Happy 30th birthday, Apple Computer!

47 Comments

Apple Computer, Inc. is 30 years old today! Time Magazine’s 80th anniversary issue featured a look back over 80 years in a piece titled “80 Days That Changed the World,” published on March 31, 2003. Lev Grossman wrote about one such day that changed the world, the founding of Apple Computer, Inc. on April 1, 1976:

They were two guys named Steve, so Steve Jobs was called Steve and Steve Wozniak went by Woz. At 25, Wozniak was the technical brains. Jobs, 21, was the dreamer with a knack for getting others to dream along with him. They had gone to the same high school, and in the hazy years after graduation (both were college dropouts) a shared interest in electronics brought them together. Jobs didn’t yet have his own place, so when their formal partnership began, the decision was made in a bedroom at his parents’ ranch house in Los Altos, Calif.

Most computers in 1976 were room-size machines with Defense Department-size price tags, but Wozniak had been tinkering with a new design, and his computer was different. It wasn’t much to look at – just a bunch of chips screwed to a piece of plywood – but it was small, cheap and easy to use, and Jobs had noticed the stir it caused when they took it to a local computer club. “He said, ‘We’ll make it for 20 bucks, sell it for 40 bucks!'” Wozniak remembers. “I kind of didn’t think we’d do it.” Jobs came up with the name, inspired by an orchard in Oregon where he had worked with some friends: Apple Computer. “When we started the little partnership, it was just like, Oh, this will be fun,” Wozniak says. “We won’t make any money, but it’ll be fun.”

They didn’t go out and celebrate that day. Woz wouldn’t even quit his day job designing chips for calculators at Hewlett-Packard until months later, after Jobs had sold his Volkswagen bus for seed money. Nobody, not even Jobs, saw what was coming next: that Apple would create the look and feel of every desktop in the world and start our love affair with the personal computer.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: And “some people” thought Apple would never even be here to celebrate their 30th! Boy, were they ever wrong.

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47 Comments

  9. We all get to play with the sweet new iNothing. A super powerful densly packed cube of air held in place with invisible plastic that can defy gravity. We also get to play with the iDissapointment, since so far I havent heard a damn rumor about anything being released.

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    Reply

  16. Well I signed the Apple birthday card earlier in the week. It has also April 1st in NZ for about 18 hours now ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
    The benefits of living just west of the dateline.

    Reply

  19. Celebrated the 30th anniversary of Apple by flicking the power switch of my oldest Apple product (since I don’t have an Apple 1, I went with my Apple ][+). The green-screen monitor flickered to life, the dusty 5.25″ disk drive began chattering (unfortunately, I couldn’t find a boot disk for it at such short notice), got it to the BASIC prompt, and typed the following program:
    10 PRINT “HELLO, WORLD.”
    20 GOTO 10
    RUN
    In response, the 29 year old relic responded with:
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    HELLO, WORLD.
    {hit the break key}
    ]
    Let’s see a Dell do that in 29 years! Here’s to 30 more, Apple!

    Reply

  20. I’d also like to say happy b-day to Apple, but it’s not April 1st in Cupertino quite yet. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />

    Hey if you are using the b-day countdown widget, look it at!

    MW = want

    Those of you that read my posts know I want a nanobook!

    Reply

  25. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

    Thanks for making my daily life a whole heap better.

    Oh, and if the writer above wondering whether Apple or Ms will be around in another 50 years.. the answer is simple. One is already headed towards disintegration and the other has more brilliant product ideas than it knows what to do with. So don’t even doubt for one second that Apple won’t still be a huge forcein 50 years…

    Reply

  28. Happy Birthday Apple!
    I hate computers back in the 1980’s before you came along. Now caring for generations of your “children” is my job! I love it an I love you

    A special thanks to Apple employees who work so hard, and endure what it takes to be on the cutting edge, produce on time–or early, and surprise us with the latest and greatest products in the world. We know your sacrifices.

    Thank you Woz for thinking “different” thoughts and starting us all off in the right direction with your genius.

    A big thanks to Steve for always standing tough for what’s right, and for returning to Apple and keeping the faith, that we’d make a comeback from a real mess made by others.

    A huge thanks to the Mac Faithful for hanging together through the good the bad, and the ugly, through many predictions of doom. Thanks for writing the letters and doing most of the public advertising for Apple Computers, operating systems and apps like iLife. We are the true core of Apple.

    All of the above got us to this 30th Birthday.

    AH YES, MDN Magic Word is “more” and I couldn’t agree more with that!

    Reply

  32. Happy Birthday APPLE. Thanks for making the realization of my dreams a little easier.

    Which other company would allow me to use one machine to play music to an audience for hours on end, design publish and maintain my website, surf the web, ichat with my friends and family and just simply be so easy to use.

    Thanks for my 15″ Powerbook soon to be Macbook Pro..

    http//www.djkirklive.com

    Reply

  37. Happy birthday Apple, thank you STEVE. (and thank you Mike Markkula for supplying the money). It has been a wonderful ride. 1984 wasn’t like 1984, and even though it was Redmond that really got fat off of the brilliant designs of the Lisa and Mac groups, those men and women really did change the world.

    I hope we really do get a wonderful new product from Cupertino to help celebrate, and please keep thinking different.

    Reply

  45. “Today, we celebrate the thirtieth glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives…”

    ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

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  46. Sure do miss the old Apple II … sniff. Actually it had a pleasing scent. Made an aircraft simulator with it … mostly an ASCII cockpit with INS and a ATC that sent you to waypoints on the way to a random airport where you could do an ILS. An ASCII runway would appear if you were on the beam at 300 ft., and I remember constructing the screech sound for when the wheels made contact.

    Then someone made a good graphical simulator.

    Then the assholes at Redmond bought it.

    Some things never change.

    Reply

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