1976 Polaroids of an Apple-1 Resurface

harrymcc writes "In 1976, Paul Terrell, owner of the Byte Shop in Mountain View, California, placed an order for 50 Apple-1 computers, becoming Apple's first dealer. Over at TIME.com, I've published three Polaroid snapshots of the Apple-1 which Terrell shot at the time. They're fascinating history, and it's possible they're the oldest surviving photos of Apple products."

Comments

Nice and orderly

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh chips all nicely laid out, not crammed in. Bliss.

Re:Nice and orderly

[hairyfeet]

Man...remember when ALL the boards were like that? Nice big boards, with big traces, everything was so damned easy to work on, its sooooo nice. Now they overpack the shit out of everything, you get even at ATX board where you think "Sure with THIS much space they won't cram" and NOPE, its cram city! Hell back in the day things started to look even slightly crammed it was daughterboard time, now you have to seriously watch 'em because the cramming makes it hell to insure that all the chips get decent airflow.

As for TFA...meh, the Apple I was okay, but the Apple II was the one that ended up being sold years after everybody else moved on, simply because so damned much software and add-ons were made for it people still wanted the unit, now THAT is impressive, to have your second time at bat, against companies with a HELL of a lot more money and experience under their belts, and to knock it out of the park like that? This is why even though I have never cared for the locked down nature of later Apple I give the two Steves credit, they pulled off some shit back then that would frankly be impossible in this lawsuit heavy megacorp world, they built a fricking empire from a garage...now THAT is impressive.

And this is news?

[bogaboga]

I mean...photos of one [famous] American company's early products? What has Slashdot become? Geez! Is this still news for nerds, stuff that matters? I guess I should post photos of earlier Motorola products, then claim space on Slashdot, right?

Re:And this is news?

[Savage-Rabbit]

I mean...photos of one [famous] American company's early products? What has Slashdot become? Geez! Is this still news for nerds, stuff that matters? I guess I should post photos of earlier Motorola products, then claim space on Slashdot, right?

In terms of the history of personal computing the Apple-1 and 2 are somewhat important. The same goes for the Motorola DynaTAC and MicroTAC series. If you are too young to appreciate the things that helped create the modern high-tech industry you take for granted you can always do something you perceive as being more important like going some place else to refight the Samsung-Google vs. Apple flame war for the umpteenth time and leave us old-timers to indulge in enjoyable recollection of times gone by.

Re:And this is news?

[girlinatrainingbra]

Right, the Apple 1 is an important artefact. A store that bought 500 of them whole sale at $500 apiece to sell them for $666.66 apiece is also interesting. But seriously, just the "polaroid photos of the Apple 1" by themselves is not worthy of much, but surrounded by the facebook posting of these photos and a blog on the Time magazine website about these, well that just barely takes it up a millimeter above the floor level of being uninteresting.
:>p
Where's the tech aspect? Where's the nerd aspect? Did they have to do cool digital image restoration to recover theimages? Did the polaroids somehow help Apple make enough money off the Apple 1 to keep them afloat until they could build and sell the apple ][ and move on to fame? I don't see any more gnews for gnerds capacity in this story. Time to move on.... And it's not that I'm so young that I can't see the importance of this. My parents have a trs80 and a running apple ][ bought in 1977 and some punchcard programs with fortran watfor (what for? :) ) on it in the garage for play and giggles; so I do know about and appreciate the history of computing. But seriously, the title of this topic is "1976 Polaroids of an Apple-1 Resurface". Seriously. Sad. Seriously sad.

Re:And this is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

a is true because b is a fact therefore a is true which makes b a fact

also what's your problem? if you want something more interesting on the front page, maybe you should contribute something more interesting. what I really expected from your (drunken?) rant was an alternative to the story. instead you just explained how your parents have computer stuff and you are not interested in pictures of an apple 1...isn't it sort of sad you took so many letters to convey that message?

Re:And this is news?

[Savage-Rabbit]

My parents have a trs80 and a running apple ][ bought in 1977 and some punchcard programs with fortran watfor (what for? :) ) on it in the garage for play and giggles; so I do know about and appreciate the history of computing. But seriously, the title of this topic is "1976 Polaroids of an Apple-1 Resurface". Seriously. Sad. Seriously sad.

Your parents, right so that is how young you are. You should ask them why this stuff is important enough to them that they don't scrap it. Why do we keep old cars around and expend more money on restoring them than they are worth? To you computers seem to be something you take for granted a mundane item like a toaster.... which is fair enough if you are not a computer geek. If you are not a car geek I can see how you would be puzzled over people who think it is a sin to crush a 1950s Chevrolet concept car or one of only 51 model 1948 Tucker Sedans ever made to turn them into beer cars or sewer lids. To me these pictures are interesting, because I can remember when there were no PCs. I used to have to laboriously type essays on a IBM 'golfball' typewriter (you should try it, the keys are so stiff you literally have to 'punch' them with your fingers). Getting a computer, being able to make changes and correct mistakes and then print out a new copy was a huge labor saving. Then there were games, first 2D an then Doom, nobody had seen anything like it.... Now, before you get off my lawn, please remind me why are you here taking the piss out of old-timers over our nostalgia when you could be doing something more important like refight the Google-Samsung vs. Apple flamewar for the umpteenth time or convincing politicians that music wants to be free.

Re:And this is news?

[thePig]

I would prefer this much more than the umpteen politics and yro posts here.
So, even though it might not pique your interest, there would be many others who might be interested.
Also, look at the comments on that site. It is quite illuminating and does give an idea of how computers really came through.
History does teaches lessons a lot.

Re:And this is news?

[cjjjer]

Where's the nerd aspect?

Clearly you are not a nerd if you have to ask that question.

Re:Dinaao

[Anonymous Coward]

In the picture, "AUTO 10,10" means every time you hit enter, it auto types the next line number ten more the the highest one. Hit Ctrl D to get it to stop. Woz basic expects an "END" statement to finish the program or else it's an error.

Re:wrong gender, that's a Mac connector

[macraig]

This mouse is much older than a Macintosh. It's so old that the only marking on it is the name "Microsoft" molded in relief into the housing... no part number, no other external markings, period. The little internal PCB has markings in Japanese. It's so old it doesn't even use an optical sensor: instead it has some sort of endless potentiometer with its spindle in contact with the ball. The connector probably predates the RS-232 PC connector standard.