[HN Gopher] Operational Apple-1 Computer for sale [video]
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Operational Apple-1 Computer for sale [video]
Author : guiambros
Score : 66 points
Date : 2025-07-09 03:51 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| hopelite wrote:
| Does Apple have one of these? It seems they definitely have the
| money to buy it.
| nielsbot wrote:
| There was one on display at their original campus for a while
| but i believe it was donated to the Computer History Museum
| hcfman wrote:
| Maybe they spent it all on the Birkin bag?
| volemo wrote:
| If they do, I'm considering Severance a documentary.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Poor Woz perpetually haunted by Steve's shadow.
| bigyabai wrote:
| His departure from Apple feels like potent foreshadowing of the
| Apple Steve envisioned. I remember feeling confused hearing the
| Apple II story growing up, but as I mature in the industry I
| really empathize with Woz's lack of patience for bad
| administration. Feels likely that Steve coveted that attitude,
| maybe a bit too much for an impromptu business administrator.
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| Apple is unabashedly, outwardly, privacy focused. Just their
| law enforcement policies put them way ahead of their
| competitors. But this argument usually deteriorates to "they
| are all the same!" so I won't even bother making a case for
| them.
|
| What I will say that if Apple is what Woz feared. Then what's
| OpenAI and X/Grok and Google and Facebook (hell bench on
| world domination)? Unimaginable?
|
| _Chorus_ They are all the same! _Chorus_
|
| Apple helped create the black rectangle monolith appliances-
| in-a-smartphone plague. But they are not even in the top 10
| list of companies I'm currently worried about. They are far
| more embarrassing than dangerous as of late.
| cornholio wrote:
| I think you are attributing to choice what can easily be
| explained by contigent circumstances.
|
| Apple is privacy focused because it's a lifestyle and tech
| fashion company that competes with internet data brokers.
| Apple's instincts for monopoly power, locking down the
| market and choking life out of their complements is second
| to none.
|
| Given the opportunity, all successful tech CEOs are bred
| and selected to burn the world down if the result is
| aligned to their power goals.
| detourdog wrote:
| I don't see it as choking the life out of anything. They
| started in blank slate era of PCs. They grew as a compnay
| developing many human centric details for computing. They
| have a group of customers that like that approach and
| that is who they cater to. They just want to play in
| their own sandbox. The desire to control their own
| sandbox and customers is not aggressive. Their success
| with customers is a reaction to that. The fact that they
| keep some developers ideas at arms length is not
| aggressive. They support development with a different set
| of criteria than the mass market.
| vessenes wrote:
| It's both. Steve was who he was. Tim was a gay man in an
| era when the fbi would blackmail you over your choices.
| The product decisions and enterprise decisions aren't
| made in a vacuum.
| dvrp wrote:
| ...and Wozniak.
| mig39 wrote:
| Yeah, the video mentions both names. Whoever made the title
| didn't include Wozniak, but the video definitely does.
| tomhow wrote:
| We updated the title to credit both, thanks!
| dvrp wrote:
| That's awesome; making the world a better place one title
| diff at a time haha.
| allanrbo wrote:
| Handmade by Jobs, not Woz?
| st_goliath wrote:
| If you are interested in handmaking a replica, some enthusiasts
| have already replicated the PCB design and there is a zip archive
| with Gerber files floating around:
| https://www.applefritter.com/content/apple-1-replica-gerber-...
|
| From what it looks like, the difficulty shouldn't be in getting a
| board made or soldering them, but sourcing the parts. Other than
| the odd 74 series ICs, the design includes some (I think memory?)
| chips that are nowadays more difficult to find than the 6502 &
| 6520.
| Frenchgeek wrote:
| Not sure if it was already posted here (most likely), and it's
| for a C64 but: https://youtu.be/MG3j_6DBCIE
| amelius wrote:
| I bet you can run the entire thing in CircuitJS and it would
| still be faster than the original.
| Calwestjobs wrote:
| yeah, 0.003$ MCU can run it.
| justin66 wrote:
| Number crunching performance is definitely what people
| building Apple 1 replicas are aiming for.
| hcfman wrote:
| I'm kinda torn between the Birkin bag and this.
| belter wrote:
| Go with the bag, since there is no evidence to support these
| claims by Sotheby's
|
| Based on historical records, the evidence suggests that only
| less than 150 to 200 Apple-1 computers were ever made and the
| assembly team was Wozniak who did most technical assembly, with
| help from Daniel Kottke, Patty Jobs (Steve's sister), and
| occasional friends.
|
| Also....the actual video title is: "The Finest Operational
| Apple-1 Computer in Existence - Handmade by Steve Jobs - Is Now
| at Sotheby's" an even more wild claim. Then editorialized here
| to be called in the title of this submission: " Apple-1
| Computer, handmade by Jobs and Woz"
|
| The video has low credibility, and changing the title wont
| change that.
|
| Jobs role has always been reported as business/sales focused
| rather than hands-on assembly.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| _[Insert obligatory personal although almost meaningless
| anecdotes about seeing Woz 's castle-themed house when it was
| first built and almost running over SJ with my VW Westfalia.]_
|
| _[And literally almost physically colliding into Tim Cook in Los
| Altos where Garage Technology Ventures used to be.]_
|
| _[If you need someone important ran into accidentally, I guess
| that 's about my only natural talent.]_
| chiph wrote:
| Honestly, even if I had the money, I'd be too afraid to use it.
| I'd get one of the replica boards.
|
| Those electrolytic capacitors will eventually need replacing. At
| that point you have to ask yourself if the value will be
| diminished more by replacing them (with as close to a vintage cap
| as you can find) to keep it running, or by letting it become
| nonoperational.
| vessenes wrote:
| Cassandra, the woman in the video, is a super interesting person.
| She essentially created the 'nerd stuff' auction market at
| sothebys, including enigma machines, tons of space stuff, she
| managed the Feynman estate auction..
|
| I'd guess she is planning on making a market for this early Apple
| gear based on the video. Will the auction result pay for the
| video? Probably not, but they get to set the market price and be
| the auction house of record for this going forward, and that
| could be quite valuable.
| Calwestjobs wrote:
| I hate lies, i hate manipulations.
|
| Sothebys will be paid in multiples of what that video cost to
| make. How did you come up with opposite ? Most auction houses
| take 10- 30 % of price. So youre saying that this computer will
| cost less than 30k at final price ?
|
| Also, Apple Computer was founded in 1976. But there were
| already "home" / personal computers sold from other companies
| for half of decade already. Or you can say that Apple employees
| did not built Apple-1 computer with already available intel
| 8008 CPU. Apple employees at that time were not innovators,
| they were marketers and solder monkeys.
|
| Yes wikipedia is edited by public, and it is confusing on
| purpose. Apple has billions of dollars, so marketing department
| got paid to increase confusion on wikipedia articles for all
| apple products.
|
| By charting computer history on timeline, you can see Apple-1
| computer was nothing exceptional. It was just another random
| kit.
|
| Apples push to sell to gullible teachers was toxic marketing
| strategy, which worked. So peoples exposed to this brand of
| computers in schools had emotional attachment to this brand.
| Yes apple targeted children. Not in China, in USA.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I worked on the original Mac OS as a 3rd party developer and
| tester. One of my perks was getting the entire original developer
| and design team to sign the inside of my original Mac case with
| felt tip pens. I kind of forgot about it, and when getting my Mac
| serviced for some reason, the Mac selling computer store stole
| the case, the police reluctantly got involved, not understanding
| shit, and it was a whole "thing". The original signed case as
| never recovered.
| wglass wrote:
| Oh man. Both love and hate this video. It's so slick, which seems
| the opposite of the late 70s homebrew backer culture.
|
| The video is designed to appeal to nerd nostalgia. However it has
| problems right from the start when it emphasizes Jobs not Woz
| (the true nerd hero), including a stylized ascii art.
|
| According to the video, this item is exceptional because it's
| fully operational. However paradoxically that's because it's
| never been used. The video praises the owner who bought it and
| stuck it in a closet, never turning it on. It implicitly puts
| down the actual users who actually used the machine (burning the
| paint) and especially those who tinkered with and modifying the
| machine.
|
| As someone who grew up in the 80s hacking my Apple II+ doing
| everything from playing Lemonade Stand to building custom
| coprocessor boards, I salute those who actually used their Apple
| machines to the max, destroying the collector value.
| lloeki wrote:
| > it emphasizes Jobs not Woz (the true nerd hero), including a
| stylized ascii art.
|
| I rewatched it:
| https://youtu.be/XdBKuBhdZwg?si=nywGYWzsB5HmW2AB&t=184
|
| Woz appears first, then Jobs shortly, then the Apple logo.
| Arguably Woz's face even appears slightly longer because
| there's a short pause whereas Jobs just flies by to the Apple
| logo.
|
| Later there's both "Woz and Jobs holding Apple I".
|
| The video description explicitly calls out "The Steve Wozniak-
| designed computer".
|
| The by-name callouts in the video are:
|
| - "hand-built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak"
|
| - "in Steve Job's mom's garage."
|
| - Jobs acting as a salesman
|
| I'm not really sure how Jobs is emphasised at all.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| There's a certain type of nerd that just can't stand Jobs and
| seems to have a complex about the archetypes that Jobs and
| Woz represent.
| wglass wrote:
| Fair enough! Guilty of that attitude, no doubt. I note the
| corrections in the message above re emphasis on Woz/Jobs.
|
| I think mostly I was annoyed at the emphasis on how the
| computer is untouched and unused, which seemed the
| antithesis of the spirit of those early days.
|
| Having said all that, I really felt an urge to bid, though
| no doubt it's 10x what I can afford.
| omoikane wrote:
| > https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2025/history-of-scie...
|
| > Estimate: 400000-600000 USD
|
| > Current Bid: 350000 USD
|
| Apple 1 sold for $666.66 in 1976, which is ~$3766 today after
| inflation, so ~900x increase in value.
|
| For comparison, AAPL stock went public in 1980-12-12 at $22 per
| share. Adjusting for 5 splits, the initial IPO price was $0.10.
| It's at $210.86 today.
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