9.69 million RMB! A collectible Apple 1 computer for sale, which Jobs helped make 45 years ago

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There is such a question on Zhihu:

Do electronic products depreciate faster?

In fact, the so-called "depreciation" is related to many factors, such as technological development, brand planning for products, the value of the product itself and market feedback.

Taking mobile phones as an example, three years seems to be the replacement cycle that many people agree on.

According to the "2019 Q3 Smartphone Industry Quarterly Data Research Report" released by Aurora Big Data, the largest proportion of domestic smartphone users has a replacement cycle of 2-3 years, accounting for 29.7%.

Just yesterday, Xiaomi officially released a big data statistical result: Xiaomi 6 users’ first choice for changing phones is Xiaomi 10 (the data statistics date is from the release of Xiaomi 6 to December 31, 2020).

But as the saying goes, "scarcity makes things valuable." If an electronic product developed decades ago is put on the market today, the price tag will be hundreds or thousands of times higher.

According to a report from the foreign news website 9to5Mac, an antique Apple 1 computer was recently sold on the trading platform eBay with a price tag of up to 1.5 million US dollars (equivalent to approximately 9.69 million RMB)!

Why sell at such a high price?

In fact, it is not uncommon for classic Apple computers to appear on eBay, but this time the Apple 1 computer was sold at an even more unacceptable price than ever before - you know, the price of Apple I in that year was $666.66.

In fact, the main reason is that the computer was built by Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

This computer was one of the first 50 manufactured and is one of six shipped with an original KOA wooden box from Byte Shop and an unmodified NTI motherboard.

The seller said he got this Apple I in Montreal, Canada in early 1978.

On the eBay product description page, the seller mentioned the following:

• All functions are good and work properly

• Not a replica

• Museums/collectors/enthusiasts are waiting for its sale

• Only the video and keyboard ports were replaced, and the case was recently reinforced

Overall, this is rare among computers produced in the same batch.

For $1.5 million, you can buy not only a computer, but also:

• Electronic copies of original owner's manual, schematics, basic instruction manual, tape interface and guides.

• The original components of the computer: software including basic languages, games, low and high memory tests, 30th anniversary video, etc.

The seller said:

Apple I expert Corey Cohen verified the system's authenticity at the Vintage Computer Festival West in August 2019, where it was run more than six hours a day.

It is worth mentioning that the seller also prepared a "Certificate of Authenticity" issued by Achim Baque, head of the Apple-1 Registry, for buyers to check (link: https://www.apple1registry.com/en/79.html).

About Apple 1

Looking back at the history of Apple 1, we will find a name closely related to it - Steve Wozniak.

Steve Wozniak was born in San Jose, California, USA in 1950. His father was an engineer working in the missile department of Lockheed Corporation.

Steve Wozniak has been interested in electronics since he was a child:

• built a transistor-based calculator at age 13;

• At the age of 15, he successfully assembled a binary adder and subtractor;

• At the age of 18, he was introduced by his electronics teacher to work at Sylvania Computer Company and learn the FORTRAN programming language.

• At the age of 19, he and Bill Fernandez, who later became Apple's No. 1 employee, built a computer called "Cream Soda", which used a random access memory chip that was relatively special at the time.

Of course, Steve Wozniak is best known for founding Apple and creating its original line of computers.

In fact, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs met through Bill Fernandez and once sold a machine called the "Blue Box" that illegally hacked into the phone system.

In March 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, then engineers at HP, built the Apple-1 computer from scratch.

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According to an autobiography of Steve Wozniak called iWoz, he sold his HP-65 calculator to buy the Apple 1 motherboard for $500, while Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen van for $750—the two needed $1,000 to find a computer company to print the circuit board.

On April 1, 1976, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Ronald G. Wayne and others founded Apple Computer, starting their journey of making history and changing the world.

In the 1970s, Apple I and Apple II were released one after another. By the end of 1976, Apple I had sold about 150 units, and the company's first-year revenue was nearly $80,000. Apple II became the best-selling personal computer in the 1970s and early 1980s.

However, when they were designing Apple II, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs began to have disputes, and their relationship deteriorated - in Steve Wozniak's view, Apple II should have stronger expansion capabilities and retain more slots.

In 1981, Steve Wozniak, who had just obtained his pilot's license, had an accident while flying a plane and was subsequently in a state of amnesia.

After his memory gradually recovered, Steve Wozniak began to slowly fade out of Apple, applied to the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) in 1987.

In fact, as Apple's oldest product, Apple 1 has been sold at sky-high prices many times. In 2014, the Henry Ford Museum in the United States purchased an Apple 1 for US$905,000.

This time, facing such a sky-high price, which buyer will buy it?