Two of Apple's three founders worked at Atari before starting Apple. Steve Jobs was a technician there, and Steve Wozniak helped design the circuitry for Breakout as a contractor.
Apple's Atari Connection: Jobs & Wozniak's Early Days
Before Apple became the world's most valuable company, two of its founders were cutting their teeth at Atari—the company that brought Pong to living rooms across America.
Steve Jobs landed a job as a technician at Atari in 1974. He was just 19, a college dropout with a reputation for being difficult. Atari's founder Nolan Bushnell later described Jobs as having "the kind of body odor that offended people" and suggested he work the night shift.
The Breakout Hustle
In 1975, Atari tasked Jobs with designing a single-player version of Pong called Breakout. There was a catch: the fewer chips used, the bigger the bonus. Jobs knew exactly who to call.
Steve Wozniak, Jobs's friend and future Apple co-founder, was an engineering genius working at Hewlett-Packard. Jobs offered to split the bonus 50/50 if Woz could design the game in four days.
Wozniak pulled it off, creating an incredibly efficient design. The problem? Jobs told Wozniak the bonus was $700, splitting $350 each. The actual bonus was reportedly $5,000. Wozniak wouldn't learn the truth until years later.
What About Ron Wayne?
Apple had three founders, not two. Ron Wayne—the often-forgotten third founder—never worked at Atari. He was an engineer at Atari's slot machine division, but that was after Apple was founded, and it was a different company entirely.
Wayne famously sold his 10% stake in Apple for $800 just twelve days after the company was founded. That stake would be worth over $300 billion today.
The Skills That Built Apple
The Atari connection wasn't just a footnote. Jobs learned crucial lessons there:
- Simplicity sells—Atari games had to be intuitive enough that anyone could play without instructions
- Design matters—Bushnell obsessed over how products looked and felt
- Move fast—Atari shipped products at a pace that seemed reckless
These principles would define Apple for decades. The first Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone—all bore the DNA of Atari's philosophy.
Wozniak's experience was more technical. Working on Breakout's hardware gave him hands-on experience with the kind of efficient engineering that would make the Apple I and Apple II revolutionary for their time.
A Different Kind of Origin Story
Most tech origin stories involve garages and dropout mythology. Apple's is more interesting: it's about two very different people who happened to orbit the same video game company at exactly the right moment.
Jobs brought the hustle, the vision, and—let's be honest—the willingness to shortchange his best friend. Wozniak brought the engineering brilliance that made everything possible. Atari was the unlikely training ground where those skills first intersected.
Without those late nights at Atari, the personal computer revolution might have looked very different.