Apple is probably best known today for the iPhone more than anything else, but a significant portion of its origins and modern company remains in tailor-made personal computing. The first model, launched in 1977, was a huge success as an all-in-one home computer and was produced until 1993. In other words, like many Apple products, it was copied.

In the early 1980s, a company called Franklin produced an Apple II clone under the frankly unprecedented name of Ace 100. I had never heard of this hardware until writer David Friedman pointed out the most unusual aspect of it in his latest newsletter (opens in new tab).

The first 40 pages of the manual (opens in new tab) contain pearls of wisdom such as that a personal computer is "nothing more than a super-fast, super-expensive calculator" and that its role in your life is "funky" rather than to run your computer. It also opens with the following semi-inspiring straight talk:

"If you are reading this, perhaps a fast-talking salesman has already convinced you that ACE will make your life complete. [Please dispel that doubt. Dispel those doubts. You can use ACE for good purposes.

Then a new chapter begins: the ancestral territoriality of the Trumpeter Swan. Unless you are fascinated by birds, you probably won't read this chapter of the manual first." You are correct. This is the "Introduction" section of the manual, and if you had called it that, you might have skipped the introductory chapters.

What makes the entire manual worth skimming is that there are jokes on every page, many of them for computer geeks. Perhaps the funniest aspect of the Ace 100 manual is this: the manual is clearly written by someone with a healthy skepticism of the computer industry and the people who congregate around it. It contains tips on how to avoid getting ripped off by computer dealers, and advises you to ignore silly jargon like "bits and bytes."

"Program makers are innate paranoids," the manual says. Those bastards want you to pay for their work, not when you have ACE 100. The manual includes a section explaining to users how to circumvent typical 1980s software copy protection to create a "personal backup," before explaining that there are three kinds of crooks in the computer world.

The first is "they," the salespeople who peddle these things with overpromises; the second is "you," the people who are trying to get you to buy their software, and the third is "you," the people who are trying to get you to buy their software. The second is "you" because, as our manual explains, the industry treats you like a crook in licensing agreements.

"These license agreements usually stop just short of requiring you to sign over your life, your home, and your first child. No one in their right mind would sign such a contract. But personal computer users do. It is possible that "they are not of sound mind," but signing a license agreement does not prove it.

The third con artist is "we," Franklin himself, and they are selling Apple II clones with copies of the Apple OS. Echoes of Richard Nixon haunt me, but it is written, "We are not crooks."

I mean, okay.

You might be surprised to learn that the U.S. justice system did not agree with Franklin. Apple sued the company for copying its operating system on the ACE 100 and later the ACE 1000 machines, a landmark case in computer history: it was the first time a court ruled that a computer's BIOS could be protected by copyright ( (Open in new tab). Franklin initially won the case, but lost on appeal and had to withdraw all copies of Apple machines from the market by 1988. Franklin Computer is still in existence today, although not on the scale of Apple (opens in new tab).

David Friedman goes into more detail about the manual in his article (opens in new tab), including tracking down Sal Manetta, who wrote the manual, and Bob Applegate, a former Franklin programmer, and exploring the differences between each version. Applegate knows why Manetta took the attitude he did: the engineering department was in a long, narrow building with no windows and was called a "cave." Sal had never had contact with an engineer before Franklin, and we sometimes overwhelmed him. He used to tell first-time visitors to our building, "He who enters should give up hope."

But credit where credit is due. Franklin may have started out as a copycat, but he was candid about how much he hated licensing and copy protection:

"Someday enough consumers will get fed up with this nonsense and put an end to it. But that hasn't happened yet.