By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 25/06/2026I've been mulling this "rampant theft of IP" remark for a couple of days now, but it wasn't until a reader wrote to me to remind me about Apple's origin story that I realised what the punchline is. 26/ 1252
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 25/06/2026Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak financed their first product launch by selling "Blue Boxes" (devices that let you make free long distance calls by cheating the phone company) door to door in the UC Berkeley dorms: macdailynews.com/2024/06/19/s... 27/macdailynews.comSteve Jobs felt certain Apple would never have existed without Woz and him making blue boxesSteve Jobs said building illegal blue boxes to allow users to make long distance and international phone calls for free with Steve Wozniak… 1313
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 25/06/2026Now, I'm not going to weep for lost revenues that Jobs and Woz denied to AT&T. After all, AT&T was stealing that money from its customers, which is why, just a few years later, a federal court convicted AT&T of monopolistic practices and broke the company up: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup... 28/en.wikipedia.orgBreakup of the Bell System - Wikipedia 1250
