OK... So maybe “Pre 1975” isn't quite accurate. Unless we're allowed to count the not insignificant amount of groundwork that paved the way to Apple's formal founding on April 1st, 1976. But as I snapped this picture among the fruit trees at Filoli gardens last month, I couldn't help but think it's darn close to the mark.

Apple's been through quite a bit these 30 years. Back in gloomier times for the company, Wired's famous June 1997 “Pray” cover and accompanying “101 Ways to Save Apple” article certainly seemed warranted. I remember receiving the news of the NeXT-Apple merger six months earlier with cautious optimism. As a big fan of both NeXT's developer technologies and the Mac user experience, I couldn't help but wonder: Could my all-time favorite OS help carry the Mac into the future, while itself being rescued from relative obscurity and elevated to the status of a mainstream development platform? Even a few years later, as I read web-editorials by concerned Mac afficionados worried about what the new OS would bring, while writing Obj-C/Cocoa code with wild, enthusiastic abandon on my WallStreet PowerBook running OS X Server 1.x and the OS X developer seeds, the Mac's future, and Apple's with it, seemed anything but guaranteed.

A lot of truly amazing stuff has happened since those uncertain days nearly a decade ago, and I count myself fortunate to have been a part of the team during the company's recent, stronger-than-ever resurgence. OS X has grown to become far more of a technical success and a bigger hit with users than I'd ever have dared count on back then, and celebrated its official 5th birthday just a week ago. I look forward with great enthusiasm, and a confidence borne of 20/20 hindsight and involvement in the development process, to what I'm sure will be many more great achievements and milestones yet to come.