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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."
They are actually new photos with new instagram filters.
Ahhh chips all nicely laid out, not crammed in. Bliss.
Ahhh, look at the cute baby Apple
Table-ized A.I.
The author of the piece has a Slashdot account that he can use to submit and promote his own work, and at least one Slashdot staffer is willing to let him do it. Is that good or bad? McCracken apparently isn't an exceptionally shoddy writer, since he's been making a living at it for decades.
You know, currently Apple is famous for products which don't have a keyboard at all.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Dinaao Is Not An Apple One.
I spoke with Steve Wozniak at the 30th anniversary of Apple held at the Computer History Museum - I asked him why the Apple One was so retarded. He really wasn't happy about that question. I then explained that I had built a Replica 1 and then written Dinaao to teach myself how the guts of the Apple One really worked, and had found that the input was limited to 60 characters a second, and the output as well even though the MOS 6502 CPU was running at one million clocks per second. :NEXT I
Woz then explained that the Apple One was originally designed to be a TV teletype allowing deaf people to type to each other over a phone line. The current TV teletypes ran at 30 characters per second - his was twice as fast. It was a short time later that he was dragged to a local computer club meeting where someone was talking about these new microprocessors that just became available when he realized that rather than typing to a person, you could be typing to a program running on a microprocessor, and watch it respond on your television, all of which normal people could afford. That was how the Apple One was born.
After getting this running, his friend Steve Jobs worked with him to start Apple, and he started using the Apple One to help design the Apple Two with color graphics so that you could play Brick-Out.
If you want to play with a pretty nice Apple One analog - please download Dinaao off Sourceforge.net - works on Linux / MacOSX (get xcode which includes gcc) or any other posix OS. Unpack, run make, run dinaao, type "E000R", and you've got Woz Basic up and running. Works in a console. You can even cut and paste basic programs from web sites like this one. Hit F9 to exit (might need to move function keys in MacOSX out of the way).
10 FOR I=1 TO 20:FOR J=1 TO I
20 PRINTJ;:NEXT J:PRINT
30 END
Enjoy!
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.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
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.
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
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.
Where's the nerd aspect?
Clearly you are not a nerd if you have to ask that question.