The Computer History Museum has today launched a special online exhibit dedicated to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The site reaches back to the high school exploits of Jobs and fellow founder Steve Wozniak, and chronicles various stories through until the iPad, which the museum describes as Jobs’ “last major product launch.” Links take visitors to related materials, such as early business plans for the Macintosh, and a copy of a Homebrew Computer Club newsletter.
Of special interest is rare video of 23-minute presentation by Jobs in 1980, when Apple was already four years old. The museum notes that Jobs credits Apple’s founding to luck as well as skill. “For some crazy reason in the universe, two people from Los Altos and Cupertino, California managed to want something that just so happened to be what about a million other people wanted,” Jobs says in the clip.
The Apple founder also talks about some of the obstacles the company faced at the time, such as bringing the cost of computers down, or exploiting extra processing power. A major goal for the company was reducing the barriers to learning computers, for which Jobs set out a four-year timeline. In 1984 Apple would launch the Macintosh, the first successful PC to use a graphical interface and a mouse.
