Above: Steve Jobs returns to the fabled garage years after Apple’s initial success.
So up until now we’ve been lead to believe that the two Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, created the very first Apple I computer in a humble California garage, attached to Steve Jobs’s childhood home.
But according to Steve Wozniak, the Apple I computer wasn’t actually 100% ‘built’ from scratch in the venerated building, and the garage itself was more of a hangout for the two young men during the early days of Apple.
In an interview with Bloomberg, which you can see in full at the source link below, Wozniak claims that the garage itself wasn’t the hub of activity the much hyped legend would have you believe, and little to no actual work on Apple’s computer was done there.
“The garage is a bit of a myth. We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there. The garage didn’t serve much purpose, except it was something for us to feel was our home. We had no money. You have to work out of your home when you have no money.”
– Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder, Apple Inc.
Not to say that the garage didn’t play some part in Apple’s rise, as of course the two Steves must have had some relevant discussions whilst spending their time in there. The garage itself does hold some relevance, as Steve Wozniak says, it was the ‘home base’ for him and Steve Jobs at the time the Apple I was first made.
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Currently the mythical garage holds a bit of prestige as a ‘historic resource’ as voted by the Los Altos Historic Commission in 2013 – it’s a sort of ‘listed building’ if you will, and is currently owned by the Jobs Trust, who manage Steve Jobs’s legacy.
The Apple I itself is a masterwork of hand-crafted computer excellence, the pioneering design and the fact that it arrived (almost) fully ready to use was quite the revolution in the early emerging PC market.
Surviving examples of the device have fetched close to 1 million dollars in the US, with only 70 odd example available, although a multitude of replicas exist.
Apple’s garage myth might be a bit shady and embellished, but the company’s massive impact on the early PC market is, and will always be, uncontested.
Via: Techspot
Source: Bloomberg