When Steve Wozniak designed the Apple II – released in June 1977 – he launched a wave of home computers similar to home devices for the average person. For the 45th anniversary of this monumentally important machine, we talked to Wozniak about its impact – and he had a lot to say.
The key to Apple’s early success
In 2022, Apple is one of the largest, most successful companies in the world. It’s a huge achievement, and it all started back in 1976 when Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer, Inc. While the company released its first product (Apple I) in 1976, it reached a very limited audience as a machine for hobbyists. In contrast, the 1977 Apple II tended to be mainstream from the start, and its popularity made Apple an extremely successful company by the standards of the time.
In that regard, we asked Wozniak if he thought there was anything special about the original Apple II design that laid the groundwork for Apple’s current success. (He answered our questions via email, and his answers are easily edited for presentation.)
“The Apple II was years ahead of the others,” Wozniak replied, referring to other personal computers in development at the time. “Actually, I designed and made for myself a small computer 5 years earlier that was like what everyone else was trying to do – basically a processor with a bus, switches and lights [for an] interface. ”
Until 1976, small computers were mostly sold among tech-savvy electronics enthusiasts who knew how to make and use them, Woz notes. But his Apple II relied on a more customized setting: a typewriter-style QWERTY keyboard as an input device, a CRT monitor, or a TV as an output device, and it comes with a built-in BASIC programming language. As soon as you turn it on if it’s on, you can start using your computer right away.
“The Apple II was such an improvement that it was our only successful product – which made a lot of money for Apple – for the first 10 years of the company,” says Wozniak, referring to the difficult era of the Apple III (1980), the Apple Lisa. 1983) and the Macintosh (1984) all struggled in the marketplace. “Apple II gave business leaders a platform to create other hit products in the end, after many failures.”
The impact of video games on the Apple II
During our interview, Woz highlighted the impact that early video games had on his Apple II design and how that impact translated into unique Apple II features such as cheap color graphics and the inclusion of two blades (rotating button controllers) for gaming game.
“Atari created the video arcade industry in Los Gatos, California,” he wrote. “These were fast-paced graphics games, starting with Pong (and a little while ago). They were black and white because the colors were more expensive and harder to create. These arcade games usually had 100 to 200 chips, with thousands of wires connected by skilled TV engineers to place elements of the game on the TV screen. You can see why the prototype of the game took most of the human year to develop – and only by skilled engineers. I know because I developed some arcade video games, including Breakout. ”
Color in arcade games was extremely rare in the 1970s, so the ability to create a color game on Apple II, programmed in software instead of logic chips, was a big deal, Wozniak says. “The nine-year-old could create a decent game (during that time) in one day using a simple programming language, BASIC, which is built into the Apple II. I made this version of BASIC with commands to set colors and draw horizontal and vertical lines. ”
The way Wozniak designed the Apple II to cheaply create color video signals is a matter of legend. Modern color video boards for the earlier Altair computer, such as Cromemco Dazzler, cost $ 350 (about $ 1,800 today) and used dozens of chips. Woz’s solution did not use additional cars and was built into the machine.
“To generate color for $ 0, I had to work away from the books and math that defined the color system at the time, the NTSC in the United States,” says Wozniak. “I was also qualified to be a TV engineer. It was an analog world and required precision parts with a lot of testing to get color on TV. Circles required a differential calculus for design only. I like to think outside the known methods and I realized in my head that just taking a digital number and transmitting it on TV in the right way would prove to be a color. ”
The ability of the Apple II to generate a color video signal was a great achievement and a recognizable feature of the product from the very beginning. He even defined marketing for the company itself. “Think about it, our first logo was in 6 colors,” says Wozniak, referring to the famous Apple logo with six colored stripes.
Is there anything you would do differently?
Over the past 45 years, Wozniak has given thousands of interviews about the Apple II, and it can be difficult to break new ground with interesting questions. So we asked Wozniak out of fun: If you could go back in time and change one thing about Apple II design, what would it be?
“I wouldn’t change anything,” he replied. “My advice to myself would be to rob a bank,” he said jokingly. “Then I’d have a few other options from the beginning, like lowercase.” (The Apple II platform only supported uppercase letters until the 1982 Apple IIe because of Woz’s original cost-saving design.)
Although Wozniak designed the Apple II car and architecture himself, the Apple II as a complete product was not a solo exhibition. For example, Rod Holt designed the power supply and Jerry Manock designed the Apple II plastic case. The role that Steve Jobs played in the development of Apple II often appears in historical reports, so we asked, “Would you have done something different if Steve Jobs had not been involved in Apple II?”
“Steve Jobs wasn’t involved, so I wouldn’t have done anything different,” Wozniak said at the outset, referring to the electronic design of the Apple II. But then Wozniak described Jobs ’essential role in bringing Wozniak’s computer into the hands of paying customers.
“Steve Jobs has turned computer design into a product that can be delivered,” says Wozniak. “He was great at business and marketing. I was very shy and had very few friends, and Steve Jobs respected my engineering skills, so he was my best technical friend. Others suggested I take the Apple II to the product with them or others, but I’m too loyal, and Jobs was the only one I would do it with. He turned my designs into money and fun 5 years before Apple II. ”
Understanding the Apple II today
Since so much time has passed since the launch of the Apple II in 1977, a new generation of Americans has grown up without direct exposure to the Apple II. So we asked Wozniak: Does it matter that people know about the Apple II in 2022?
“I’m not sure how important that is for the masses,” he replied. “A person interested in astronomy would look back on the big steps in that field. Those who are interested in the internal work of today’s computers would also look back. There is also a ‘retro’ market, as in other areas. ”
“Apple II is understandable,” he added. “That’s why early products get a lot of attention. One person can see the design in the Apple II. ”
We also wondered if there was something that the Apple II did well that modern computers do not do – something that we explore in more detail in another article. So we asked, “Is there anything we can learn from Apple II design that we forgot?”
“The pairing was a zero step,” Wozniak said. “If you include a board in slot 4, it was known as ‘4.’” He also mentioned the radically open nature of the Apple II, with no customer restrictions. “You, the user, controlled it yourself and owned it.”
45 years later, Wozniak is grateful for his success with Apple, which he didn’t do for the money: he wanted respect from his peers. “My intention was not to start an industry or a company,” he says. “It was that other digital engineers respected my engineering, looking at my designs and code. Honestly, I wanted to give this great computer to others. What matters to me is how great Apple has become, but also that I am an IEEE Fellow, where I am respected by other engineers. ”
As for the legacy of the Apple II, he is proud that it is still partly technical, inspiring the next generation of engineers. “It’s wonderful to see people creating Apple I and Apple II replicas today. Our future is with young people who take an early interest in computers and construction. ”
Happy birthday, Apple II!