An Insanely Great Thirty Years of Innovation - A Brief History of Apple Computers

Posted by on 08/10 at 10:24 AM Permalink

One fine day in 1976, 21 year old Steve Jobs quit his day job at Atari and convinced computer engineer Steve “Woz” Wozniak to quit his job at Hewlett-Packard. Together, in the garage of Jobs’ Cupertino, CA home, they founded a new company which they christened “Apple”. Their goal - create an inexpensive and simple to use computer. On April Fool’s Day in 1976, they introduced their first system, an encased circuit board known as the Apple I (previous computers consisted of circuit boards and switches which produced flashing lights) and sold for $666.66 at the local electronics store. By the time the Apple II and the Mac rolled around, Jobs and Woz had popularized the personal computing revolution, and the rest, as they say, is history.

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    Posted by Barry Levine  on  08/13  at  07:02 PM

  1. "iMac, priced at $999.00 and designed much like the original Macintosh case in clear plastic and trimmed in translucent shades of blue or red. The sleek unit was accompanied by a smaller mouse and keyboard. The new design utilized SCSI and Apple desktop bus (ADB) ports. An iMac portable would follow in 1999, using the same clear white and translucent design adopted by the iMacs.”

    Not quite. “Bondi Blue” (blue-green, actually) for the original iMac. SCSI was dropped completely from the motherboards of all desktop Macs as was ADB. It was USB that was the basis for serial communication from then on although FireWire was added to the motherboard the following year as the replacement for SCSI.

    And the “portable” was the iBook.

    2. Posted by Richard Meuse  on  08/14  at  07:28 AM

  2. The Apple is a fine computer that cost too much for the average working person.  I kept one around the shop so I could understand the way they worked.  But they kept changing the OS and the new ones wouldn’t work on my old machine, so I let it go to a kid just learning computers.  I’ve been around computers since 1974 and have seen all the changes, when I think of the times I had when new upgrades came out and some of my ideas came to past it is truly an exciting time to be a computer Guru.

    3. Posted by Rooster  on  08/14  at  07:50 AM

  3. I have been working with computers since 1973.  Being military, I was able to take advantage of the improvements as they were developed.  Mostly applied to aviation electronics.  I was not able to afford my own PC until 1985.  It was an IBM, with double disk drives and no HD.  I had to boot the PC with the DOS.  Everything I did required a command.  We have come so very far!  My grandsons call it the “stone ages.” Thanks for bringing back some good memories. Now retired and enjoying life.

    I enjoy receiving your e-mail advertisements and “geek” stuff. I’m keeping an eye out for a 32-37” LCD HD TV. No more than 39” wide (due to my space restrictions) and priced within my budget.

    4. Posted by chippuller  on  08/14  at  11:40 AM

  4. The Mac 128 had 32 64 k ram chips soldered to the logic board. the logic board was silkscreened to show where the additional components would be installed to upgrade it to 512 k by adding some resisters and 1 IC and 32 256 k ram chips. Around that time 256k ram chips were selling for $25.00 each so buying 32 of them was a tad expensive. the 64k ram chips were selling for about $8.00 each at that time. I remember unsoldering the 64k ram chips off of the Lisa 512k upgrade memory cards to sell the ram chips. Apple did not want the 512k ram cards when the Lisa’s were returned to them in their Mac plus exchange program. I had over 30 512k ram boards and made lots of extra $$$ recovering those ram chips. What are those Lisa/Mac plus memory cards worth now. if I had only known.

    5. Posted by jazminn  on  02/20  at  02:00 PM

  5. im sad yew all geeks .... smile hahaha :L

    6. Posted by Bob Lloyd  on  08/21  at  03:15 AM

  6. Although a couple of items were mentioned about the Lisa and the visit to Xerox Research Center (PARC) in Palo Alto, they should have been explained more as they both had a major impact on the company.  The Lisa came out as a $10K computer and was a total failure. It’s EMI footprint was horrible.  It reappeared shortly as the Mac and they tried to have everyone with a Lisa exchange them or use software which would run Mac software. The visit to PARC was a major impact. They saw a mouse in use, the GUI on the Star system was one of the best ever developed.  When Apple sued MS for GUI, Xerox stepped in and said we developed it and the Judge agreed.  The case was dismissed and Xerox had waited too long for their legal action to take place so all of the GUI war went away. Apple takes credit of items that they didn’t create even today.  Xerox was a leader who let the times pass it by.  There STAR office system was loved by office personnel and would still be in use if not for the MS power take over and marketing.

    I too am a dinosaur.  The first computer I worked on was a system with 1k core memory and was huge.  I have a Data General 8K core board from 1978 that I keep on the wall.  It continues to create questions and amazement by visitors.

    7. Posted by Condominiums Mississauga  on  07/14  at  02:09 PM

  7. Style and sculpting are such a matter of taste that I’ll just let the pictures do the talking. I like them, but they are surely not for everyone. They are very much in line with the Games Workshop school of design.

    8. Page 1 of 1 pages

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