handwritten apple serial number finally solved

Although the revenue at stake is not as large as for iOS devices, this was a huge step forward for the new silicon paradigm that Apple has pioneered, and the beginning of the end of the dominance of x86 in personal computing. If you’re looking for your own Steve Jobs memorabilia, we learned this week of an interesting auction.At its World Wide Developer Conference this year, Apple ( NASDAQ: AAPL) announced that it was transitioning the Mac product line away from Intel ( INTC) and AMD ( AMD) to its own custom silicon. Read more over at the Apple 1 Registry site. Finally, the mystery is solved! Steve clearly just didn’t recall doing it. The company took three months to perform the analysis, also studying many photos, before authenticating the handwriting on the boards as that of Steve Jobs. Helpfully, these documents include a number of handwritten numbers.īaqué then personally transported two of the boards, and the handwriting samples, to California for examination by PSA. The company’s analysis would include the slant, flow, pen pressure, letter size, and other characteristics.ĭaniel Kottke, who was a close friend of Steve, provided a number of letters and postcards written by Steve. However, since Steve rarely signed autographs, making his signature and handwriting especially valuable, the potential impact on the value of the machines with serial numbers meant that as much certainty as possible was needed.īaqué asked one of the world’s leading handwriting authentication services to compare the serial numbers on two of the Apple 1 boards with known samples of Steve’s writing.Ĭalifornia-based PSA said that they could do it, but photos wouldn’t be sufficient – they would need to carry out a physical examination of both the boards and the handwriting samples. This, it turned out, would not be a trivial task.ĭespite Steve Jobs’ denial, the handwriting on the boards did seem to match his. Likewise for Byte Shop owner Paul Terrell, who bought a batch of 50 of them…Īchim Baqué, who maintains the Apple-1 Registry (a listing of all Apple 1 computers), finally decided to try to solve the mystery. Daniel Kottke, who assembled and tested some of the boards, said it wasn’t him.

Steve Wozniak said that he didn’t write them. Apple geeks may be aware of the mystery of the handwritten Apple 1 serial number present on some of the surviving machines.

Handwritten apple serial number finally solved