as the Macintosh. Below that: a search box, a row of text links, and the country menu.

The iMac picture isn't a still. It's an animated GIF, and it was archived the same day as the page.⁷ The computer turns to face you, and the word hello is written across its screen. Here it is, as the Wayback Machine kept it:

imac.gif – apple.com, May 1998 ×

Remember that word. It comes back.

In May 1999 one picture on the homepage was labeled Star Wars 10 million downloads. That was a movie trailer, and you watched it in Apple's QuickTime player.⁸ By August 2000 Apple reported more than 35 million downloads of the Episode I trailers.²¹

The short page stays. In August 1999 it's an orange iBook, iMac to go, over a row of small boxes: AirPort, QuickTime TV, Send Me eNews. The page even prints a date and time at the top, August 27, 1999, 10:41 a.m. PT, and in the footer, a link for the year's big worry: Apple & Year 2000.

One change is easy to miss, because it isn't on the page at all. Through November 1999 the title in the browser tab was Apple Computer.⁹ By February 2000 it's just Apple, seven years before the company dropped "Computer" from its legal name. The same month, a row of tabs appears on top of the page:

Fifteen of them, in two rows. Keep an eye on the iTools tab: by 2003 a .Mac tab sits in its place. And at the bottom, for the first time, a phone number: 1-800-MY-APPLE. It is still in the footer in 2026.

Say hello to iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket.apple.com, October 23, 2001, the day the iPod was introduced

Apple introduced the iPod on October 23, 2001,¹¹ and that day it took the top of the homepage. There it is again, the word from the iMac's screen: hello. The footer has news of its own. Apple had opened its first two stores that May, in Virginia and California,¹⁰ and the page now says Visit the Apple Store online or at retail locations. Under it sits a small badge, Powered by Mac OS X Server, which stays there until 2005.

The 1,000 songs didn't last long. Less than two years later, by mid-2003, the homepage promised 7,500.²⁰

For the next five years the layout barely moves: a big picture, four boxes of Hot News Headlines and the row of tabs. The tabs are where you can watch Apple change direction. The iTools tab gives way to .Mac. A Music tab arrives with the iTunes Music Store, which opened in April 2003 at 99 cents a song, with over 200,000 songs. Apple's announcement even promised you could burn the songs you bought onto an unlimited number of CDs for personal use.¹²

A year later the tab is iPod+iTunes. A tab called Switch turns into Get a Mac in 2006, next to a box that says I'm a PC. I'm a Mac. Watch the new TV ads.

The small print is fun too. In June 2005 the page ranks the most popular Dashboard widgets, the little apps of Mac OS X Tiger:

In 2006 a box announces Apple Store, Fifth Avenue. Now open 24/365., and the page's code holds a drop-down of every Apple Store in the US, state by state, from Chandler, Chandler Fashion Center in Arizona onwards. That year's footer is also the last to say Apple Computer, Inc.

Apple announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007,¹³ and the same day it dropped "Computer" from its name.¹⁴ On launch weekend at the end of June, the whole homepage is a single image on black: Say hello to iPhone. The footer now reads Copyright © 2007 Apple Inc.

The tabs are gone too. The two rows of sixteen tabs are replaced by one slim bar with six items:

One more detail sits in the footer: Google, the Google logo, and Google Maps are trademarks of Google Inc. © 2007 NAVTEQ. One of the iPhones in the picture shows a map, so Apple's own homepage carried a credit for Google's map data.

The format from the iPhone launch holds: one product, one short line. More power. Thinly disguised. for the iMac in 2008. Small talk. in 2009, for an iPod shuffle that was the first music player that talks to you. Below the picture: four boxes and a short footer.

On January 27, 2010 Steve Jobs introduced the iPad.¹⁵ By that evening the homepage quotes his keynote almost word for word: Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price. That spring the homepage also linked to a letter signed by Jobs himself, Thoughts on Flash. In the June 2010 page's code, the letter shares one promo spot with another tile, and a script picks which one you see:¹⁶

Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011.¹⁷ In the days that followed, Apple's homepage was a single black-and-white portrait with his name and 1955–2011. No products, no news, no footer. Apart from his name and the years, the only words on the page are seven menu labels: Store, Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTunes, Support. In 1997 the homepage had over 600 words. This one has ten.

Afterwards the product pictures and slogans return, and the slogans get playful. 2012, the new iPad: Resolutionary. 2013: iPhone 5. Loving it is easy. That's why so many people do.

And in 2014 a pianist with an iPad on the music stand, under the question What will your verse be? A large photograph leads the page, with four smaller panels below.

On August 6, 2015 Apple folded its online store into the rest of the site. The Store tab disappeared from the menu, and a shopping bag icon took its place on the right.¹⁸ Our capture is from the next day. Under the menu the homepage has a new shape: a stack of tiles, one product each, The Watch is here., iPhone 6. The two and only., MacBook. Light. Years ahead. It's the layout Apple still uses in 2026.

The footer changes just as much. For years it was two lines. Now it's a full map of the site, with columns for Shop and Learn, Apple Store, For Education, Apple Values. The page has 60 words in 2014 and almost 300 in 2015.

The tiles follow the year's launches: This is 7. in 2017, and in 2018 an old word in a new place, the iPhone X: Say hello to the future.

In 2019 one tile announces a credit card: This is Apple Card. A new kind of credit card. Created by Apple, not a bank. And in June 2020, above the iPhone SE, two lines that no homepage before had needed: Evaluate COVID‑19 symptoms and understand next steps and Shop online and get free, no‑contact delivery. Further down, a tile reads Apple is taking action to fight systemic racism.

Six years after it left, on August 3, 2021, Store came back as the first item in the menu.¹⁹ The banner on top is about stores reopening: We look forward to welcoming you to our stores. Further down the same page, the new iMac gets two words: Say hello.

The menu grows again: AirPods and TV & Home in 2022, Entertainment in 2023, Vision in 2024. So does the small print. Prices come with footnotes: trade-in values, monthly installments, carrier deals. The Apple Card from 2019 gets its fine print too. By 2021 the footer adds: Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch.

In 1998 Apple cut its homepage from over 600 words to about 50. By 2021, mostly because of footnotes, it has more than a thousand.

The headlines stay short and keep inventing words: Wonderfull. for the iPhone 14, Newphoria. for the iPhone 15, Thinstant classic. for an Apple Watch. In 2024 the Vision Pro tile promises the era of spatial computing; in 2025 three tiles add Built for Apple Intelligence.

This is Apple's homepage in September 2026. The first tile is the iPhone 18 Pro, Pro further. The second is a phone that unfolds, the iPhone Duo, and its line is Hello, hello. Twenty-eight years after the iMac wrote it on its screen, the word is still there:

The alt text has changed too. In 1996 one of the homepage's pictures was described as BIG HEADER ALTERNATE TEXT: nobody had filled the template in. In 2026 the pictures get full descriptions, written for people who can't see it:

Put the first and the last page side by side. Drag the handle to rewind.

OCT 1996 · Apple Computer2026 · Apple

In 1996 the homepage had something to say about everything. Today it talks about one product at a time, and it still opens with hello.apple.com, 1996 → 2026