A closer look

Imagine saving your life's work onto a screeching audio cassette. The highly revered Apple I and early Apple II computers did not come with internal hard drives because the technology was prohibitively massive and expensive. Instead, if you wanted to save your code or text documents, you had to hook the computer up to a standard consumer cassette tape recorder. One slightly warped piece of magnetic tape, and hours of programming vanished instantly into the ether.