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.

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

    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

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