Substantially more than half of Apple's profits came since 2012. In fact eyeballing it, it looks like their profit in 2015 was bigger than their profit from 1977-2009 combined. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.#Financ...

You gotta account for inflation

It really doesnt make that big of a difference: https://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Consumer_Price_Index/His...

In Apple's case, no, because their growth over the last decade is insane. But to be clear that table you posted shows that $1 in 1977 is worth $4.40 today. That is a big difference, mostly cause by the insane inflation of 1979-1981 (around 12% a year for three years). That makes the average inflation rate over the last 40 years 4%, which is double our target of 2%.

It's much cheaper to buy promising talent, I mean companies than to devote resources to do your own work from the ground up.