An original Apple-1 computer sells for $400k
npr.org
npr.org
no, it was not, the Olivetti Programma 101 was sold in thousands already in the 60s and was a pretty finite product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers#...
But then I barely would call the Apple-1 that, either. You bought a PCB, optionally pre-assembled that booted into a system monitor. Even though you could directly connect a keyboard and a television (huge improvements; competing products still had toggle switches and indicator lights) that’s not something you could sell to ‘normal’ people.
The Apple II added a power supply, a keyboard (meaning buyers didn’t need to go to some dump to find a keyboard that worked or could be made to work with the system), a case and Basic in ROM. That, for me, made it a personal computer. If you bought it, you could go home, plug it in, and start tinkering.
http://www.trs-80.org/was-the-trs-80-once-the-top-selling-co...
If you think these are synonyms, the TRS-80 may have been more significant, but it wasn’t the first. The race was close, though. Apple II in June, TRS-80 in August, PET in December 1977.
And of course, the ideal first would be the Honeywell Kitchen Computer from 1969, but unfortunately none of them seem to have been sold, if the product even existed for real (https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=927). Now, _that_ would be a collectors item.
It was also mostly complete out of the box, didn't need to be programmed via switches on the front panel, and could be used for actual tasks right away.
Its combination of low cost, high feature count, and out of the box usefulness is why it usually gets referred to as the start of the personal computer industry.
Apple-2: 1976 666$, 2021 400K$, x600
AAPL: 1980 10¢, 2021 150$, x1500
So if you bought 1 share for 10$ in 1980 (as an example), today you would have 100 shares at 150$.
I invite you to go find the actual prices of the stock back then, and track down all the stock splits. But it´s not helpful for the point that "aapl" appreciated in value about 1500-fold over the last 40 years.
So, every single Apple I still in existence? IIRC, only a few hundred were made, and Jobs and Woz hand soldered every single board.
As for "rare", that's very true. The Apple II had a trade in program where they'd take your Apple I and destroy(?) it? (reuse it for parts?)
Remember the video of a group hunting a stash of ET Atari video games cartridges, that was an interesting video.
Sometimes when I’ve lost something and am looking for it, I think “what if it’s simply not here?”. Then I think, “it still likely exists, where is it?”
He does such a good job that word of his good service spreads and he wants to expand by buying a truck with a plow. But he doesn't have the money so he goes to a bank and borrows the money. He's able to expand his enterprise dramatically.
He's happy. His customers are happy. The bank is happy. Society is better off, isn't it? There are of course problems with capitalism which is where regulation comes in. But it isn't rotten to the core.
At the latest when he has a monopoly the company's services will deteriorate and the prices will rise. The customers won't be happy anymore. Also he will scatter so much salt on the roads that the ground water gets polluted. You see where I am going?
Of course it doesn't need to go this way but usually it does.
I owned a computer service company for five years. I never did any of the things that you mentioned. All of my customers were small businesses and they never did anything you mentioned. You seem to be basing your opinion on the 1%.
Since dollars are votes in capitalism, market cap is the more relevant metric.
The more I think about it.. if the company is traded at the stock market and controlled by shareholders it cannot be good anymore because the optimization of revenue is the core of everything now.
And with good I mean that it doesn't have interests that improve anything for the human race or the people of some country as long as these interests don't also align with optimizing profits.
>wave-laborer
These terms are mutually exclusive.
People would inevitably offer me more because they were worth more (examples: a very old TRS-80 or musicians who still used the Atari ST). More often than not, I declined. I was more interested in seeing them used and not interested in turning my hobby into a business. For the most part, everyone was happy.
Younger people shovel ways so the older people do not fall and get hurt.
One day, a few of those younger people have an idea and get their start from that community, who helps fund, perhaps some members sharing space, equipment, etc...
How so?
More likely it is a repurposed CCTV monitor, that looked like this since very early too (In the 90's worked in place that had a very old CCTV system, from the 70's, with the giant cameras, and the displays were basically this size and format.
There were other very small TVs too. It's not like we still used vacuum tubes to build tvs in 76.
Except for the picture tube itself, of course! (Broadening the definition a bit, perhaps.)
Even more I wish I kept the shares of Apple stock I bought for $52 in 1992. Sold 'em right before the iPod was introduced. <facepalm>
any recommendations?
256Kb expanded memory
80 column display card
2 x 5.25 disk drives and a collection of floppies
Gravis joystick.
Green screen has a tear in the fabric I need to repair. Other than that it still works.
Fun fact: the picture tube in that monitor was made in the US by Ball (the canning-jar company), the anti-glare fabric came from Ireland, and the rest came from Taiwan.
A well-preserved example went for $31k in 2018. That’s somewhat lower than I would have expected. Maybe we’ll see a more impressive price the next time one of these goes to auction.
He doesn't have an actual Apple-1 either, of course, but this year he was finally able to build an accurate replica.[0] (It still wasn't cheap or easy.)
> See, back when the video game market was still considered to be a commercial wasteland, Nintendo decided to host “test launch” events for the NES in New York and Los Angeles. Basically, they wanted to see how the console would perform in those markets before expanding their release strategy. For those events, they manufactured a few thousand “special copies” of Super Mario Bros. What made them so special? Well, they were sealed with a sticker rather than plastic shrink wrap. Seriously…that’s pretty much it.
> As it turns out, that sticker is a pretty big deal among collectors. The only known still-sealed copy of the “test launch” version of Super Mario Bros. sold for $140,000 in 2019, and some suspect the game could go for close to $1,000,000 if it was sold on the current market.
[1] https://www.denofgeek.com/games/rarest-most-valuable-nes-gam...
On the other hand they spent more on this than my car or home.
I feel like the Apple II was a better example of that: the Apple I more like a prototype (that shipped a little).
Why?
MOS setup to bring an inexpensive microprocessor to market and were successful. In some of the history Chuck Peddle has told, MOS really did not even target the personal computer market initially.
One, it was not quite a thing, and their KIM trainer was aimed at "distributed intelligence", basically embedded type use cases.
Once the ball got rolling, and Apple was a big part of that, using the 6502 gained traction.
Moto, by charging so much for the 6800, and later 6809, missed out on a lot!
Sidebar:
I often wonder what personal computing and video gaming might have looked like had the 6809 been inexpensive and was the basis for all the 6502 machines, or more of them... In terms of capability, the two chips are similar, but the 6809 offered a far more robust instruction set. Maybe it did not matter much overall. The set of possible things is similar enough.
But, I do wonder all the same. Doing really hard, or demanding things with the 6809 has advantages, but I digress big time here!
End sidebar:
In any case, MOS scored! Sold a ton of chips, and why would they be entitled as to get that kind of compensation?
Or, is this snark? Maybe is... LMAO. I probably bit on this when I did not have to. Oh well. Cheers!
"... the model marked the start of the personal computer industry."
"Apple-1 was the start of the personal computer industry."
"The Apple-1 was the first Apple product to be sold. It marked the start of the personal computer industry."
200 units were built, 80 or so remain around today, and they were released in 1976. The Commodore PET was being designed in 1976, and released in 1977 - before the Apple II. There was, of course, a flurry of other activity around this time.
Are these grandiose claims reasonable?
https://twitter.com/Devilish_Design/status/10881650262786621...
If you want the experience without the cost, there's a 6502-Arduino hybrid you can build:
https://hackaday.io/project/26234-apple-1-mini
https://github.com/tebl/RC6502-Apple-1-Replica/tree/master/R...
The bare boards often come up on eBay.
How hard would it be to create a forgery of an original Apple I?
Asking for a friend...
The main two difficulties are:
- Getting the PCB layout exactly right. AFAIK, the original was laid out by hand with tape on mylar sheet. Bends in the traces were made by stretching the tape. Recreating all that exactly in modern PCB software is somewhere between difficult and impossible. I also seem to recall that the best existing replica PCB designs intentionally have small discrepancies from the original to make them detectable as replicas.
- Getting a PCB made with period correct materials. The specific materials used to make those PCBs in 1976 aren't in use anymore. I know at least one replica builder has tried to get as close as possible by having a PCB manufacturer go back to older methods, but even then, I don't think they were able to get it 100% accurate.
Additionally, there are few enough Apple 1s in the world that most if not all of them are known, named, numbered, and accounted for, so you'd have to have a great backstory explaining where your forgery came from and why it has been unknown for so long. See here: https://www.apple1registry.com.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
Even equipment from the 1950s rarely have to have their capacitors replaced, though sometimes they have to be "reformed".
For most things I’d expect there to be no difference between the value of a computer with original caps _and no damage_ and one with recaps _and no damage_, because the buyer is going to recap anyway. For this Apple I, which is a museum piece rather than a hobby piece, I really don’t know if that holds.
It is neat when it's more tangible
There isn't an easy way to flex your status online, unless you're a celebrity, or put in the work to become an influencer.
For people with money, there isn't a simple way to come to places like HN and just be important because you have money. There isn't a way to show people how wealthy and powerful you are without contributing.
But NFT's allow you to show people how much disposable income you have, and therefore how much better you are than the unwashed masses, without needing to really do anything of substance.
Or maybe that's just my own personal bias and confusion about NFT's in general showing?
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgzed/what-the-hell-is-righ...
Its like walking around with a Gucci billboard on your forehead - you think youre flexing but youre actually just demonstrating clown shoes.
Nobody cares how expensive your nft is. They have no use anywhere. Its like having the fanciest clownshoes - you're still a clown.
It is like that "I'm Rich" app someone from Germany(?) made for iOS. Priced it at the max and a few people bought it!
What they got was an app that displayed a picture of some expensive, fantasy ring with an equally fantastic gemstone set in it.
Total status signaling!
Of course the general failure on that one was the lack of network effects. Someone could see the app was on a phone, and or could see the displayed picture should the user leave it running.
Seriously lame, but still there appeared to be at least a few takers.
Which, as you point out, can be simplified to "exist" ;)
But owning a prime piece of vintage computing history gets you into a community too. And owning one is as much as status play as BAYC is.
I'd be happy to purchase said receipt from you for 100 million dollars in the hope that a greater fool comes along and pays me 150 million for it.
However, with an NFT, there's no maintenance cost, it's always the same, it's pristine. I can do whatever I want with it, shrink it for socks, grow it to put on a blimp, make cakes, whatever.
For the first time I can see why people spend millions of dollars on hashes of pictures of randomly generated monkeys.
The GS used a 65816 CPU, and the Apple 1 and 8 bit Apple 2 computers used 6502 and 65C02 CPU chips.
A 65802 can be installed into the 8 bit computers, with the 64K address space limitation imposed by the hardware.
A bit of digging can get one an Apple 8 but computer for a few hundred bucks, sometimes cheaper, depending.
I got my //e Platinum a decade ago for $150'ish from Apple Rescue of Denver. At that time, it came with one disk drive, Super Serial card, and the 128K / 80 column display card.
Anyone interested in these machines could skip getting a disk drive, though using floppies a few times is fun, and go for a emulation card. I do recommend the CFFA 3000 card, if available. Those can take disk images right from an ordinary USB flash drive.
Edit: Photo NFT wouldn't sell for more. It's entirely different realm.
I’d like that on my own tweets, to start.
Claim of ownership is overrated.
It's just a record on a blockchain.
It is trivial to fork said blockchain, and have a conflicting claim setup on the fork.
It’s harder to fork the Ethereum blockchain in the same sense that it’s hard to convince people to accept factorial bucks over old fashioned USD.
FYI I'm not a huge crypto person, I don't know if the above is trustworthy, but it's an example of what you could do. God's knows if it works or collapses in a fire, but it's fun to watch.
It's not about having access to content, but about owning the "thing". You might buy a painting and post high resolution scans of it: good enough for people to make very convincing copies. But it doesn't affect the ownership of the thing.
NFT is not so much the content, but a record of ownership on the blockchain. And for digital content, that "doesn't make sense" outside of digital realm, it's a very natural tool to produce ability to own something digital.
4 million Tether. Do these NFT valuations ever touch real dollars?
Because it's a unique, historically significant artefact?
Because you can afford to, it hurts literally no one, and it will make you happy?