Steve Wozniak
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
and those eight expansion slots.
The competitors had black and white displays, way less memory, and zero expansion slots.
Radio Shack and Commodore had made a calculated decision.
They wanted to be appliance companies.
They kept their technical specifications secret, hoping to monopolize the market for peripherals and software.
RadioShack stores weren't even allowed to sell third-party products.
They were building walled gardens before anyone used that term.
The Apple II was the opposite because of Wozniak.
Within months, the entire industry sprang up around the Apple II.
Dozens of companies started writing games.
Other companies built circuit boards for those expansion slots.
Memory cards, sound cards, graphics cards.
They created products Wozniak hadn't imagined.
Computer magazines filled with Apple II product ads.
Suddenly, the Apple II name was everywhere, Wozniak wrote.
We didn't have to buy an advertisement or do anything ourselves to get the name out.
That was the power of the open architecture.
Every third-party company that made a product for the Apple II became, in effect, a marketing arm for Apple.
Every ad they bought, every review they got, every innovation they created made the Apple II more valuable.
It was a virtuous circle that started with those eight slots.