On this day 40 years ago, Apple’s first Macintosh went on sale, just two days after being introduced to the world during a commercial break in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. Although “1984” became a cultural phenomenon and a watershed moment for product launches, Apple’s Board of Directors was against it from the start. Here’s how the legendary ad almost didn’t air…
On this day 47 years ago, Paul Terrell opened the Byte Shop, one of the world’s first personal computer retail stores and famously known for ordering the first rudimentary computers from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s newly formed company, Apple Computer.
Apple Museum of Poland is now open, boasting to be the “biggest and most complete” collection in the world. With over 1,600 exhibits, the museum is the result of years of dedication from Polish collector and architect Jacek Lupina and spans the company’s 46-year history.
Created with a love of Apple pop culture in mind, the Apple Museum of Poland is set to open this month. Found in the Norblin Factory complex in Warsaw, the modern facility will surely excite Apple fans. The museum will hold a complete collection where you can view the entire history and development of one of the world’s largest tech companies.
In October 2020, Ken Kocienda, longtime Apple human interface designer and the inventor of the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, launched his first standalone app. The game “Up Spell” is highly addictive yet incredibly simple. John Gruber described it best at the time as a “fast-paced solo version of Scrabble.” Recently, YouTuber DankPods shared a look at a variety of old iPod Touch prototypes from the late 2000s and early 2010s. In the video, DankPods looks at a bunch of internal Apple apps, and one of them happens to play like Kocienda’s game, almost to a T.
A fully operational Apple I computer with documentation showing that it was purchased direct from Steve Jobs is being auctioned by Christies on 11th December. It is the only surviving Apple I known to have been personally sold by Jobs in 1976. Originally bought for $600, the auction house says it is expected to sell for more than half a million dollars, reports Reuters.
The so-called Ricketts Apple-1 Personal Computer, named after its original owner Charles Ricketts and being sold on Dec. 11, is the only known surviving Apple-1 documented as having been sold directly by Jobs, then just 21, to an individual from the Los Altos, California family home, Christie’s said.
Ricketts died with the computer in storage. The current owner, Robert Luther, bought it in 2004 from a police auction.
“I knew it had been sold from the garage of Steve Jobs in July of 1976, because I had the buyer’s canceled check,” Luther wrote on a kickstarter page soliciting funding for a book on the machine’s history.
“My computer had been purchased directly from Jobs, and based on the buyers address on the check, he lived four miles from Jobs.”
In an interesting twist, the cancelled check formed part of the evidence used to achieve historical listing status for the Jobs family home in Los Altos, just over a year ago.
The auction estimate of $500-600K may prove an under-estimate: fewer than 50 Apple I computers survive, and another fully-working model without the Jobs documentation sold last month for $905k.
Remember when we mentioned that you could pick up what is believed to be one of only six remaining Apple I computers in working order if you had “a spare $260-400k”? We were wrong. The NYT reports that the machine broke all expectations when it sold at auction on Saturday for $671,400.
The high prices paid for the machines seem to be explained by the combination of scarcity, a fascination with the early history of the computer age, and the mystique of Apple and its founders, Steven P. Jobs and Stephen G. Wozniak. And some irrational exuberance in the prices, for a machine that can do very little and originally sold for $666 (about $2,700 in current dollars).
The machine was bought earlier in this year in non-working condition for $40k. Its then owner apparently managed to source the parts needed to restore it to working order – nice work if you can get it!
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