The First Apple by Bob Luther

Author:Bob Luther [Luther, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Business & Management, vl-nfcompvg, Antiques & Collectibles, Hobbies & Home, Crafts, Computers & Technology, History, Crafts; Hobbies & Home
ISBN: 0989167712
Amazon: B00EGSF1MO
Publisher: MassMedia Press
Published: 2013-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

At this point, I mentioned that Joe Copson had purchased his Apple-1 from the Byte Shop and it had been shipped to him.

Paul - An interesting sideline to that, was that I actually did mail a computer to an individual from the Byte Shop. I think I might even have that photo, I’ll have to go back and see if I’ve got that, and see if that was his name. Because my lawyers wanted me to have proof of use of the mark Byte Shop. I shipped somebody a computer, and took a photograph of the box and label as proof of the Byte Shop mark. That’s how we registered our trademark.

I put that photograph on a piece of cardboard, and later somebody wanted it. It might have been when they were doing the Apple ][ Forever theme at the Moscone Center, when they launched the Apple ][c. I got a call from Jobs, and he wanted me to come down to the Mac building, and have an interview with me and Wozniak. The marketing people were putting together this big launch. They did a film on the old days. I lived right there in Saratoga, so I drove on down to Cupertino, and the three of us got together in this room. The most memorable thing for me from that meeting, was, you know, Steve had quite an ego. So at any rate, it was funny that in this meeting on tape, Steve Jobs actually admitted to me that if I hadn’t forced him into assembling and testing the Apple-1, that they would’ve never have made it. It wasn’t his idea, it was mine…and I was pushing him to do it. And of course Woz was right there. You know, you might not think of it at the time as being such a big deal. But I obviously had my own agenda. Here I was, the exclusive sales rep for the MITS Altair, and that was coming to me in a kit form and pieces, and I was desperately trying to get assembled and tested stuff.

My sales rep was calling on the Department of Water Resources in Sacramento, the ramp controller guys over there, and the transportation department. We’re looking for some serious microcomputer applications, serious computers were needed. And these guys kept sending us kits. So we had a little manufacturing operation going on in our demo room. Customers would come in, they’d buy something, and then all the sudden—they were a technician over at National Semiconductor, or something—now we’re putting them to work in the evenings.

As I said, the Byte Shops became hang-outs for people between Homebrew Club meetings. Well, this was the other thing that was going on. We had guys there actually doing the assembly because they were technicians, soldering stuff in the demo room and, you know, the whole thing. Things were being built, demonstrated there, and engineered there. Woz and Steve Jobs came down quite often to that environment, to get their hands on peripherals and stuff that we had that they didn’t.

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