Super-rare wooden Apple 1 hand built by Jobs and Wozniak goes to auction Anyone interested in an Apple I hand built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak circa 1976 has until 11:30 am PST today to make a bid as the rare computer goes up for auction at John Moran Auctioneers outside Los Angeles, California. The vintage machine is one of the few Apple-I versions encased in koa wood, from the Acacia koa …
It looks very nice, aesthetically, in that wooden case. And there’s no doubting that these machines are historically important - especially if you consider that they evolved into the Apple II, which ran VisiCalc, and in so doing became the first desktop business computer mega hit - and prompted IBM to take this whole microcomputer thing seriously, giving us the IBM 5150 (and its descendants)
It belongs in a museum where everyone can enjoy it.
As to whether it’s overpriced, that depends on whether you’d consider articles like the Wright Flyer, Puffing Billy, Colossus and other early examples of their type have an intrinsic value based on their historical provenance.
"These machines are historically important"
Yes, but only to a very very, very small number of people. The real driver for the ridiculous costs attributed to these things is people hoping to make a future profit on it, rather than any overarching altruistic concern to preserve it for future posterity.
I'm quite sure Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse is right and here is why:
A job application by Steve Jobs, pbuh, has been sold 4 times since 2017, with each auction multiplying the sale value several times.
One could argue that a paper application has even less intrinsic value than a working computer.
But re-selling this highly collectible item almost on a yearly basis? That's nothing but speculation.
Edit: Source https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/29/steve_jobs_nft_auction_race/
The thing about people with plenty of money is that they tend to get and stay that way because they care about exactly that sort of thing. as the saying goes, look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves. A relatively small five figure increase in value might not be much to a millionaire, but a couple of hundred such increases absolutely does mean something to them. Most people involved in such auctions aren't there because they happen to be interested in one particular piece, they buy up lots of things in lots of auctions as part of a broad investment strategy. It's like saying that someone gambling on the stock market doesn't care about the tiny profit from a single share; the point is that you trade rather more than just one and those tiny amounts quickly add up.
Original capacitors...well, that sold m e, I'll be bidding!
I suppose for that price, the thing will rest inside a glass box for the rest of its life, and will never be powered on, lest one of those original "rare" capacitors fail and decrease its value by $1k. A bit sad, really. Those things were made to be used.
The active, and shelf, life of an electrolytic capacitor is about 20 years, so plugging that in without replacing them all would not be a good idea.
That Apple 1 is now an archaeological relic, you can not replace the failed bits with era appropriate parts because they are all bad now and if you replace them all with modern parts so that the board functions you end up with the Ship of Theseus paradox!
Best that can be done is backward engineer the board with test probes and dump all the ROMS, digitise all the original datasheets for the IC's from the era used to preserve that information for future generations of archaeologists. Doing that and including it now would increase the value next time it is sold on.
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A physical binder filled with the paper datasheets, and maybe a dot matrix style printout of the ROM hex dumps. Although far less practical would probably fetch a higher price. Maybe even seal the binder in UV protective cover filled with nitrogen to preserve it longer. And throw in a few 8 inch floppy disk backups of the ROMs just for the fun factor ("We have included a fully digital archive copy for your convenience!").
"I suppose for that price, the thing will rest inside a glass box for the rest of its life,"
Well, yes, of course. At that age, there'll be DANGEROUS LEAD in the solder. Elf'n'Safety dontcha know. There's probably a hint of CARCINOGENIC chemicals too! (Note the SCARY CAPITALS)
Coat, rather than Joke icon, since to some, it might not be a joke, especially if the buyer is in California.
"I suppose for that price, the thing will rest inside a glass box for the rest of its life, and will never be powered on, lest one of those original "rare" capacitors fail and decrease its value by $1k. A bit sad, really. Those things were made to be used."
I'm not troubled by that, especially if the glass case was visible to the public (it probably won't be). There's nothing you can do with a 1976-era Apple I which can't be done with greater ease on something everyone already has. If you really like the computer and you want to spend money, run an emulator on some hardware you've put into a wooden box and you get the same experience. While I'm no collector, I would find it a little sad that a piece of computing history was destroyed after its importance was known just because someone wanted to try their hand at 1976-era basic.
Spent many hours trying to use this thing in a classroom environment through the Apple II. Writing software for it was a nightmare. I never really understood the fascination that school districts had for this product, especially the "networked" version. I was writing code for the Amiga and Commodore at the same time. By comparison they were far and away better machines. Thank God the IBM personal computer came along for personal computing. When windows appeared on the scene it was another step backwards. I still have a picture of a little girl sitting in front of one of these machines smiling while she typed *EBDTA5:PGM.MAC $Y$$ or something like that. Yeah, sure.
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