Apple Inc. is 34 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.
To the moon Apple, to the Moon!
I Love the whole apple story, it has everything from a Shakespearean classic to an Orwellian novel and Star Trek Next Gen. future. The Steve and The Woz are the greatest. I just wonder why Woz isn’t more involved in the co. with the introduction of all these revolutionary prducts, you’d think he’d be so excited to be working on these concepts.
Apple just hit the Reset button on Tech !!!
It’s a New Era in personal computing and Apple reinvented it again
Best April fools prank ever. I’m still on board with the foolish dream. 😮 )
Apple is just amazing!
MW: great!
Happy birthday Apple, Blow out the candles and make a wish.
Apple, I stuck with you during the Dark Times in the ’90s. Nearly everybody told me that Apple was dead, was going to be bought by Sun, was going to close it’s doors for good in 6 mo. But I told them they were crazy, it wasn’t going to happen. Since then, we’ve seen Micron, Gateway, eMachine, & Dell tank, and MS dead in the water. Thanks for making me look good over the last decade, and Happy Birthday!
We all owe John Scully NOTHING, may his tribe decrease. But we DO owe Gil Amelio a little sumpin’-sumpin’: It was his idea to bring The Steveness back to the fold, so . . .
Thanks, Gil (even though your leadership at Apple was truly a nightmare).
“We’ll make it for 20 bucks, sell it for 40 bucks!”
Wow, Just wow.
Happy Birthday Apple!
Cheers!
Don’t dis Amelio…… He and Hancock had the guts to trash taligent/Pink and go shopping for a new OS. His turnaround (had he been allowed to stay) would not have been as dramatic as Steve’s, but Gil setup and enabled Steve’s triumph!
How cool to celebrate an anniversary with a ground-breaking (actually much more than that) new product, a massive pile of glowing reviews, and the cover of Time.
I want a belt buckle like that… I’m dead serious!