Business Insider / Hannah Roberts
The Apple II.
It turns out that Prague is home to the biggest private exhibition of Apple’s products in the world.
In the heart of the Czech Republic capital city’s Old Town, the Apple Museum takes you through 41 years of the company’s fascinating history.
As well as displaying almost every Apple product ever made, the museum is a tribute to the California company’s late cofounder, Steve Jobs. Portraits of Jobs cover the museum’s walls and his quotes are everywhere.
Here are some photos from its most impressive displays (shot on an iPhone 6 Plus)↓↓↓
The museum is in the centre of Prague’s old town.
Its walls are full of Steve Jobs quotes — even on the outside.
This quote was from a speech Jobs gave to Stanford graduates in at a graduation ceremony in 2005:
“Stay Hungry. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
Entry to the museum costs around £7.50 / $9.50 / €9 (depending on the exchange rate at the time) per adult.
One of the first things you see is a portrait of Steve Jobs made from the components of six iMac G3s — a line of Apple computers from 1998-2003.
The museum takes you through a physical timeline of Apple’s history as a company and its products. It was founded on April 1, 1976 by Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.
Wayne, who after just 12 days as a founder sold his shares to Wozniak for $800 and had his name removed from the company, is not pictured in the collage.
Markulla invested the first $250,000 — the cheque he gave to Jobs is pictured in the collage — of venture capital money into Apple, its first proper funding.
Wozniak and Jobs met whilst working for Hewlett-Packard in 1971. Wozniack was still in college and Jobs was still in high school.
In 1977, the two Steves moved out of the Jobs’ family garage to the company’s first official corporate address, 20863 Stevens Creek Blvd., (Building 3, Suite C) in Cupertino, California. Apple still owns this office.
Two early Apple employees, Bob Martinengo and Mark Johnson, spoke to Business Insider about what it was like working with the two Steves back in the days when nobody knew what Apple was.
Both Jobs and Wozinak went to Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, where Apple is headquartered.
Over 40 years of Apple’s products are pictured chronologically on a wall.
Apple’s first computer, a naked circuit board called Apple 1 released in 1976, is the first product on display. Hand-built by Jobs and Wozniak, it was sold without a casing, power supply, keyboard, or monitor. Wozniak insisted its initial price be $666.66 because he reportedly liked triple digit numbers.
Only 200 Apple 1 computers were made. But an auction house, which listed an original Apple 1 computer back in 2015, said only a quarter still exist.
Sources: Christies, NWODB.
And this is a giant version of the MOS 6502, the microprocessor used in the Apple I.
When Apple was preparing to announce the Apple II in 1977, its VP of marketing at the time, Mike Markkula, sent a letter persuading dealers to stock and sell the company’s second product. The letter, which placed great emphasis on how much Apple had spent on direct advertising for the Apple II, shows just how far back Apple’s marketing efforts went.
The letter mentioned the fact that the Apple II required no assembly by the customer and could be “up and running in … minutes, not hours.”
And here it is — the fully assembled Apple II, released on April 16, 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco, California. It went on sale for up to $2,638, that’s about $10,000 in today’s value, and it was a huge success. Sales of the Apple II remained a significant part of revenue for the company well into the late 1980s.
It was also available as a circuit board only, without a keyboard, power supply, or case; the top computer lifts off with little effort.
This image from 1978 (not from the museum) shows the crew on the Apple II team, with the product in the background on a set of racks. It was taken was “because it was the first time that we tested, assembled and shipped 57 units in one work week. A big accomplishment back then for the team,” an early employee told Business Insider.
Two early Apple employees, Bob Martinengo and Mark Johnson, passed on the photo to Business Insider. Johnson told us it was taken on a Friday, “We were waiting for UPS to pick up the 57 Apple II computers that were completed,” he said.
The Apple II was successful in large part because it ran an app called VisiCalc, the first ever electronic spreadsheet that propelled the computer ahead of market leaders. With VisiCalc, Apple could sell the Apple II to the business customer.
Business Insider spoke to the inventors of VisiCalc, Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, and made this video.
And it had superior colour graphics relative to anything else at the time, which prompted Jobs to add colours to the Apple logo in 1977. Early Apple employee Johnson told Business Insider that jobs “commissioned a local shop to create an embroidered patch to commemorate the new corporate logo” and he gave a patch to each employee at the time.
The early Apple manager Gene Carter created the embroidered Apple logo in 1978.
The Apple III, released on May 19, 1980, was also displayed in the museum. A business-focused computer, it was supposed to compete with the growing threat of IBM and Microsoft. But it was largely considered Apple’s first failure, thousands were recalled, but even after relaunching a new model in 1983, it was eventually abandoned.
Much has been written about why it failed so spectacularly but in sum, its design faults severely damaged Apple’s reputation. The Apple III was the first Apple computer not designed by Wozniak.
Despite the Apple III’s failure, on December 12, 1980 Apple launched its IPO on NASDAQ. Selling 4.6 million shares at $22 per share, it created about 300 millionaires. Jobs made $217 million dollars alone. Markkula was the second-largest shareholder, followed by Wozniak.
Source: EDN.
In 1983 Apple released the next-generation Lisa computer with a graphical user interface (like the kind we use today) to much fanfare but disastrous sales — it was too expensive and didn’t have enough software support.
This photo is not from the museum.
Source: History of Apple in photos, Business Insider.
In the same year, Apple launched its first Macintosh and Apple got a new CEO, John Sculley. Sculley was serving as Pepsi’s youngest-ever CEO, but Jobs managed to bring him to Apple with the now-legendary pitch: “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
Source: 32 photos of Apple’s early days before it ruled the world.
The Macintosh had strong sales, but not enough to break IBM’s dominance. This led to a lot of friction between Jobs — the head of the Macintosh group who liked doing things his own way — and Sculley, who wanted stricter oversight on future products in the light of the Lisa disaster and disappointment of the Macintosh.
Source: 32 photos of Apple’s early days before it ruled the world.
Things came to a head in 1985 when Jobs tried to stage a coup and oust Sculley — but Apple’s board of directors took Sculley’s side and removed Jobs from his managerial duties. A furious Jobs quit and went on to found NeXT, a computer company making advanced workstations where he had total control.
Source: 32 photos of Apple’s early days before it ruled the world.
The museum plots Apple’s share price between the year Jobs first left Apple (1985) and the year Apple decided to purchase Jobs’ NeXT Computer (1997) on this feature. During that time Apple was losing to IBM and Microsoft.
Apple bought NeXT Computer for $429 million in February 1997.
To reintroduce Jobs to Apple fans, then-CEO Gil Amelio hosted a keynote which concluded with the unveiling of the Twentieth Anniversary Mac (TAM), pictured here in the museum. Jobs got a standing ovation. One of the very first things he did after replacing Amelio as CEO was kill the TAM — a product costing $7,499 which he reportedly thought was a symbol of Apple’s out-of-control excess and lack of focus.
If you paid the $7,499 for the Twentieth Anniversary Mac, Apple would hand-deliver it via limo and set it up for you, in a full-on concierge experience.
The very first iMac was released a mere five months after the TAM was fully taken off the market in 1998. And the rest, as they say, is history.
1997 would also see the introduction of Apple’s famous “Think Different” ad campaign celebrating famous artists, scientists, and musicians. The museum makes a spectacle of this campaign …
… and has a wall dedicated to portraits of the artists celebrated in the campaign.
Pretty much every computer in Apple’s history is on display at the museum. Here’s the “Mac G3 All in one,” which was sometimes nicknamed the “Molar Mac” because of its tooth-like shape.
And here’s the PowerBook G3. At the time of its introduction, it was advertised as the fastest notebook computer available.
The PowerMac Family 1999-2001.
The iBook Family, 1999-2006.
The evolution of the iMac is impressive …
… 2002-2012.
This photo of the original iPod brings on pure nostalgia. Jobs introduced the first ever iPod in 2001 with the advertising slogan “Say hello to iPod. 1,000 songs in your pocket.”
The Apple Store didn’t exist at the time, so the device was only helpful if you had loaded all of your CDs onto your computer.
A history of iPods through time.
Business Insider looked back at the evolution of the iPod in 2013, 12 years after its launch.
And here’s the Apple product that really changed the world. This iPhone prototype from 2007 is also on display in the museum. The product’s design and emphasis on a touchscreen was unprecedented at the time. Jobs said that he was going to fire anyone who let the iPhone leak out before it launched.
A prototype of the first device was almost lost on a plane, according to former Apple executive and Nest founder Tony Fadell.
It also displayed a history of iPhone models through time.
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