Before there was an iPod, an iPhone, an iPad, or an Apple Watch—before there was a Macintosh or Apple II or even an Apple-1—there were a couple of kids who came of age in Silicon Valley in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were brought together by a shared fascination with electronics. Supported by friends, family, and a burgeoning community of hobbyists, technologists, and entrepreneurs, just as the microprocessor was ushering in a new era, they channeled their strikingly different skills into joint projects.
On April 1, 1976, along with Jobs’s former coworker Ronald Wayne, the two Steves formed a partnership to market Wozniak’s latest invention, a microcomputer kit for electronics hobbyists. They called it Apple Computer Company.
This year, as Apple turns 50, its presence in our lives is so pervasive—2.5 billion of the company’s devices are in active use—that its unlikely origin story is more resonant than ever. To tell it, I turned to the people who lived it:
Their memories show that both pluck and luck played a part in Apple’s initial success. But so did an unshakable faith in the transformative power of personal computers—a vision that set the company on a course to change history.
Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
As Jobs, Wozniak, and other members of their junior high and high school circles become obsessed with electronics, Silicon Valley is not yet known as Silicon Valley. Still, these young geeks are definitely in the right place at the right time.
Electronics as a shared interest continues to fuel Wozniak’s social life, in ways that would prove fateful.
Wozniak and Jobs bond over not just their mutual electronics hobby but also a love of mischief. One early collaboration is inspired by an October 1971 Esquire article by Ron Rosenbaum, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box.” It chronicles the shadowy exploits of geeks known as phone phreaks—some of them blind—who’d figured out how to place free calls and otherwise hack the phone system using homemade tone-generation gadgets called blue boxes.
In 1973, Wozniak gets a job as an engineer in Hewlett-Packard’s calculator division, though he funnels much of his ingenuity into personal engineering projects of increasing ambition, culminating in a full-blown microcomputer. Meanwhile, Jobs finds work as a video game technician at Atari in 1974.
As Wozniak gins up his TV terminal, a community of kindred spirits is forming in Silicon Valley. One gathering place is People’s Computer Co. in Menlo Park, where anyone can walk in and use a terminal hooked up to a Digital PDP-8 minicomputer.
Wozniak has built a personal computer. Jobs wants to build a company. The result: Apple. At Atari, Jobs befriends Ronald Wayne, a colleague more than 20 years his senior. Wayne had wound up at the company after his own startup, which manufactured slot machines, had collapsed.
Jobs soon lands on a different venture: selling Wozniak’s computer, initially as a bare circuit board to techies who’d install their own chips. Funding the project requires a sacrifice that would become the stuff of Silicon Valley legend: the sale of his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak’s HP calculator.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Apple does not quite start in a garage. But as the company ramps up operations and begins assembling Apple-1 boards, it does rapidly take over the Jobs household in Los Altos, with the assistance of Steve’s parents, Paul and Clara, and sister Patty.
The Apple-1 gets Apple up and running, but it doesn’t become a breakout hit, even by 1976 standards. It does, however, give the company enough momentum to start thinking bigger.
Still, the Apple-1 gets some attention—including a February 1977 magazine feature by Kilobaud magazine’s Sheila Craven, “The Remarkable Apple Computer.” It’s the first article about Apple that’s more than a few paragraphs long.
Even after McKenna agrees to take on Apple as a client, it isn’t obvious how to market a computer to the masses.
Courting the investors whose money Apple needs to bring the Apple II to market proves even tougher than getting McKenna on board.
Unconvinced that Apple is investment-worthy, Don Valentine suggests that Jobs and Wozniak seek advice from Mike Markkula, a 33-year-old early retiree from Intel. After visiting the Jobs garage and seeing the Apple II in prototype form, Markkula gradually turns from adviser to partner. He invests $91,000 in Apple, guarantees a $250,000 loan, and convinces Wozniak to quit his HP job. On January 3, 1977, Apple incorporates, with Markkula as chairman.
In 1977, as Apple finishes designing the Apple II and brings it to market, the new machine becomes part of a wave of user-friendly personal computers—and goes head-to-head with Tandy/Radio Shack’s TRS-80and Commodore’s PET 2001.
The Apple II ships in June 1977, but is dependent on balky cassette storage. A year later, Apple beats other computer manufacturers to market with its first floppy disk drive. The company closes out the 1970s on a high note when the most important piece of personal computer software released thus far debuts on its computer.
Trying to connect every dot between Apple, the tiny, dirt-poor 1970s startup, and Apple, the $3.7 trillion 21st-century global colossus, is impossible. But this much is clear: The company has always been at its best when its original quirky humanity and willingness to be an outlier shine through.
