The inside story on Jobs and Woz’s illegal phone phreaking

By

Woz, doing his part to help computers takeover the world. Photo: Apple
Before they were Apple co-founders, Jobs and Woz were dirty, no-good, lawbreakers. Kind of.
Photo: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

Prior to founding a tiny little company called Apple, Steves Jobs and Wozniak were “phone phreakers” — selling illegal blue boxes to help people make free long-distance phone calls.

While both quickly turned their back on their law-breaking ways, Jobs noted that, “If we hadn’t made those little blue boxes, there might never have been an Apple computer.”

The entire saga is now the subject of a short documentary, featuring new interviews with Woz, alongside notable phone phreaks Charlie Pine, Tony Lauck, and John “Cap’n Crunch” Draper. Check it out below.

The whole blue box story isn’t exactly a secret if you’ve read any book about early Apple (it’s included in Jobs’ authorized biography, as well as Wozniak’s iWoz autobiography), but this documentary is so nicely put together that I thought it would be of interest to readers.

More please!

Source: FiveThirtyEight

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.