Apple, the world’s most valuable company has made a series of
terrific products over the past couple of years, but there are some
things that you do not know about the tech giant; like how John Draper, a
computer programmer and known hacker was working for Apple’s Steve
Wozniak in the early days of the company.
Draper was known for his morally dubious activities right from the
start, and when he got located to Silicon Valley, that is when he really
started to shine. Both Wozniak and Jobs were able to locate Draper
through a friend of Wozniak. So what is Draper known for; phreaking. For
those who are unaware of this term, phreaking is a term used to hack,
but instead of hacking a computer system, it involves hacking a phone
line in order to make long distance and international calls absolutely
free.
Using his knowledge, Draper developed a blue box, which is an
electronic device whose primary purpose was to make free calls. Before
Apple existed, Wozniak and Jobs had formed a business that made and sold
blue boxes. Both wunderkinds claimed that this is the product that was
the foundation of Apple’s success. According to Steve Jobs, he states
the following:
“I don’t think there would ever have been an Apple Computer had there not been blue-boxing.”
When Apple was actually founded, third party companies could actually
create devices that could connect to public phone lines. Wozniak wanted
in on this, and reached out to John Draper in order to help him out
with the venture. Working for Apple as an independent contractor, Draper
made a telephone interface board for the Apple II computer, and guess
what, the computer was able to identify phone signals and lines, which
also included ones that made free calls.
The computer was never introduced to the market, but the same
technology would later be used in tone-activated calling menus, voice
mail and other similar tech. In short, you could definitely say that
one-half of the company was inspired by a hacker in order to develop a
product that would be termed unethical by the moral police.
Was it something that shouldn’t have been done? Probably, but
companies have ended up doing far worse things, so we will let this
slide for now.
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