'Superb' Apple 1 on the block for £100k-£150K

An original Apple 1 made by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Jobs parent's garage goes on the auction block in London this month. The Apple 1 was designed by Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976. Just 200 were made, according to the website Old Computers, and up to 50 are thought to survive. At the time they cost $666.66, but Lot 65 …

[famousringo]

Let me be the first

I'd just like to point out that I could build a PC that will vastly outperform this Apple for far less money.

[Christian Berger]

This machine was on the edge...

This machine was on the edge towards general purpose computing as we know it today. For example while newer machines used a fraction of their RAM to refresh the display, the Apple 1 used a set of dedicated shift registers for that. It also had dedicated character generator ICs instead of PROMS.

[Anonymous Coward]

I repeat...

Dare you to put that on the genius bar and ask for help...

(same AC as before)

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure I'd risk it

"certainly Sir, just let me send it to our workshop, we'll call you when it's working..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Escalation...

Wonder how far it would get escalated for repair.. wonder if it'd ever land on the big iwhite idesk?

[bhtooefr]

You could trade it in on a Apple II Plus with 48K RAM and a Disk II...

Steve Jobs actually tried to recall all of the Apple-1s when the Apple II came out, so that Apple wouldn't have to support them. Anecdotes say that, when the ][+ came out, the trade-in offer had become, trade in an Apple-1 (which would be destroyed,) get a ][+ with 48k RAM (keep in mind that the maximum officially supported RAM on the Apple-1 was 8k) and a Disk ][ for free.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Unabomber had made computers...

It would have looked like the Apple 1.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

[Is it me?]

Ahhhhh Furniture

Although it looks a bit naff in the wooden case, it does prompt the question, why can't we have more computers that look like part of the furniture, rather than an ugly utilitarian lump in the corner.

Let's have roll top desks with computers built in, must be possible to make them reliable & cool enough not to need much servicing, and modular enough to make replacement easy.

Just think how much nicer a data centre would look in polished mahogany.....

LCD screens in Victorian picture frames.....

Come on Apple, HP and the rest, design something nice and natural to look at.

[Stuart Castle]

Been tried

Building computers in to furniture has been tried several times. People don't seem interested in buying it.

[Marvin the Martian]

"rather than an ugly utilitarian lump"

.... In other words, you've never had a Mac.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or...

A glass-topped coffee table, with embedded iPad/iPhone-style UI across the whole surface...

[Bobby Omelette]

Erm ...

A stunning idea ... At least until the vicar next pops round and puts his cuppa down on your favourite tug-tv bookmark.

[Lance 3]

Like this

http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/sony-rips-off-microsoft-surface-smart-table/

That design is nothing new and close to a decade old.

[John 110]

hmmm

What? Like one of these http://steampunkworkshop.com/victorian-all-one-pc ?

[Giles Jones]

Retro

Google 'Steampunk computer', you'll find what you're looking for. Albeit in an old fashioned way.

[foxyshadis]

@Giles

The steampunk laptops I've seen look nothing like furniture, they're just goofy wooden/metal shells that intentionally call attention to themselves. Given that smartphones have as much power as small supercomputers of a decade ago, you'd think it would be easier to put a standard low-power PC into a fashionable shell, such as the underside of a desk or the headboard of a bed. I guess it's not important enough to most people.

Trouble is, no one wants to look at furniture all day, so using furniture as a screen is out. I keep my PCs and hard drives as hidden inside the furniture as possible, though. Would be nice to meld them together.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

An enigma machine cost less than an Apple 1?

The mind boggles. I for one think the former is WAY cooler.

<sarcasm>

But then maybe the Apple as the better user experience

</sarcasm>

[Anonymous Coward]

Look the warning were there

666 and then some....See Job's is the devil incarnate! Yet no one took notice and now we are all doomed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if world = USA...

"ENIAC, the world's first electronic computer " ?

Ahem: Colossus ?

But that wasn't American, so doesn't count.

[ThomH]

My understanding is that...

... ENIAC was Turing complete, whereas Collosus wasn't. Though that would make it "the world's first Turing complete electronic computer", both electronic and Turing complete having already been done elsewhere.

[Giles Jones]

Not a computer as we know it

Colossus had a fixed program. To be classed as a general purpose computer you need the ability to load new software or instructions. Colossus had to be rewired to do that.

[Jimmy Floyd]

"At the time they cost $666.66..."

How very prophetic.

[Marvin the Martian]

That's an old one.

There's that giveaway, and then the apple to seduce mankind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not forgetting that...

St.Eve tempted man with an Apple..

Although Job <> Genesis.

[Tom 7]

So like a lot of apple equipment

it was not actually used - it was just for showing to people to show how cool you are?

[Ed 13]

Enigma Machine

The Enigma Machine is the cryptography machine used by the Germans for encoding and decoding messages, not the machine used at Bletchley Park to break the cypher. These machines were called Bombes.

A few people might argue about the assertion that ENIAC was the first electronic computer too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they used Enigma machines.

Bletchley Park may have used Bombes to break the cypher, but once they'd found the keys a fair chunk of the actual decrypting was done with captured Enigma machines. What's more, before the Bombes existed they did much of the code-breaking manually...

[Anonymous Coward]

At the time they cost $666(.66)

Dont say you weren't given plenty of warning.

That is all

[Gwaptiva]

As is usual with Apple Gear

overpriced and of dubious specification

[Robert Hill]

How much...

I have a competitor to the Apple I in near mint condition - the Ohio Scientific Superboard II...the ROMs are copywritted 1977, and it has the very third version of "Microsoft BASIC in ROM" by Mr. Gates himself...

Got to be worth £10...

[chr0m4t1c]

Try offering it to Microsoft

They'll probably give you a bit more for it.

They can use it as a secure starting point for the Windows 8 codebase...

[Richard Tobin]

offprints?

300,000 pounds for offprints? These people are nuts!

[Marc F]

Magical

"'Superb' Apple 1" shouldn't that be "'Magical' Apple 1"

[Anonymous Coward]

...but will it blend?

See title.

[Cunningly Linguistic]

Do Apple...

...get 30% of the final price?

[Player_16]

It just works!

.

'But in principle, it worked out of the box.'

[Lars]

Apple II+

Any value in that hardware, and at the time, wonderful feeling of progress in the air like Visicalc the first spreadsheet program.

Perhaps it is my age, or something I drink, but it is like not much has realy happened since then.

It was 1 Mhz and would give people an heart attack to use to day. But it was new and Visicalc

is the only software I would have granted an patent since then.

[Ian 55]

A look on the possibly virtual shelves of your bookshop of choice

Should reveal a 'build your own Apple I' book has been available for some time. Now all you need is some 1976 or earlier TTL chips (or just wipe the top and print your own manufacturing date) and see the profits...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it support dual-booting 10.6 and Win7?

I'm thinking about bidding, but if I spend that much on a machine I want it to do everything I need.