50 years of Apple
We celebrate Apple’s 50th birthday with a week of content about the tech giant. It covers everything from our writers’ personal memories to the best (and worst) Apple devices voted by you, and you can read it all on our 50 Years of Apple page.
Apple turned 50 this week. The company has a semi-mythical origin story, and one of its enduring images is that of founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak working in the garage of the Jobs family home in the 1970s.
From a DIY start-up to a multi-million dollar company – it’s the American dream writ large.
The Apple-1 computer is what Wozniak and Jobs made in those garage days. It was a circuit board PC that sold for $666.66 (a Wozniak quirk) and only about 200 of them were made. The Apple-1 went on sale in 1976, as Apple’s first product.
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This is an important part of Apple’s history, but it came before the company became remotely big. That came in 1977 with the Apple II, of which millions of units would be sold.
It is estimated that only a handful of the original Apple-1 systems still work, or even exist, today. But what was it like to use one of these systems? It’s a little different than you might imagine.
The Apple-1 was a tool for nerds and tinkerers: by Wozniak, for Wozniak, more or less. There was no built-in word processor. There was a version of BASIC programming, and what was actually created for the system was the one thing that people have been saying for decades that Apple doesn’t care about: games.
Despite the lack of color and no real graphics beyond character symbols, the games are where they’re at.
Getting your hands on real Apple-1 hardware to test them will cost you a not inconsiderable fortune these days. A rare prototype system was recently sold at auction in January 2026 for $2.75 million, setting a new record.
However, you can try the Apple-1 software for free on your PC using emulation software. I did just that, to get a sense of what it was really like to play with an Apple-1 in the mid-1970s. Here’s my take on seven of the most notable releases from 50 years ago.
1. Boldly going too far for modern sensibilities (Star Trek, 1977)
You have to hand it over to developer Robert J. Bishop: trip to the stars It’s an ambitious game considering what the system works with. It puts you in control of the Enterprise, capable of performing most of the key commands you’d hear in an episode of the show. You activate engines, perform short- and long-range scans, and fire photon and phasor torpedoes, all just via text.
The original version is practically indecipherable without a manual. And while the 2003 remake (by Vince Briel) is radically more accessible, it only elevates it to the level of “mostly impenetrable.” Once you understand how the system works, it also becomes a bit tedious, like an oversized version of Battleships.
Full marks for ambition, but the mind of 2026 is not made for these things. Try it to see if you are made of stronger material.
2. When is blackjack not fun? (Blackjack, 1976)
Now here’s a super-fast burst of fun that doesn’t really need too much visual input: a good game of blackjack.
Just like in real business, it’s you against the dealer. And at each stage, you choose whether to stay or draw, at least after betting. The name of the game is to get as close to 21 as possible without breaking the bank, as if we had to tell you that.
There isn’t much game logic beyond the basics, of course. It seems like you can bet as much as you want, even if your winnings fall into the red. But the dealer’s irreverent little lines at the end of each round make up for it.
3. A tiny text adventure (Little Tower, 1976)
This is an ideal blast from the past as you can finish it in just a few minutes. Who doesn’t get bored with most retro games then? small tower is an occasionally grammatically dubious text adventure that takes you in front of a mysterious three-story “tower”; yeah, it’s not a big tower.
You explore, find your way, and uncover a dangerous threat, all in the space of five minutes. Even by the standards of the first written adventures, small towerThe syntax available is very basic, but it’s a reminder of how much your imagination can fill in the gaps when graphics don’t do the work for you.
4. Like your first driving lesson, but with more death and destruction (Lunar Lander, 1976)
The 1979 arcade version of lunar lander is a vector graphics classic, one of the first titles to bring a sense of real-world physics to games. 1976 lunar lander because Apple-1 has to do the same job without any graphics. And it’s a difficult question.
As in the arcade game, the idea is to fire the engines of a lunar landing module so that it can land safely instead of plunging, like a missile, into the ground. In this there is no lateral movement, only the blasters are fired at very specific intensities. But it’s worth a try to see if your brain is up to the math. Mine is not.
5. A nice brain blow (Codebreaker, 1976)
This is an adaptation of the board game. Brain. Or, for many, it might look a bit like the slightly annoying mini-games you’ve encountered in console video games.
You have to come up with a code for the order in which a series of four colored spots is arranged. And after each guess, they will tell you how many colors you have correct and how many are also in the right place.
You only have 10 attempts. It’s a real brain teaser that is both infuriating and rewarding. There are even three difficulty levels, raising the stakes with longer codes and a time limit. You may not want to play for more than a few minutes, but you’ll feel the gears in your gray stuff turning if you’re not used to this style of play.
6. One of the OG hipster indie ‘games’ (Conway’s Game of Life, 1976)
Pretty disconcerting, this one. It’s the 1970s equivalent of an indie game that would get five-star reviews from some navel-gazing reviewer, but that much of the gaming population would shrug off. But at least it’s interesting in theory. Conway’s Game of Life It is a cell division simulator.
You enter your name, which presumably affects the mathematical model in some way. Then, at each stage of the simulation, which plays out like a dot-matrix printer displaying your tax return, you can apparently shape the result by choosing a command 1, 2, or 3. Anyway, that’s according to Apple-1 Software’s website.
A little confusing for some, then, but you’ll actually find adaptations of Conway’s 1970 mathematical model determining this throughout the store, including a modern iPad version in the App Store.
7. A simplified version of a basic puzzle (15 Puzzle, 2020)
This brain-stimulating sliding puzzle is distilled headache juice at its highest difficulty levels. There is a grid of letters in a 4×4 pattern, with only one space between them. At the beginning of the run, they are out of order and you must sort them again by sliding rows, columns or individual letters.
On the lowest difficulty, you’ll only need one or two moves to get the job done. However, at least for our puny minds, difficulty level “5” is out of reach. The interesting element about this one is that it was actually made decades after the system was discontinued. Developer Jeff Jetton announced its 2020 release on the Applefritter forums.
Apple-1 may be mostly gone, but it’s not forgotten.
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