Wow, wow, wow… I just won the auction of Steve Jobs’ THINK poster and his Apple 1 ribbon cable from his home garage, birthplace of Apple Computer.

in the David v. Goliath mythology that Jobs promulgated, IBM was the Goliath. When IBM introduced the PC in 1981, Jobs took out a full page newspaper ad welcoming the latecomer to the market. Then there was the famous 1984 superbowl ad taking a hammer to the giant.

IBM had used the all-uppercase THINK logo for over 70 years, and it was widely known in tech circles. Jobs took the IBM logo but colored it in Apple’s signature 6 colors, which originated with the Apple ][ in 1977. The Apple parody of THINK was never publicly distributed, but Jobs loved it. It was the prominent decoration in his office, and purposely present in his 1981 press photos (below) — the year of IBM’s PC entry.

2 responses to “Before Think Different, there was THINK”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Steve Jobs strikes a pose, in his office, 1981
    recreated with Aston Kutcher for the Jobs movie

    The IBM original… in the Smithsonian:

    Reply
  2. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    These must feel like owning real talismans (a chunk of metal from King Arthur’s sword) for you ;-). Is there any significance to the 8 segments top/bottom > 8 bits? Accident? Also, why not the usual 7 (ROYGBIV) rainbow colors (I know the usual apocrypha that the 6 colored apple’ "byte" logo was just Janoff’s design and Steve loved it, but always kind of wondered, is there a deeper story behind just 6)…

    Reply

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