Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Acting as Apple's salesman in chief, the enthusiastic and tirelessly confident Jobs ap-
proached Paul Terrell, founder of a computer store (a new concept) in the Bay area: "The
Byte Shop." Jobs asked Terrell to stock Apple boards. Terrell told Jobs he was only inter-
ested in selling fully assembled machines (just the computer, minus monitor, keyboard and
power-supply). He offered to purchase fifty.
Working together with no other assistance, Jobs and Wozniak built the machines - now
called Apple-1 - in Jobs' garage using parts they'd bought on credit. Released in July of
1976, the Apple-1 sold for $666.66: approximately twice the cost of the parts plus a 33%
dealer markup. Eventually, Jobs and Wozniak assembled a total of two hundred Apple-1
computers, all but twenty-five selling over the course of a ten month period.
Soon, at the request of Terrell, Wozniak designed an interface for a cassette peripheral.
The small printed circuit board - which sold for $75 with a cassette of Wozniak's BASIC
interpreter thrown in for free - plugged into the one and only expansion slot on the Apple-1
motherboard. On literature packed with the circuit board, Apple opined: "Our philosophy
is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost." The interface ran fast for
its time (1200 baud, when most other cassette interfaces ran at 300 baud). As a further im-
provement, the Byte Shop arranged for the manufacture of simple koa-wood cases to house
the naked circuit board, thus making the package far more attractive.
That same summer, Jobs arranged for Apple's machine to be sold in the the first person-
al computer store on the eastern seaboard: Manhattan's Computer Mart. Jobs also demon-
strated the machine at a meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery, where it
generated much excitement. Apple-1 was as well a hit at PC '76 held in Atlantic City, New
Jersey on August 28, 1976 - upstaging two other 6502 machines on display. For Jobs, it
seemed like the future was there for the taking.
