Many hobbyists at the time tried to design their own systems, with various degrees of success, and sometimes banded together to ease the job. Out of these house meetings the Homebrew Computer Club developed, where hobbyists met to talk about what they had done, exchange schematics and software and show off their systems.

At the same time, those same hobbyists were also interested in something ready-built that the average person could afford. Steve Wozniak, a regular visitor to Homebrew Computer Club meetings, designed the Apple I, a single-board computer. With specifications in hand and an order for 100 machines at $500 each from the Byte Shop, he and Steve Jobs got their start in business. In a photograph of the Apple I board, the upper two rows are a video terminal and the lower two rows are the computer. The MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor in the white package sits on the lower right. About 200 of the machines sold before the company announced the Apple II as a complete computer. The Apple II was one of three personal computers launched in 1977. Despite its higher price, it quickly pulled away from the other two, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, to lead the pack in the late 70s and to become the symbol of the personal computing phenomenon.

Unlike the TRS-80, the Apple II was of high quality and featured a number of technical advantages. It had an open architecture, used color graphics, and most importantly, had an elegantly designed interface to a floppy disk drive, something only mainframes and minis had used for storage until then.