Woz had already begun thinking about the next version of the
Woz had already begun thinking about the next version of the machine, so
they started calling their current model the Apple I. Jobs and Woz would
drive up and down Camino Real trying to get the electronics stores to sell it.
In addition to the fifty sold by the Byte Shop and almost fifty sold to friends,
they were building another hundred for retail outlets. Not surprisingly, they
had contradictory impulses: Wozniak wanted to sell them for about what it
cost to build them, but Jobs wanted to make a serious profit. Jobs prevailed.
He picked a retail price that was about three times what it cost to build the
boards and a 33% markup over the $500 wholesale price that Terrell and
other stores paid. The result was $666.66. “I was always into repeating digits,”
Wozniak said. “The phone number for my dial-a-joke service was 255-6666.”
Neither of them knew that in the Book of Revelation 666 symbolized the
“number of the beast,” but they soon were faced with complaints, especially
after 666 was featured in that year’s hit movie, The Omen. (In 2010 one of
the original Apple I computers was sold at auction by Christie’s for $213,000.)
The first feature story on the new machine appeared in the July 1976 issue of
Interface, a now-defunct hobbyist magazine. Jobs and friends were still making
them by hand in his house, but the article referred to him as the director of
marketing and “a former private consultant to Atari.” It made Apple sound like
a real company. “Steve communicates with many of the computer clubs to
keep his finger on the heartbeat of this young industry,” the article reported,
and it quoted him explaining, “If we can rap
about their needs, feelings and motivations,
