Ahead of its 1977 public unveiling, engineer Steve Wozniak continued honing the Apple II throughout mid-1976, developing the color graphics capabilities and elegant single-board design that distinguished it from the hobbyist kits dominating the market. Working alongside Steve Jobs, who pushed for a sleek plastic case and consumer-friendly design, the pair built toward a machine that would help ignite the home computer revolution.
By mid-1976, Wozniak had already built the Apple I board and was deep into designing its successor, determined to integrate features no other affordable computer offered: color graphics, sound, and a design elegant enough to sit on a desk rather than a workbench. He worked long nights at Hewlett-Packard, his day employer, sketching circuits on the side before Apple Computer, founded that same year with Jobs and Ronald Wayne, became his full focus.
Jobs, for his part, insisted the machine needed to look like a finished consumer product, not a kit of exposed wires, a philosophy that seems almost pedestrian now but was radical when computers were still largely the province of hobbyists soldering boards in garages. The combination, Wozniak's engineering ingenuity paired with Jobs's design and market instincts, would culminate in the Apple II's release the following spring, a machine credited with helping transform computers from a specialist tool into something a family might keep in the living room.
Key people: Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs