One of the co-founders of Apple shattered a myth years ago that is still believed wholeheartedly today
2066 Crist Drive, in Palo Alto, is a well-known pilgrimage site for all Apple enthusiasts and technology enthusiasts in general. It once belonged to Paul and Clara Jobs, the adoptive parents of Steve Jobs, who also resided there on April 1, 1976, the date on which Apple Computer was officially born.
Apple’s humble origins are often used as an example of how far one can go on a professional level. And it is almost always said that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded the company in the garage of that house. Well, it’s not true and it’s something that Woz has already denied on several occasions. In fact, we already told it more than ten years ago.
“It’s a bit of a myth”
Archive photo of Steve Jobs returning years later to the famous house (and famous garage) where he lived for years
Along with the lesser-known Ronald Wayne, who also appears in Apple’s founding documents and made a historic mistake that cost him millions of dollars, the Steves did have a certain relationship with the garage of Steve Jobs’ house. Mind you, the story is very different from how it is told.
Thanks to the numerous interviews, statements and books about the protagonists, we know that the house where Steve Jobs lived in 1976 was an important place for Apple. It was the scene of part of the birth of Apple insofar as the Apple I, designed by Wozniak, appeared there.
There is a widespread belief that the garage of the house was the place chosen to assemble everything. A place that served both as an office for administrative tasks and as a workshop for assembling the circuit boards. However, none of the participants in those early days of Apple have confirmed this as such. Far from it, there is an interview with Steve Wozniak in which he categorically denies it.
“The garage thing is a bit of a myth, given that we didn’t really design the Apple I in the garage, we didn’t create circuit boards and we didn’t make prototypes or do any kind of manufacturing in the garage either”.
“When you don’t have any money…”
Of those, Wozniak did want to make it clear that there was some truth in the belief by confirming that, indeed, the garage did exist and had “an important value in the birth of Apple”. However, not as the workshop-office that it is believed to be, but rather as a refuge for chatting. “When you don’t have any money, you have to work from home,” Woz went on to say in the interview, finally dismissing the matter outright: “but no, it wasn’t where Apple I was made”.
In any case, far from breaking the magic, it does not stop Apple’s place of origin from having less of an aura. Steve Wozniak provided the technical knowledge and the hands, Ronald Wayne the money and Steve Jobs the business vision. Apple’s rise was meteoric and within a few months they were already based in a gigantic headquarters, going public four years later and already one of the great promises in technology until they got to where they are today.
Therefore, mysticism and garage myths aside, Apple’s story clearly shows that you don’t need a lot of resources to go far. What they achieved is not simple, nor is it common, but, like other large companies, it came about in the most unimaginable way.
