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. :]
Thanks for pointing that out. The real ad appeared in the computer magazine Interface Age, September 1976 page 13, as can be seen in the Internet Archive. I think it's important for Hacker News to avoid fake/replica historical info so it doesn't end up like Reddit, where you can't trust anything.
Jobs might have had a good eye for typography but he seems to have had a blind spot when it came to grocers’ apostrophes. :)
nunez20 hours ago
It descended into glitch-ass slop towards the end, which I found funny. Very telling of an LLM/VLM since OCR would print straight garbage if it can't map a glyph to text.
This is actually a great example of why domain knowledge is important.
The printed ad is much easier to read despite the text being more densely-packed. This is because the LLM extraction stripped formatting (including the bolded and italicized text that directs readers towards interesting factoids) and used a system font and size (which is inconsistent and, often times, harder to read in column form) while the ad used a print appropriate serif that is consistent and easy to read on paper.
I'd like to think that this is graphic design 101, but when LLMs are threatening creative jobs en masse...not great.
But not to worry! All of the LLMs will nail this tomorrow after the ad's been RLHF'ed appropriately. minitruth doesn't sleep!
jibal1 day ago
Yes. Numerous typos were introduced, Even misspelling "Palo Alto".
dlcarrier2 days ago
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.
rendaw1 day ago
IANAL but I think you'd be fine as long as you placed your NUC on a Mac Mini or maybe a closed Macbook if your hardware has a larger footprint.
> use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at any one time.
Note that you do have to be careful not to stack multiple Macbooks when you do this.
NaN years ago
undefined
bryogenic2 days ago
The Mac of Theseus
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
rpastuszak2 days ago
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!
> 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.
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
vertnerd1 day ago
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.
NaN years ago
undefined
Perenti2 days ago
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.
divbzero2 days ago
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.
Not related at all: oh my, chez.com still exists? That's my very first website I did in 2000: http://w2000.chez.com/
NaN years ago
undefined
lisper2 days ago
What do any of these comments have to do with this advertisement for the Apple1?
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
TheJoeMan2 days ago
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.
aaronbrethorst2 days ago
What's up with all of the weird typos, such as:
"APPLE Computer Compagny"
"Palo Atlt"
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
Dwedit1 day ago
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.
MaxPock2 days ago
Heard to believe that all this (product and ad) was by kids barely out of teenage.
gignico2 days ago
At $666.66 this must have been a diabolic deal!
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
NaN years ago
undefined
wolvoleo1 day ago
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.
NaN years ago
undefined
mrcwinn2 days ago
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.
yashasolutions2 days ago
> "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...
PlatoIsADisease2 days ago
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.
NaN years ago
undefined
srinath6931 day ago
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.
NaN years ago
undefined
subtlesoftware2 days ago
"Compared to switches and LED's, a video terminal can dis- play vast amounts of information simultaneously."
The beginning of the end.
NaN years ago
undefined
dieselgate1 day ago
Per the address and contact number at bottom did the (415) area code formerly encompass Palo Alto?
ghc1 day ago
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.
lasgawe1 day ago
When I read this, I got a feeling of nostalgia. I do not know why. I was not even born when this was released.
qingcharles2 days ago
Green PCB Prototype #0 Apple I just sold yesterday for $2.75m
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...
Thanks for pointing that out. The real ad appeared in the computer magazine Interface Age, September 1976 page 13, as can be seen in the Internet Archive. I think it's important for Hacker News to avoid fake/replica historical info so it doesn't end up like Reddit, where you can't trust anything.
https://archive.org/details/InterfaceAge197609/page/12/mode/...
undefined
Jobs might have had a good eye for typography but he seems to have had a blind spot when it came to grocers’ apostrophes. :)
It descended into glitch-ass slop towards the end, which I found funny. Very telling of an LLM/VLM since OCR would print straight garbage if it can't map a glyph to text.
This is actually a great example of why domain knowledge is important.
The printed ad is much easier to read despite the text being more densely-packed. This is because the LLM extraction stripped formatting (including the bolded and italicized text that directs readers towards interesting factoids) and used a system font and size (which is inconsistent and, often times, harder to read in column form) while the ad used a print appropriate serif that is consistent and easy to read on paper.
I'd like to think that this is graphic design 101, but when LLMs are threatening creative jobs en masse...not great.
But not to worry! All of the LLMs will nail this tomorrow after the ad's been RLHF'ed appropriately. minitruth doesn't sleep!
Yes. Numerous typos were introduced, Even misspelling "Palo Alto".
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.
IANAL but I think you'd be fine as long as you placed your NUC on a Mac Mini or maybe a closed Macbook if your hardware has a larger footprint.
> use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at any one time.
Note that you do have to be careful not to stack multiple Macbooks when you do this.
undefined
The Mac of Theseus
undefined
undefined
undefined
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)
undefined
undefined
undefined
undefined
undefined
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...
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.
undefined
undefined
undefined
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.
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
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.
undefined
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.
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...
Not related at all: oh my, chez.com still exists? That's my very first website I did in 2000: http://w2000.chez.com/
undefined
What do any of these comments have to do with this advertisement for the Apple1?
undefined
undefined
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.
What's up with all of the weird typos, such as:
"APPLE Computer Compagny"
"Palo Atlt"
undefined
undefined
undefined
undefined
undefined
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.
Heard to believe that all this (product and ad) was by kids barely out of teenage.
At $666.66 this must have been a diabolic deal!
undefined
undefined
undefined
undefined
undefined
undefined
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.
undefined
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.
> "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...
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.
undefined
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.
undefined
"Compared to switches and LED's, a video terminal can dis- play vast amounts of information simultaneously."
The beginning of the end.
undefined
Per the address and contact number at bottom did the (415) area code formerly encompass Palo Alto?
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.
When I read this, I got a feeling of nostalgia. I do not know why. I was not even born when this was released.
Green PCB Prototype #0 Apple I just sold yesterday for $2.75m
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843037
Expandable to 65K. I don’t recall seeing SI units used in this context until by hard disk manufacturers years later.
undefined
https://archive.is/dJvc
Makes me wonder who printed their motherboards early on
'crystal control timing' lol
great feature to have! :D