I disagree - Apple was pushing the entire idea of a Personal Computer before that market existed. Microsoft's big break was when they were called upon by IBM to provide the OS for IBM's competitor to Apple. Had not Apple taken IBM by surprise, IBM may have eventually decided to go into that market anyway. But absent competitive pressure from Apple compressing their timeline, they probably would have gone with a more proprietary design and wouldn't have even needed Microsoft.
I disagree - Apple was pushing the entire idea of a Personal Computer before that market existed.
Okay, time to channel Grandpa Simpson! Where's my cane?
<grandpa>
Now, sonny, what people forget is that Apple Computer brought their Apple II to an existing market for home PCs. [1] The first home PC had been introduced in January 1975, and by 1977 when the Apple II came out there were already multiple PC enthusiast magazines, Microsoft had been in the software business for two years, and there were multiple companies selling PC hardware. The Apple II was introduced at a personal computer show.
Even the Apple I was an entry into an existing market.
Jobs and Wozniak certainly pushed the envelope: The Apple II was, for example, arguably the first PC to be marketed at folks who didn't know how to solder, who didn't even care about hardware but just wanted to buy or write software and run it. But the hardware hackers drooled over it too [2], and they bought it, and thus the venture was less risky that you think -- it didn't have to create its own market, because Jobs knew the core market was already there; the challenge was to grow the market.
Pioneering the PC market was the work of the Altair guys at MITS, two years prior. MITS, of course, followed the usual good advice for people who are trying to discover a brand-new market: They launched early to test the market. They launched really early. As in "before they actually built more than a single prototype, they photographed a mockup and sent that photo plus the schematic to the editor of Popular Electronics [3], who read the schematic, concluded that the hardware was probably real, and published an article on it that drove hundreds and hundreds of mail orders in a few weeks." Then the company used the money from the mail orders to actually buy the parts, package the kits and send them out. [4]
You could even argue that MITS was targeting an existing market: If the folks writing Popular Electronics hadn't built a fan base that was ready and waiting to solder together computers, the PC revolution wouldn't have caught fire in 1975.
</grandpa>
All of this is cribbed from Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, a book you should really read.
[1] Note: Here "PC" has its original meaning of "generic personal computer" and does not refer to MS/DOS compatible boxen. Those came later, obviously.
[2] It helped that the Apple II not only came with schematics and a complete listing of its ROM, but had been designed by a hardware-hacking genius of the first water who liked to show off.
[3] MITS also mailed their single prototype to Popular Electronics. It got lost in the mail and was never seen again. If you find it, contact some historians.
[4] If you think you intend to follow this business plan, make sure your lawyer is sitting down before you broach the subject.
Well, okay, I will of course concede that there were personal computers before the Apple II (although at the time it came out, the Apple I was probably the closest thing to a working computer, as opposed to a kit that you could use to build a working computer, that you could get)
But Popular Electronics readers or not, I still think it's accurate to say that "the market" for PC's did not exist before Apple. The post I was replying to was arguing about whether Apple or Microsoft was more like Henry Ford. I think it's also fair to say that the market for cars in the US did not exist before the Model-T, despite the fact that there were several cars sold before it, all of which were unreliable, extraordinarily expensive, and used only by hobbyists - just like pre-Apple I (and to a lesser extent pre-Apple II) computers.
