HN Reader

I worked at a place that tested software releases on a VM of every supported operating system, including OS X. We didn't have any Apple hardware, because no one wanted to deal with that, but someone had brought in the chassis of an old Apple computer and the host computer was inside it. We didn't run it by any lawyers or anything, but as far as we could tell, running OS X inside a computer that had all of its guts replaced was entirely within the license requirements.

This is not an original copy of the advertisement. This is typeset horribly from the original text of the ad, probably.

Giveaways are brutal/ill placed line breaks, zero quotes being curly ones (single and double), -- instead of a en/em dash, missing hypenation or existing one that does not align with typesetting "dis- play", etc., etc.

Why not use an image of the original instead? [1]

Jobs would have never signed off on a typographic eyesore like this. :]

[1] https://www.alamy.com/stock-image-an-advertisement-for-the-a...

Haha, excellent timing:

I opened HN just now because:

1. I got tired of waiting 2h for my app to get notarized because

2. I can't sell it on the AppStore in the EU... because

3. the AppStore Connect page gets stuck at their DSA compliance form (it's been 10 days).

And, to add insult to injury, the whole thing could be a PWA, without any compromises in the UX whatsoever.

I misread the title, but I still posted this comment as an example of confirmation bias* in the orange book for posteriority. Time to step away from the computer!

* (sunk cost fallacy)

The full sentence:

> And since our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal cost, you won't be continually paying for access to this growing software library.

The text was mangeled by some OCR-software. This ad can be found as image on Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_1_Advertisemen...

I was a 14 year old digital electronics hobbyist at that time. At $666 it could just as well have been $1 million. The most I could possibly afford at the time was about $50. For me, personal computing didn't become truly affordable until the Commodore 64 came along in the 80s, and by that point the Apple II was about 4x more expensive. The Apple computers were revolutionary, but to me they have never been affordable.

A lot of corporate "philosophies" are actually just business models. There have been times between then and now they charged for the OS. They do charge for other software. But largely it's been a good business model for them.

Breadboard area?

That's a super cool! I had no idea the Apple I had such a hobbyist-centric inclusion. I wonder what people did with it.

Heard to believe that all this (product and ad) was by kids barely out of teenage.

Not related at all: oh my, chez.com still exists? That's my very first website I did in 2000: http://w2000.chez.com/

This anecdote from history feels timely given the recent shift of Apple’s iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) from being bundled with Macs to being a freemium subscription.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/28/apple-updates-keynote-n...

I first saw an Apple I at a Maths Camp in late 1976. It was from the first batch to arrive in Australia. We were all enthralled. We were slightly less enthralled waiting for the floating point libraries to load from cassette tape.

Earlier that year I'd been on a school excursion to Lismore "to see the computer". Richmond River High had got themselves a computer. It was a WANG the size of a washing machine, with a separate mark-sense card reader and a separate RF adapter which connected to a big black and white TV. It was new by the way.

The rate of advance from the WANG to the Apple I was incredible. I'm still intoxicated by it.

What's up with all of the weird typos, such as:

"APPLE Computer Compagny"

"Palo Atlt"

I appreciate that the software and updates are made "free" to me, and it may be their right to disallow "downgrades" and have time-limited windows for redemption. However, as a developer for their platform, it is quite frustrating that these restrictions are at odds with industry practice to guarantee support for older OS versions than current. I cannot purchase a new iPhone, put iOS 18 on it, install my app, and test updating the iPhone to 26. This can have very real negative consequences for the very same shared customers of mine and Apple's.

The Apple I computers got bought back by Apple for the release of the Apple II. That's why they're so rare, Apple wanted them gone. They were not a user-friendly computer. It booted to the Monitor prompt, and did not include BASIC in the ROM.

There was discourse in the 1970s about whether software should all be free or if paid software would be better. Apple and Micro-Soft had different perspectives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

Green PCB Prototype #0 Apple I just sold yesterday for $2.75m

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843037

Per the address and contact number at bottom did the (415) area code formerly encompass Palo Alto?

What do any of these comments have to do with this advertisement for the Apple1?

Expandable to 65K. I don’t recall seeing SI units used in this context until by hard disk manufacturers years later.

At $666.66 this must have been a diabolic deal!

"Compared to switches and LED's, a video terminal can dis- play vast amounts of information simultaneously."

The beginning of the end.

Weird that they say "4 Ko RAM". That's how the French refer to bytes (octets) but everything else is in American units and dollars.

When I read this, I got a feeling of nostalgia. I do not know why. I was not even born when this was released.

Interesting to think that:

>If Microsoft never bailed Apple out, this wouldn't be on the front page today

>If Apple didn't have the greatest marketing team of all time and nail the ipod commercial, this wouldn't be on the front page today

>If Apple charged competitive prices for the iphone, rather than make it a veblen good, this wouldn't be on the front page today.

If I could only consider how much luck is involved in life, it might make setbacks feel better.

This was less a philosophy and more a competitive jab at Gates' "Open Letter to Hobbyists." Apple bundled BASIC for free because Woz wrote it himself, they had no software costs to recoup. Easy to be generous when your cofounder is the product.

> "you won't be continually paying for access to this growing software library."

Well... the apple used to be sweet and has turn pretty sour with the years...

I know people are rightly amazed by Woz’s engineering prowess, but it’s fascinating to see Steve’s fingerprints all of Apple I. Look at the product commitments and they’ll ring a bell:

- It’s all in one - Hassle free to set up - Something that usually doesn’t work (cassette board) now just works

They rightly identified the hobbyist market (I want to tinker) was actually the smaller market within a larger one. Seems obvious in hindsight. It wasn’t obvious then.

'crystal control timing' lol

great feature to have! :D

Makes me wonder who printed their motherboards early on