The basic Apple I

Apple I

Basic Info

The Apple I is the first computer produced by Apple Inc. (at that time known as Apple Computer Company). It was projected and realised by Stephen Wozniak and the idea of selling this product came from a young man called Steve Jobs. The Apple I entered in the computer market in 1976 during a presentation at the Homebrew Computer Club. The launch price was $666.66 and the product consisted in a fully assembled motherboard.

The wood case

Tech Specs

To make the computer working was necessary to buy a power source, a keyboard and a computer display. For only $75 you could buy an audio cassette interface for data storage. The only thing the users had to do was typing commands (for example to program something) on the keyboard and see the outputs on the display. It was a revolution because before the Apple I, the users were programming using switches on the interface and the outputs were showed with some blinking LEDs, like some computers made the years before. It had a 4kB Ram expandable to 64kB and used a MOS 6502 microprocessor. Inside the ROM there was an Apple I BASIC programming language. The Apple I was very customisable also because it was sold without a case, so everyone was able to put it wherever he wanted. The most current cases were the ones made-up of wood.The interface of the display was not graphic but textual and monochromatic with a resolution of 40x20.

A full optional Apple I

Apple Rarity

During the years following the issue of Apple I (in conjunction with the issue of Apple II) Apple began to offer discounts to the Apple I owners for the Apple II to persuade them to return back their computers. All the computers that were coming back, were then destroyed. This fact has contributed to the rarity of this computer: nowadays is very difficult to find an original Apple I; in an auction an Apple I was even sold for $905'000.