Apple fans, this is one of those coffee‑table books you actually end up reading cover to cover—and it just landed with a solid launch discount. Right now, Apple: The First 50 Years by David Pogue is available at 31% off its $50 list price, bringing the hardcover down to around the mid‑$30s range on Amazon, with Walmart and Target also matching the price, making it a nice window to preorder or pick it up without paying full MSRP. Given that this is a hefty 608‑page, full‑color history of Apple published by Simon & Schuster, that discount matters more than usual because printing costs normally keep books like this stubbornly close to list price.

If you’ve somehow missed the hype, this is Pogue’s big swing at telling Apple’s entire corporate biography—starting with the two Steves and that scrappy 1976 startup phase, through the near‑death years, the Jobs comeback era, and into the Tim Cook decade where Apple quietly became the most valuable company on the planet. The hook is that it drops in time for Apple’s 50th anniversary on April 1, 2026, and Pogue leans on 150 new interviews, including heavyweights like Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and current designers and executives, to fill in gaps and correct a lot of the mythology that’s built up around the company.

This isn’t a thin narrative either—the book is designed as a kind of definitive visual history, “lavishly illustrated” with full‑color photos throughout, and structured in 50 bite‑sized chapters that make it surprisingly approachable even if you don’t live and breathe spec sheets and semiconductor roadmaps.

What makes it more interesting than a typical fan book is the range: Pogue spends time on the glamorous hits—Mac, iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods—but also digs into the messy stuff like Lisa, Apple III, and MobileMe, along with all those almost‑products that were killed “five yards from the end zone.” You also get the context around the weird middle years that a lot of Apple retrospectives skim past, including the Sculley and Amelio eras and the long shadow of NeXT before Jobs finally returned. The result, if you care about product design, corporate strategy, or just like being a fly on the wall when big bets get made, is more “you’re in the room where it happened” than glossy anniversary brochure.

Disclaimer: Prices and promotions mentioned in this article are accurate at the time of writing and are subject to change based on the retailers’ discretion. Please verify the current offer before making a purchase.