Fast Company just dropped a massive oral history of Apple's founding

Fast Company global technology editor Harry McCracken has published a comprehensive oral history of Apple's earliest days, which includes interviews with cofounders Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne alongside the company's first employees. The publication coincides with the 50th anniversary of the April 1, 1976 partnership that formed Apple Computer Company.

I have been an Apple fanboy since I got my Apple IIGS in 1986. I only switched to DOS and Windows for a few years to get more games, but I switched back to Apple in 2000. The early days of the company fascinate me. Reading about the exact moments these hardware pioneers decided to build their own machines is exactly what I want with my morning coffee. Please, if you were an apple fan, click the link and read the full interview. It's fantastic.

The interviews cover the era long before the Macintosh or even the Apple-1. McCracken spoke with a large roster of early figures. The interview list includes Mike Markkula, the Intel retiree whose funding turned the startup into a real business. It also includes Chris Espinosa, who joined the company as a teenager and still works there today.

Bicycles and flashing lights

Bill Fernandez was Apple's first full-time employee. He met Steve Jobs in the eighth grade at Cupertino Junior High School in 1968. Fernandez got Jobs interested in electronics. The two of them would ride bicycles to each other's houses to work on trivial projects in their garages. They built buzzers, sirens, and flashing lights.

Fernandez also lived across the street from Wozniak's father. Jerry Wozniak was an engineer at Lockheed, and Fernandez would go over to ask him questions about electronics. Steve Wozniak was four years older than Fernandez, so they did not interact socially until high school.

Wozniak's obsession with hardware started early. He told his father he was going to own a computer someday. His father warned him that a computer cost as much as a house. Wozniak simply replied that he would live in an apartment. He was determined to have a computer if it was physically possible.

A text adventure from 1980

McCracken is the right journalist to compile this history. He was part of the early microcomputer boom himself. Around 1980, a 16-year-old McCracken developed a text adventure game called Arctic Adventure for the TRS-80. He was inspired by Scott Adams, a pioneer in the adventure game genre. McCracken actually went back recently to debug his old code and make the game playable in a modern web browser.

That same era saw Apple cement its place in video game history. The Apple II launched in 1977 and quickly became a foundational platform for developers. It hosted the early days of role-playing and adventure games. Titles like Oregon Trail, Ultima, Karateka, and Prince of Persia all found a massive player base on the hardware. It was the machine that proved home computers could be viable gaming platforms.

2.5 billion active devices

Apple currently has 2.5 billion devices in active use around the world. The contrast between that number and the 1970s hobbyist scene is wild. The early days were driven by the Homebrew Computer Club and a small community of technologists sharing ideas.

McCracken also interviewed Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. They created VisiCalc, the spreadsheet software that gave the Apple II its first real killer app for business users. It shows how a few kids with soldering irons accidentally changed the trajectory of consumer electronics. You can read the full oral history over at Fast Company.