Apple ( AAPL 1.80%) has moved back into the top spot as the largest company in the world by market cap. It's gone through some stunning ups and downs, but if you'd bought shares at the initial public offering (IPO) back in 1980 and held on, you'd have a lot more shares, and a lot of money. Let's see just how much.

Shares of Apple Inc. rose 3.71% to $228.87 Thursday, on what proved to be an all-around favorable trading session for the stock market, with the NASDAQ Composite Index rising 2.51% to 18,013.98 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 1.

Apple stock jumped along with other tech shares Thursday, as markets cheered the Federal Reserve’s big interest-rate cut. Still, one strong day for the iPhone maker shouldn’t cloud the uncertainty ahead.

The free update enabling the first set of features in Apple’s suite of artificial intelligence became available Thursday.

Apple is giving more people the chance to test a software update that will implant artificial intelligence into its virtual assistant Siri and automate a variety of tedious tasks on the latest iPhone coming out Friday.

The iOS 18.1 public beta comes a day after Apple released a new testing version of the developer’s beta. In addition to iOS 18.1, Apple is also making available the public beta of macOS Sequoia 15.1 and iPadOS 18.