Apple's original computer

[alexora]

While most are spending their time discussing Windows 11, this is the latest news from the Mac side of the street:

Apple's original computer fetches $400,000 at US auction



An original Apple computer built by firm co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in 1976 has fetched $400,000 (£294,990) at auction in the US.

The rare Hawaiian koa wood-cased Apple-1 - still functioning - is one of only 200 made and sold in kit form.

The computer has only had two owners, a college professor and his student to whom he sold the machine for $650, said John Moran Auctioneers in California.

The sale included user manuals and Apple software on two cassette tapes.

"This is kind of the holy grail for vintage electronics and computer tech collectors," Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen told the Los Angeles Times ahead of Tuesday's auction in the city of Monrovia, near Los Angeles.

"That really makes it exciting for a lot of people."

The koa wood case of the auctioned model was added by a pioneering early computer retailer, ByteShop, in California, which took delivery of around 50 of the Apple-1 machines.

Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple on 1 April 1976 in a garage in California.

To help finance the Apple 1 production, Jobs sold his VW Microbus, while Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500.

In 1976, the machines were sold for $666.66, reportedly because Wozniak liked repeating numbers.

It is believed there are around 20 such computers in the world still capable of functioning.

The auctioned machine is not the highest-grossing Apple-1 computer - that distinction belongs to a working version that sold for $905,000 at a Bonhams auction in New York in 2014.

Source:

http://bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59222749

[SynchroDub]

^^^^^I wonder if one day the old Unibody Macbook Pros will still have the same value.
I'm seeing many people still buying/selling 2008 and 2011 models on a regular basis.

[alexora]

Originally Posted by SynchroDub

^^^^^I wonder if one day the old Unibody Macbook Pros will still have the same value.
I'm seeing many people still buying/selling 2008 and 2011 models on a regular basis.

Probably not: many more units were produced of those machines than the Apple 1.

However any Apple product (be it a Mac computer and its peripherals, an iPod, or iPhone) remains a collectable object of interest to many people, so will always have an intrinsic added value if compared to its generic PC counterparts.

[alexora]

Originally Posted by alexora

any Apple product (be it a Mac computer and its peripherals, an iPod, or iPhone) remains a collectable object of interest to many people, so will always have an intrinsic added value if compared to its generic PC counterparts.

I mean, who would turn an old Dell into something like this...?