Five (5) Astonishing Apple Facts
Channel: Top Best Least Worst Things
Date: 2020-06-19

5 Astonishing Facts About 

Hello everyone this is PhillyMac and welcome to 3 - 5 - 10 Top Best.  This episode: Five Astonishing Facts About 

We all know the iPhone is amazing, and we love our current MacBook, iMac (or if you’re a high end graphics business - your $12k Mac Pro), but did you know these five astonishing facts about ?


1.  had three founders, not just the “Steves”, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak . His name was Ronald Wayne and he left the company only 12 days after it was founded.  He sold his 10% share for $800 and got an additional payout of $1500.  That 10% state in  would now be worth about $50 billion. Owie.  What happened to Ron Wayne?  He had a career he was happy with and he’s retired living in Nevada - after getting out of tech he ran a stamp shop. He plays the slots in his spare time.

2.  has a no smoking ban regarding their computers. Sound weird? Yup, but it’s true, if you smoke while using an Apple computer you void the warranty.  No idea if that includes vaping.
3. Apple employs more people than live in the town I grew up in, plus the first city I lived in when I got married.  Currently, they employ  about 137,000 people in 25 countries as of 2020.
4. The iPod was the device that changed Apple’s fortunes in a bit way, but they weren’t the first company that had the opportunity to manufacture it. Tony Fadell had originally offered the device to both Real Networks (anyone remember them?) Seems they make games for mobile platforms now and Philips (an electronics manufacturer). That worked out well for them.
5. To raise capital for , co-founder Steve Wozniak had to sell his beloved HP-65 calculator (whoa.. that is one sexy device…). Understand, in the 1970s, calculators were the leading edge of consumer computing. It was a big deal to have one and they were used by engineers to do their daily work, that included Steve Wozniak. But, he was all in to make Apple a viable business and he sold his calculator for $500 to make the business go.

PS Here’s a bonus fact - did you know the young Steve Jobs (pre his return to Apple) would cry in meetings? Walter Isaacson documents numbers of times ( in his book on Jobs published 2011) during the early days of Apple - until Steve was shoved out for being a maniacal whack job - that when he wasn’t getting his way, Jobs would cry trying to make his point.  There are no records of that behavior when he returned to Apple, probably because he learned better.