Apple Book: So Far
Quite a while back I found this Apple book So Far: The First Ten Years of a Vision at a garage sale. I had never heard of it before, so I did a bit of research and found out it was a special publication from 1987 to commemorate the first 10 years of Apple Computer. It was created at Apple for Apple employees so I guess it was never sold in stores to the general public.
Anyhow, it’s a pretty cool. At the time this book was published, the Macintosh had been established as a ground-breaking computer, largely because of its GUI and its capabilities in desktop publishing. But the book also goes back through the days of the Apple IIe and the creation of the original Apple computer. There are several really impressive fold out pages with photographs documenting different phases of Apple’s development.
This fold out page shows a timeline of the Macintosh computer. The tall column of images contains stills from the television commercial “Lemmings”.
Original Apple computer in a suitcase. This computer was the $666.66 Apple I circuit board.
Most of the book contains vignettes of how powerful and useful Apple computers were, and how integral they had become to people in all walks of life and all around the world, from musicians, to publishers, to school kids, to researchers, and professors. I guess it was all meant to be taken as evidence that Apple was truly changing the world for the better. Of course, today it looks a bit quaint since all the then-impressive computer graphics were being displayed on a tiny grayscale screen.
Needless to say, this is one of my favorite books and I’m never selling it!
I also have a copy of this book. I received it while touring Apple’s Palo Alto manufacturing plant in 1987. I it is totally reflective of the company’s culture. I am considering donating it for a charity auction (many computer geeks attend). Does anyone have any idea if it has any value?
All I can go on is the price on eBay — I think I have seen this book offered
with a starting bid of around $150. Maybe a book collector would know.
I worked for Apple Australia from 1987 — 2003 and I had a copy of this book. Unfortunately my wife had a clean out and took the book by mistake to a second hand bookstore. ARRRGH
Where did you get your copy?
Phil,
I just found a still shrink-wrapped copy of this book. I’m getting it ready to toss up on Ebay, but if you’d like to inquire, drop me an email.
Phil,
I just found a new still shrink-wrapped copy of this book. I’m getting ready to put it on eBay, but if your interested drop me an email.
I too have a copy of this book which I took out of my storage today. I never worked for Apple so I’m not sure where I got it. I did work for NeXT however, which is probably where I got my copy.
It’s cool that people still like this book. I was on the small team that designed and produced it. Apple’s Creative Services designed and produced the book from scratch in about 6 weeks. For me that is a big part of it’s beauty. Normally, in that day and age, it would have taken 6 months to design and produce. The photography came from the “Day in the Life” books photographers lead by Rick Smolen and David Cohen. So we had all these cool images and a budget to provide a suitable gift for the upcoming sales meeting. Instead of getting a lame pen and pencil set or something similar, we used the photos to produce a book on the history of Apple “So Far”. The truck with the books arrived just two hours before they were handed out. It was a memorable project.
Wow, neat to hear from someone who actually worked on the project. Yeah, this is still a neat book, and it just gets better with time what with Apple’s current rise with iDevices and stuff. A real historical snapshot of where Apple was at that time.
Maybe I’ll scan in a few pages and put ‘em on my iPad.
May Apple live forever! I think I still have a case of those books somewhere…
BTW: I’ve found some interesting relics at http://redlightrunner.com/index.html
They seem to specialize in Apple marketing stuff, buttons and tee shirts and such. I’ve never bought anything from them though, so I don’t know how they are to deal with.
Who was this book written by? I am doing a research paper on Apple and I am mentioning this book in my report. Do any of you know?
SoFar — The first ten years of a vision
Text by Rob Price
Design by Jill Savini
Creative Director : Thom Marchionna
Published by Apple Computer in celebration of our thenth anniversary
Conceived, Developed, And Produced By Apple Creative Services