Apple II Bits

Earlier this month, Apple's founding contact was auctioned from the estate of Wade Saadi by Sotheby's. Its estimated value was in the range of $100,000 to $150,000 USD.

It went for $1,350,500 — almost ten times more than expected. For comparison, an actual Apple-1 computer went for $213,600, or 15% as much as the contract.

It's hard to see this sale as yet another unfortunate transaction in which Apple co-founder Ron Wayne was involved. He sold this same contract in 1994 ago for $500 (although some reports indicate it was several thousand dollars); if he'd held onto it, he could've sold it for 2,701 times more than what he got for it. Of course, that's nothing compared to the $800 for which he sold his 10% share of Apple stock in 1976. Today, it'd be worth $35 billion, or 43,750,000 times more.

But there may be hope yet. That contract was one of several documents that Wayne has kept in his possession all these years. Brian Heater of Engadget recently rifled through Wayne's archives:

The documents, stashed in a USPS mailer kept by the door of his office, were a veritable treasure trove of information, including pages of pages of plans and pencils drawings of an Apple I enclosure Jobs asked Wayne to build — his creation was ultimately rejected by Apple and lost to history as the company gained steam.

Also stored in the envelope were a facsimile of the contract signed by Wayne, Woz and Jobs, which recently sold on auction for more than $1 million — in fact, it was Wayne's original copy that hit the auction block. He had parted ways with it for far, far less some time ago. Wayne's Statement of Withdrawal is in the pile as well — the document effectively ended his term with the company, filed for a $5 fee. Also inside are an Apple I operation manual, with the company's original logo, designed by Wayne himself and an Apple II order form.

Will one of these documents end up on the auction block next? Will Wayne's brushes with fortune ever bear fruit? Or will he forever earn nothing more than a footnote in Apple's history?

(Hat tip to Jon Brooks and Bloomberg, both via Mike Maginnis)

Steve Jobs' passing made international headlines. This week, it's nice to see the rest of the world remembers "the other Steve", Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Woz has been making the rounds throughout Eurasia, stopping first in Armenia, where he played some jokes on the hotel staff before going for a spin on the Segway.

Of greater substance is Woz's interview with New Delhi Television in India. Woz spoke at length not only about Steve Jobs ("I haven't read [Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs]. I have been so busy in the last two months. I never got around to reading that book… But I have lived a lot of it. So I am sure it is accurate") but also what made the Apple II a success, especially compared to other early Apple products:

Apple II became successful because of various reasons. Steve Jobs had a large part to play in it, and he knew where he wanted to go with it. It was an excellent product. Steve Jobs sought the best things in the world. He knew that I was the best designer, and that Apple II was the best computer, and that's why he wanted both. We were best friends, though. So that helped. It was excellent because it came from my one mind. I controlled the entire environment of how that computer was built. It worked so well that very few parts did very much. Only because, I wanted a computer for me. And it had to be that beautiful.

But the Apple III failed… is it because there were too many people working on it?

Yes, if the guys at Apple had built the machine that they would love, it would have been successful. It came instead from formulas from Apple executives. Marketing people were in charge and some very bad decisions got made, in my opinion. There were hardware failures. You put out a product that has failures right away, and even if you fix it a year later, it just doesn't sell. It's the same thing with any smartphone today. It comes out and it has something horribly wrong about it. You can fix everything wrong about it, and it still won't sell. It has missed its window of opportunity.

At the same time Woz praises Jobs for his involvement in the Apple II, he criticizes the Apple III for its design by committee. I wonder what the breaking point is between having the right people involved, and having too many people?

A bit more than a year after an Apple-1 sold at an Christie's of London auction for $213,600, another irreplaceable piece of Apple history will be up for bid. Next week, you'll have the opportunity to bid on the contract that established Apple as a legitimate business entity.

Sotheby's "Fine Books & Manuscripts" auction (N08811) occurs on Tuesday, December 13, 2011, at 10:00 AM EST in New York and consists of personal and autographed items belonging to the likes of Cole Porter, Joseph Heller, and Giacomo. Lot #241 of 353, listed as being the "property of various owners", has the title "APPLE COMPUTER CONTRACT AND DISSOLUTION OF CONTRACT SIGNED BY JOBS, WOZNIAK AND WAYNE (3 DOCUMENTS)" and is described as follows:

Two typed documents signed by "Stephen G. Wozniak", "steven p. jobs", "Ronald G.. Wayne": Apple Computer Company Partnership Agreement, dated 1April 1976, 3 pages (8 ½ x 11 in; 216 x 279 mm) with small staple holes and crease in upper left corners; With: Amendment dated 12 April 1976, 1 page, with erasure and minor corrections to text; And with: Registrant's Copy of County of Santa Clara Statement of Withdrawal signed by "Ronald G Wayne," 1 page.

This document founded the company in 1976, but it was invalidated and succeeded a year later when Apple was incorporated. The estimated value is between $100,000 and $150,000 USD, with bids being accepted both in-person and online.

These John Hancocks can be yours — if the price is right.

What I find to be the most striking aspect of this auction is not the future bidding that will occur, but the trail this piece of paper must've travelled to arrive at this auction. How and why did the document leave the possession of Woz, Jobs, and Wayne? Was it sold, stolen, or misplaced? Have the current owner(s) approach Apple Inc. to attempt a direct sale? Is there any legal basis for this contract to be in the possession of a third party and not returned to its original owners? IANAL and do not have the answers to these questions. But I look forward to more information being revealed as its sale approaches and more publicity is garnered.

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In its lifetime, the Apple II computer has a variety of unusual uses, from making piano player music to demonstrating motion-activated inputs. How about an ultrasound monitor?

That is the application to which the Apple II was put in last month's direct-to-DVD release of Batman: Year One. The tale is set at the dawn of Bruce Wayne's superhero career, reflect in the movie's slightly antiquated look. In one scene, Jim Gordon's wife visits the hospital for an ultrasound; in another, a trauma victim's vitals are monitored. Both times, an Apple II can be seen in the background.

According to the 1985 journal article "Mixing Apple microcomputer graphics for ultrasound scan measurement" in Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, the official journal of the World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, Batman: Year One is not playing fast and loose with its historical fiction but is instead accurately portraying the technology of the era and its capabilities:

A modern microcomputer with high-resolution graphics can provide an inexpensive method for measurement on video images from a real-time ultrasound scanner. The problem which has to be overcome to allow the computer graphics to be superimposed on the ultrasound video image and permit subsequent analysis is that of synchronization. The video signals must be synchronized before they can be mixed, but neither microcomputers nor ultrasound scanners provide facilities for external synchronization of their video output. A mixer has been designed which uses a buffer memory and allows the graphics of an Apple II microcomputer to be synchronized and mixed with an external video image; we used a Hitachi EUB22 real-time ultrasound scanner. The resulting combination is a versatile instrument which permits a wide range of measurements on ultrasonic images.

Facebook user Herbert Fung first spotted these artifacts, reporting the sighting on October 22 and following up a day later with the above screen captures. Dave Miller provided the historical context.

When an Apple-1 sold for $213,600 almost a year ago, it was a business expense: the new owner, Marco Boglione, intends to feature it in a computer museum in his hometown of Turin, Italy. Reported one media outlet:

Turin, a northern Italian city, already has a television museum, a radio museum and a museum of cinema. Computers, and aesthetically-driven Apple in particular, would be a good fit in fashion-conscious Turin.

"It's big money," says Boglione, who says that he "couldn't care less whether tomorrow a machine like this goes for more or less. I think it's good in Italy that there is such a historical piece, one of the best, in good condition."

Now it looks like there's another computer history museum in the making. The BBC UK reports that Andrei Antonov is assembling Apple's lineage with which to found a museum in Moscow, Russia, by the end of 2011. The gallery will include the portable Apple II (the IIc), the Bandai Pippin, and other rare and aging artifacts.

Is a museum dedicated to Apple products too focused, compared to the comprehensiveness of the Computer History Museum? Does it need to reach further back in its focus, as the Vintage Computer Festival does? Or, like the recent rebranding of Macworld Expo, does an Apple museum capitalize on a brand that invokes passion and dedication like none other?

Britannia may be the fictional setting of the Ultima game series, but that shouldn't stop you from buying property there. For the cool sum of $4.1 million USD, Brittania Manor, the home of Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, can be yours.

Located at 8207 Two Coves Drive in Austin, Texas, the 5,900-square-foot mansion, currently for sale through RE/MAX, features all the essential amenities, including a pool, an observatory, a grotto, a waterfall, a sauna, a gazebo, and a five-car garage. The castle, built in 1987, appears to be in an excellent state of upkeep.

Britannia Manor is famous for its biennial haunted mansions, for which Mr. Garriott spared no expense. But assuming the house isn't truly haunted, it raises the question: why is the house for sale? Surely someone who can afford a trip to outer space isn't hurting for money. Maybe Mr. Garriott needs to fund his geocaching adventures?

(Hat tip to Jason Scott and Nathan Bernier)