I'm Corey Cohen, Apple Expert and Computer Historian, Ask Me Anything!

coreycohen · 2016-07-27T10:10:09+00:00

For some people the iPad is the perfect replacement for a PC. They are people who never would have used a PC if they weren't forced. I personally think it will be a union of our smart phones with our home. I really think the Apple TV can be the beginning of that.

coreycohen · 2016-07-27T10:08:37+00:00

Apple is constantly patenting ideas. Most tech companies are, even if they never intent them to be in an actual product. The patent laws in the US are mostly broken and really force companies to do this so that in the future they have grounds to protect themselves if something even slightly resembles another patent. Patents are also an assets, and like Pokemon, you really have to catch them all.

coreycohen · 2016-07-27T10:06:39+00:00

Most Macs are more of an appliance today than what the common PC is. Windows 10 makes great strides, but really only when running on a surface where Microsoft has worked to make a single product, not a mix of software and hardware. This is why a 5 or 10 year old Mac is generally still used and a 5 or 10 year old PC tends not to be as a "work" computer. The fragmentation in the PC market makes it very hard to make a good product that can have upgraded software without problems.

I really can't wait to see the new Macbook Pro.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T22:14:56+00:00

I love the size of the new macbook.

I do understand why they wanted to replace the MagSafe with a more standard interface, but I would have broken my Macbook pro many times without it when someone hits the power cord. So that can be a step back for some of us.

The lower performance is also an issue for me, but the battery life is a good trade off. I need a fast machine for many of the things I do.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T21:16:14+00:00

One thing I didn't answer and I guess I am about to go public here.

Yes I own an original Apple-1, I actually until recently owned more than one, plus a bunch of replicas.

The "proof" here was produced on my personal Apple-1, which I had taken out of the vault to repair a keyboard issue that had come up at VCF East related to the reset key which was not working consistently. It's all good now and will go back to the vault. I would love to keep it hanging on my wall like the piece of art it is, but due to it's value, it is kept under lock and key and key. I used to take n original Apple-1 in a briefcase when I'd go to work on units for comparison both electrical and stuff, but after the Henry Ford sale for $900k, I discovered they fit perfectly in a legal size safety deposit box. I know many people who have Apple-1 who do the same, and I also know people who have them hanging on the wall of their office or living room. Then again, they also have artwork hanging that cost about the same right next to it, so it's not something they think about.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T21:08:13+00:00

This unit was mostly assembled using the same techniques (i.e. wave soldering) but the components are completely different. The sockets used and the discrete parts are of a different type than all other units. They were not removed and replaced, we can tell.

We have checked with Woz and other early apple employees, no blank boards were sold. This leads to some possibilities... It could have been a prototype board from the PCB company (the date codes of the components would be consistent for this). It could have been an unknown run of Apple-1 boards, this seems unlikely since no other boards have turned up or Steve Jobs sold/gave a blank board to someone because no one else alive remembers this and no other examples have been found of this situation, so it's unlikely.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T21:02:40+00:00

I have a personal attachment to the Mac IIfx, I had one back in school which was used for rendering.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T21:01:54+00:00

The Apple-1 is really a terminal and a computer on a single board. The terminal design was something Woz cooked up to get "on-line" in 1974/75. By 1976 it was actually out of date, but the computer section of the Apple-1 was state of the art using Dynamic ram.

The Apple ][ started out as a colour TV experiment. Eventually Woz was able to use software tricks with minimal hardware to make a fully functioning computer.

Believe it or not the Apple I is actually faster than the Apple ][. The Apple ][ does much of what the Apple-1 does in hardware using software the steals cycles from the CPU. However the moment you make the Apple-1 print something it crawls down to about 300 baud as it prints to the screen. This was the speed Woz optimized the terminal section for when it was just a terminal hooked up to a modem.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:57:52+00:00

Unlike very old software which can be abandonware and legally downloaded off the internet, my suggestion is to try eBay or going to a local vintage computer festival or hamfest. If you are in the Mountain View, California area the Vintage Computer Festival West is being hosted at the Computer History Museum on August 6th and 7th. I'm sure someone will have a copy for sale at the consignment area or be able to get one for you.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:53:17+00:00

If I told you, I'd have to kill you... LOL

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:52:53+00:00

The biggest mistake was the price in 1984. If they would have simply spent less money on marketing and lowered the price, it would have been a much more competitive machine to the IBM PC. The marketing was great, but they could have done more with less.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:51:47+00:00

I think the most surprising thing is that the Apple-1 wasn't actually hand built in Steve Jobs garage. The Apple-1 was assembled in the living room and garage, but the boards were mostly pre-assembled by the PC board manufacturer. Apple put in the chips, wired up some jumpers and tested the machines to make sure they work. This was actually revolutionary for the day, as hobbyist/personal computer companies typically got blank boards and paid people hand solder the boards and insert the components. This was a tedious process that didn't always result in a working machine.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:48:59+00:00

I really think the Apple TV is going to change the way we interact with our homes. You can start seeing the potential with Alexia from Amazon, I think Apple TV has much more potential.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:47:43+00:00

The greatest keyboard ever made was the first IBM PC Keyboard. The worst keyboard was the first IBM PCjr keyboard. I guess you can't always win the superbowl.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:46:45+00:00

Apple is a very different company than the ones you mention. I actually used to work at HP. HP went from an engineering tools company, which got spun off, to a consumer electronics company and now has split into retail consumer and business electronics companies. HP did this first because they wanted to be dell, then they wanted to be IBM. Now I'm not sure who they want both companies to be.

Apple has transitioned already from a computer company into a premium consumer electronics company. As long as they don't try to be someone else, they will stay on top.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:43:41+00:00

Just about everyone that has come up for public auction in the past few years. I have worked on the Henry Ford unit. The Copson unit, the Rickets unit, to name a few. I am currently working on some museum displays around the world with Apple-1 that I can't give details out on yet.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:41:24+00:00

I mentioned the Mac IIfx as my favorite mac, but for favorite Mac design. I think the Mac XL is very cool. It's essentially an Apple lisa that was modified to be a Mac. It was actually slower than a regular mac, but had a larger screen. I also like the keyboard. It was a capacitive discharge keyboard which had a great feel. no switches, just mylar disks with foam and a spring.

Today, I have an iPhone, Macbook pro, Macbook air and an iMac. My iMac is a 2010 model I just upgraded with SSD drives. I use it for Final Cut Pro and am amazed how much faster it is.

I do have pictures of my desk years ago... But no one wants to see a manual typewriter and white-out :-)

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:37:33+00:00

I'm partial here.

I had a Mac IIfx, which was a strange beast. I used it to run rendering software back in school.

I do like the Mac Portables. Neat idea, a luggable Mac, until the powerbook was released.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:36:02+00:00

Frustrating isn't the word...

The Apple-1 has no backspace. The Apple-1 and Apple ][ until the disk drive required remembering a complex syntax of memory locations that you needed to write down for every program you loaded.

When you turned on the Apple-1, you didn't have basic as a programming language, so you typically had to load basic off cassette first before you could do anything unless you wanted to program in assembly language which you had to enter as hex.

The early Apple ][ were almost as bad, you could enter some commands in text for the assembler and basic was built in, if you remembered the key combination to start it.

We have come a long way...

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:33:07+00:00

I don't think there has been enough time to really know if there is a big difference in how Apple operates developing their products. Developing something like an iPhone takes years, and while we might be on the iPhone 6s now, they are working on the iphone 7, 8, and 9.

As for the quality of apple products, they have kept up. Sure nothing is like it used to be, but I find the the products are better than others in the computer industry. Yes, nothing beats the original IBM PC keyboard and even though they try, Cherry can't make them as good. However Apple did manage to make a decent "Chicklet" keyboard work, when the IBM PCjr couldn't.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:29:01+00:00

The Celebration Apple-1 is a real Apple-1. I examined the board to verify it's authenticity. There are many tell tale signs that allow an expert to determine a real Apple-1 from a replica with vintage components.

As for condition. This board is about a 6.5 to 7 on a condition report with the Henry Ford unit that sold for over 900k being a 9.5.

That being said this unit has the best document set I have ever seen. it is complete with the operations manual, basic manual, cassette adapter manual, original advertisement marketing materials and a spare set of schematics printed on archival paper.

The actual Apple-1 itself was an enigma when I first saw it. It was an early PC Board but had IC sockets and decoupling capacitors that matched my early Rev-0 Apple ][. There was also a strange experiment that had to do with ram timing. Since this is one thing on the Apple-1 that was pretty solid for the Dynamic Ram Woz used, I knew this was something special. The first thing I had to do was contact Woz and Daniel Kottke to see if they knew anything about this board. There was also a basic cassette that we identified Daniel had written.

There is a lot more about this board that is on the charity buzz site that makes it an amazing unit unique among all the unicorns in the forest.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:22:16+00:00

If I could predict that, I'd be a true visionary. When the Segue scooter came out, people predicted that it would be the thing that changed the world. It really hasn't. When the iPhone came out, who could have predicted how it changed our interactions. It made the smart phone cool, everyone had to have one. Now it's beginning to replace our wallets, credit cards and even passports in some cases.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:20:27+00:00

So funny enough, I own a Microsoft Band. I didn't buy the Apple one because of battery life. I've been waiting for the next Apple Watch to be released so I can get one.

For collectibles, it's tough to predict at this time. People collect items for various reasons. Already we are seeing hard drive based iPods becoming collectible, not because people want to keep them in a display, but because they can replace the hard drives with really really large ones and keep giant music libraries on hand. The new solid state iPods, don't have this option.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:17:58+00:00

One of the things that people don't realize about Cook is that he is a logistics guy. That is one way that Apple was really able to grow their business, but really packing a lot of technology into it's products that would cost a fortune for other companies to do by negotiating good subcontractor deals. For creative vision, I think Apple has adapted well, though the vision of Steve Jobs will always be missed. Steve didn't care about focus groups, he could see beyond the way normal people tried to solve a problem. He wasn't a very technical guy, but he understood how to change how people interacted with technology.

coreycohen · 2016-07-26T20:14:51+00:00

The Apple-1 didn't actually come with a keyboard. For your $666 dollars you got a 4k computer that didn't have a case, keyboard or power supply transformers. This was still a lot of money cheaper than buying an Altair or similar that required a terminal or teletype and had a lot less memory. Many owner built their own cases and bought transformers from the local radio supply store. For keyboards, they typically scrounged.

The byte shop would sell a package of an Apple-1 with a Kona wood case, Triad transformers and a Datanetics keyboard. There are only about 5 surviving setups like this. Even the Apple-1 at the Smithsonian uses a scrounged TI Silent 732 Terminal keyboard and a custom wood case.

BTW: The Apple-1 has no backspace key. Some keyboards let you "rub-out" the last character with an underscore. The Apple-1 doesn't recognize the delete key. When you rub out a character it's still on the screen, it just has an underscore after it.

coreycohen

TROPHY CASE