Apple Inc. is 35 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.
Omg look at the young Steve Jobs in that photo!
Yeah he was sexy. He looked a little bit like Kevin Rose.
“… that Apple would create the look and feel of every desktop in the world….”
Which of course was essentially stolen by Bill Gates, creating an unspeakable fortune for himself and his cronies, and diverting the progress of technology down a dark alley. It has taken Jobs’ leaving and returning and a quarter century to restore his role in defining the future of technology.
Have a great 35 birthday and may you live long and prosper.
Wonder how much that Apple Belt buckle would sell for today lol.
Stay hungry, stay foolish!
with a bit of luck, AAPL gets a birthday present today:
AAPL is about to pass MSFT+INTC, or, Apple > WINTEL
Maybe that was the first official Keynote. “Oh, yeah… one more thing.”
Best wishes to both Steves. And kudos to everyone who stuck with Apple through the dark years.
HBTY HBTY HBDA HBTY
A good many folks forgot the day; good to see you sharp as iCal MDN. Happy birthday, Apple, and you too Ronald Wayne.
Is it joke?
No joke. Apple was incorporated 35 years ago today!
It might have been a joke at the time. I know I’m still laughing. =)
Thank god for Apple! If we didn’t have them we wouldn’t have the advancements we have today! I use to hate cellphones until I got an iPhone! I use to think Windows was the bomb, until I bought a MacBook Pro. Here’s to another 35 years of innovation! Cheers Apple Inc!
I’m honored to share my birthday with Apple. Happy birthday to us!
Happy birthday, Perry.
Happy Birthday Apple. Keep it up.
Awesome work thus far! Looking forward to even more in the coming years!
iQ
Steve was quite the hottie in that pic!
But then we all looked better 35 years ago. Well, hard to look good when probably some of you here weren’t even alive then!
Actually, the only things that look better 35 years later are the computers!
Happy birthday, Apple, and the entire Apple team.
Wish I was 35 again- and looking as sharp as Apple.