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while her husband sat at the kitchen table using the computer to attend to more worldly chores. The copy was unequivocal about what the computer could be used for: “The home computer that’s ready to work, play and grow with you . . . You’ll be able to organize, index and store data on household finances, income taxes, recipes, your biorhythms, balance your checking account, even control your home environment.” The advertisement also carried a lot of technical specifications which were aimed at the ardent hobbyist but were not calculated to appeal to the layman. Keen hobbyists with agile hands and a technical bent were told they could buy the Apple II in the form of a single printed circuit board for $598.

A large poster which started to appear in computer stores about the same time carried the distinctly equivocal slogan APPLE II: THE HOME/PERSONAL COMPUTER. Markkula was quoted at the time as saying that Apple would not be an exhibitor at the National Computer Conference, the traditional showcase for manufacturers selling to businesses, but would concentrate its efforts on the Consumer Electronics show. Apple’s advertising manager, Jean Richardson, admitted, “There was not a lot of sophisticated strategy. They thought they were selling to people in a home.”

The magazines in which the advertisements appeared were more important than the copy or the look. Compared to companies like Compucolor, a Georgia company that produced a color computer, Apple’s earliest advertisements were wan. As well as buying space in hobbyist magazines like Byte, Apple, during its first year, also advertised in Scientific American and Playboy. They were expensive places to advertise but the nature of the magazines helped lift Apple above the crowd of other small computer companies. Apple also placed little adverts, designed to boost the corporate image, that didn’t say much about the computer but were bright and perky and written by McKenna himself. One of the most popular began: “A is for Apple. It’s the first thing you should know about personal computers.”

At the end of 1977 Digital Research’s Gary Kildall again wrote to Jobs and among other subjects politely recited his concerns about Apple’s marketing: “From our earlier discussions I believe you want to address the consumer market. . . . The Apple advertising is somewhat misleading. . . . The Apple II is not a consumer computer and, even though I have had ‘previous computer experience,’ I had some difficulties getting parts together, and making the system operate. . . . Further, commercial appliance manufacturers do not advertise products which do not exist. . . . Your advertisement implies that software exists (or is easily constructed) for stock market analysis and home finance handling. Do these programs exist? Secondly, a floppy disk subsystem is promised by the ‘end of 1977.’ Where is it?” Kildall was right on all scores, and the program that allowed an Apple to connect to the Dow Jones ticker appeared a year after it was first announced. All told, Apple’s early ads reflected Markkula’s own hobbyist bent.

Though the line of the early advertisements missed the mark, there was a change in strategy within six months of the Apple II announcement. It was the sort of luxury given to a tiny, invisible company in an industry that was too small to be taken very seriously. Apple was able to take advantage of its obscurity and the forgiving nature of an expanding market and consequently had much more freedom to maneuver than a large company whose blunders would be magnified.

A memo to Apple from the McKenna Agency in early 1978, outlining a marketing strategy, demonstrated a clear understanding that the time when consumers would use computers in the home was far away. It also reflected McKenna’s anxiety that Apple not ruin a consumer market by making promises that couldn’t be fulfilled. The agency also began to identify its targets, recognizing the differences between the hobbyists, the “programmable calculator market,” and the markets in schools and universities. And within thirty-six months