Pre-Mac
1976 – 1983 · 9 devices
The computer «for the rest of us», the most famous ad in history, and Apple's most turbulent years — between Steve Jobs's departure and his return.
The story
Apple was born on April 1, 1976 — an unintentional April Fool's joke — when Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne formed a company to sell the Apple I, a bare motherboard hand-assembled by Wozniak. It cost $666.66 and had no keyboard, screen, or case: buyers had to add everything themselves. About two hundred were sold.
In 1977, with the arrival of investor Mike Markkula and $250,000, Apple was incorporated and launched the Apple II: one of the first mass-market personal computers, with color graphics, that would remain on sale for over a decade. Revenue grew from $174,000 in 1976 to one billion in 1982.
Not everything went smoothly: the Apple III of 1980 was the company's first major failure, and the expensive Lisa of 1983 — pioneering as it was with its graphical interface — never broke through. But the foundations for the Macintosh revolution had already been laid.