The Apple II debuts at the West Coast Computer Faire
Steve Wozniak's design turns the hobbyist kit into a finished consumer product
Quick facts
- Designer
- Steve Wozniak
- Debut
- West Coast Computer Faire, April 1977
- Shipped
- 10 June 1977
- Key later additions
- Floppy disk drive (1978), VisiCalc (1979)
What happened
Steve Wozniak designed the Apple II, and Apple, cofounded with Steve Jobs, unveiled it at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco in April 1977. Unlike the Altair or Apple's own earlier Apple I, which required buyers to supply their own case, keyboard, and power supply, the Apple II arrived as a complete, ready-to-use unit that plugged into a television for its display and had BASIC built permanently into its memory. The floppy disk drive, added in 1978, and the VisiCalc spreadsheet program, released in 1979, later turned it into a genuine business tool rather than only a hobbyist machine.
Why it matters
The Apple II was promoted, and largely succeeded, as a computer for ordinary people rather than engineers, proving a mass consumer market existed for a fully assembled personal computer rather than a kit. It became one of the first personal computers to sell in large enough numbers to build a lasting software industry around itself.
How we know
The Computer History Museum's Revolution exhibit documents Wozniak's design, the finished-product packaging, and the later disk drive and VisiCalc additions from its own historical account.
Sources
- Computer History Museum (CHM Revolution). The Apple II · Reputable sourcecomputerhistory.org · The domain "computerhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Engineering and Technology History Wiki (IEEE). Milestones:Introduction of the Apple II Computer: 1977-1978 · Reputable sourceethw.org · The domain "ethw.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- History of Video Games → · The Apple II's color graphics and open architecture made it an early platform for a wave of commercial computer games.