50 years with Apple
We’re celebrating Apple’s 50th birthday with a week of content about the tech giant. It covers everything from personal recollections from our writers to the greatest – and worst – Apple gadgets as 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 of founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak working out of the Jobs family garage in the 1970s.
From do-it-yourself start-up to multi-billion-dollar business – it’s the great American dream.
The Apple-1 computer is what Wozniak and Jobs made back then in the garage. It was a circuit PC that sold for $666.66 — a Wozniak mark — and only about 200 of them were ever made. The Apple-1 went on sale in 1976, as Apple’s very first product.
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This is an important part of Apple history, but it came before the company was remotely great. It came in 1977 with the Apple II, which would go on to sell millions of units.
Only a handful of the original Apple-1 systems are estimated to still be working, or even in existence, these days. 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 geeks 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 made for the system was the one thing 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, gaming is where it’s at.
Getting your hands on real Apple 1 hardware to try them out will cost you a not inconsiderable fortune these days. A rare prototype system recently sold at auction in January 2026 for $2.75 million, setting a new record.
However, you can try Apple-1 software for free on your PC using emulation software. I did just that to get a feel for what it was like to play with an Apple-1 back in the mid-1970s. Here’s my take on seven of the more notable releases from 50 years ago.
1. Daring to go too far for modern sensibilities (Star Trek, 1977)
You have to hand it to developer Robert J. Bishop: Star Trek is an ambitious game considering what the system is working with. It puts you in control of the Enterprise, capable of doing most of the key commands you’d hear in an episode of the show itself. You activate engines, do short- and long-range scans, and fire photon torpedoes and phasers – all through text alone.
The original version is pretty much indescribable without a manual. And while the 2003 remake (by Vince Briel) is radically more accessible, it only brings it up to the level of “mostly impenetrable.” Once you get the hang of how the system works, it also becomes a bit boring, like an over-engineered version of Battleships.
Maximum marks for ambition, but the 2026 mind is not made for this. Try it to see if you are made of stronger stuff.
2. When is blackjack not fun? (Blackjack, 1976)
Now here’s a super quick burst of fun that really doesn’t require too much visual information: a good old game of blackjack.
Like the real deal, it’s you against the dealer. And at each stage you choose whether to hold or withdraw after betting the minimum. The name of the game is to get as close to 21 as possible without going broke – as if we needed to tell you that.
There isn’t much in the way of game logic beyond the basics. You seem to be able to bet as much as you want, even if your winnings dip well into the red. But the reverent little dealer lines at the end of each round make up for it.
3. A tiny text adventure (Little Tower, 1976)
An ideal blast from the past, this one as you can finish it in minutes. Who isn’t bored with most retro games by then anyway? Little Tower is an occasionally grammatically questionable text adventure that throws you in front of a mysterious three-story ‘tower’ – yep, it’s not much of a tower.
You explore, find your way in and discover a dangerous threat, all within five minutes. Even by the standards of early text adventures, Little Tower‘s available syntax is very basic, but it’s a reminder of how much imagination can fill in the gaps when graphics aren’t doing the job 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 early titles that delivered a sense of physical physics in games. The 1976s Lunar Lander for the Apple-1 has to do the same job with no graphics at all. And that is a difficult question.
As in the arcade game, the idea is to fire a lunar lander’s engines so that it is able to land safely instead of diving, missile-like, into the ground. There’s no lateral movement in this one – just firing blasters 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 Pleasant Brain Hemorrhage (Codebreaker, 1976)
This is an adaptation of the board game Master mind. Or to many, it might seem a bit like the slightly annoying mini-games you’ve come across in console video games.
You have to work out a code for the order in which a series of four colored blobs are arranged. And after each guess you are told how many colors you got right and how many are also in the right place.
You only get 10 attempts. It’s a proper brain teaser that’s equal parts annoying and rewarding. There are even three difficulty levels, which increase the stakes with longer codes and a time limit. You might not end up wanting to play for more than a few minutes, but you’ll feel the gears on your gray stuff moving 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 confusing, this one. It’s the 1970s equivalent of an indie game that would garner five-star reviews from the odd navel-gazing critic, but a pat on the back from much of the gaming population. But it is at least interesting in theory. Conway’s Game of Life is a cell division simulator.
You enter your name, which presumably affects the mathematical model in some way. So at each step of the simulation—which rolls out like a dot matrix printer pulling your tax return—you can apparently shape the outcome by selecting either a 1, 2, or 3 command. At least that’s according to the Apple-1 Software website.
A bit confusing for some, then, but you’ll actually find adaptations of Conway’s 1970 mathematical model that determines this all over the store, including a modern version for the iPad in the App Store.
7. A simplified version of a puzzle (15 Puzzle, 2020)
This brain-teasing shooter puzzle is distilled headache juice at its higher difficulty levels. There is a grid of letters in a 4×4 pattern, with only a gap between them. At the start of the run, they are messed up and you have to put them back in order by pushing rows, columns or individual letters.
On the lowest difficulty, you only need a move or two to get the job done. But at least to our puny minds, difficulty “5” is above us. 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.
The Apple-1 may be mostly gone, but it’s not forgotten.
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