Apple’s best product ever

On The Vergecast: AI’s pivot to business, and the impossible task of ranking Apple’s 50 best products.

by David Pierce

Apr 3, 2026, 12:52 PM UTC

David Pierce is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.

All week, we’ve been asking you to help us rank the 50 best products Apple ever made, as we mark the company’s 50th anniversary. Thanks to everyone who pitched in — we ended up with more than 1.6 million votes! We also have lots of other coverage of Apple’s first half century, and you should check it all out. All those votes later, we have some answers. And some thoughts.

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On this episode of The Vergecast, after some housekeeping (vote for us in the Webby Awards, and come see Sneakers with us in New York in a few weeks!) and some OpenAI news, Nilay and David dig into the rankings. First we go through the overall results, reacting our way from number 50 to number 11.

Then, we compare your top 10 to our own rankings, which we’ve been making and tweaking for weeks. Turns out, we all agree on some big things — and we have a few to argue about. Is it recency bias, anti-printer bias, or something else? Who knows.

After that, it’s time for the lightning round, with another edition of Brendan Carr is a Dummy, some more gadget price hikes, Nilay’s adventures in iMac repurposing, and more.