In preparation for the 50th anniversary of Apple’s founding, which will be this Wednesday, April 1, we went into our personal archives to uncover a book Apple wrote 40 years ago to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
“So Far: The First Ten Years of a Vision” was given out to Apple employees in 1987 to commemorate 1976-1986. Filled with photos and quotations (including “The best way to predict the future is to invent it“), the coffee table book includes four “Time Capsule” foldouts that take up the full width of most coffee tables:
- 1976-1979. The company-establishing Apple I and Apple-//
- 1980-1983. The ill-fated Apple-/// and Lisa. Apple //e
- 1984. The Macintosh. Apple-// Forever
- 1985-1986. The Macintosh Office. Apple IIGS.
“So Far” ends with a list of all employees who had worked at Apple through 1986. With a ridiculously small font, the list took only eight pages. A rough guess is that the list would take 500-1000 pages today!
Alan and Priscilla’s names in the book were separated by “little brother” Charlie’s (actually no relation) and followed by R. Alan’s, whom Alan met his first week at Apple.