Apple I



"Byte into an Apple."

The Apple Computer, or Apple I, was the first computer produced by Apple (well duh), which at the time was three guys in a garage: Steve Wozniak designed it, Steve Jobs went around selling it (and also owned the garage), Ron Wayne wrote the documentation, and all of them (but mostly Wozniak) assembled the damn things. About 200 units were produced; 63 are known to still exist, but only six in working condition. Being so rare, they command some curiously high prices. And by that I mean over half a million dollars. Many cheap unofficial replicas also exist.

At first the Apple I was sold as an assembled circuit board; it was up to the user to add the case, power supply, keyboard, and any other peripherals. Only later, fully assembled machines were sold by a computer shop. Absurd as it may sound now, the board was in fact much more complete than the typical computer kit at the time, such as the famous Altair 8800, that left up to the user to assemble and solder dozens of little chips, and didn't even include the circuitry for connecting to a terminal or teletype.