Steve Jobs' Forgotten Deals and a $34K Science Fair Relic

Steve Jobs’ 1968 science fair project fetched $34,375 at auction, and a newly released memoir shows he once tried to ship Mac OS on Dell PCs. The two stories expose a pattern of bold bets that never materialized.

RR Auction closed on the hand‑built exhibit on Tuesday, recording a final bid of $34,375. The project, built when Jobs was a teenager, was a simple electronic display that lit up a series of LEDs in response to sound. The sale coincided with the release of Michael Dell’s memoir, Play Nice But Win, which recounts a 1990s meeting where Jobs pitched Dell on licensing Mac OS X for low‑priced Intel‑based PCs. Dell says the deal fell through, but the anecdote adds a new layer to Jobs’ reputation for high‑stakes negotiations.

The auction that turned a teenage hobby into a cash grab

The artifact was a modest circuit board with a few transistors, a microphone, and a row of LEDs. It was the centerpiece of Jobs’ 1968 science fair entry, a project that earned him a modest prize at the time. RR Auction described the piece as “hand‑built” and highlighted its rarity as one of the few surviving early works by Jobs.

Collectors value the item not for its technical sophistication but for its provenance. The $34,375 price tag reflects a market that rewards anything linked to Jobs, even when the original device performed a simple sound‑to‑light conversion. The sale underscores how the mythic status of Jobs continues to inflate the value of peripheral memorabilia.

Dell’s memoir reveals a missed Mac‑Dell partnership

In Play Nice But Win, Dell recounts meeting Jobs at a computer user group in the early 1990s. Jobs, then CEO of Apple, proposed that Dell license Mac OS X and ship it on Dell’s fast‑selling, low‑priced Intel PCs. Dell says the proposal would have placed a genuine Mac environment on mainstream hardware, a move that could have reshaped the PC market.

The plan never left the conference room. Dell attributes the failure to technical incompatibilities and a cultural clash between Apple’s closed ecosystem and Dell’s open‑hardware model. He also notes that the media has long cast Apple and Dell as arch‑rivals, yet the two executives became friends, with Dell describing Jobs as “a brilliant entrepreneur, a savvy marketer, a dreamer and an idealist.”

The Xerox PARC myth gets a fresh look

A separate debate resurfaces around the claim that Jobs stole the graphical user interface from Xerox PARC in 1979. The story, popularized by early biographies, paints Jobs as a pirate who lifted the mouse, windows, and icons from a research lab that “didn’t understand the revolutionary potential” of its own inventions.

Recent scholarship challenges that narrative. Historians point out chronological errors and conflicting testimony from Apple engineers who say the PARC visit was not the singular revelation the myth suggests. The truth appears messier: Apple was aware of PARC’s work but also pursued parallel research that contributed to the Lisa and Macintosh GUIs. The myth persists because it fits a tidy story of genius copying, but the evidence shows a more collaborative, if competitive, environment.

A pattern of high‑risk bets that never paid off

Both the auctioned science fair project and the aborted Dell partnership illustrate Jobs’ appetite for daring moves. He turned a teenage hobby into a collector’s item, and he once tried to merge Apple’s software with Dell’s hardware at a time when the two ecosystems were worlds apart.

The failed Mac‑Dell deal mirrors other missed opportunities, such as Apple’s early refusal to license its software to other PC makers in the 1990s. Those decisions cemented Apple’s walled‑garden approach but also limited its reach during a critical growth period. The pattern suggests that Jobs’ willingness to gamble did not always produce the expected payoff; sometimes the gamble stayed on the table.

What to watch

Dell’s memoir will likely prompt renewed scrutiny of other undocumented deals Jobs pursued. Analysts should watch for any archival releases from Apple or former executives that detail similar negotiations. In parallel, the market for Jobs‑related memorabilia may expand as auctions continue to surface obscure artifacts. Tracking future auction results and memoir disclosures will reveal whether the legend of Jobs’ bold bets continues to shape both his legacy and the tech industry’s strategic playbook.

Updates

• 2026-09-03 — The Apple Vision Pro was used for a successful hip surgery (source)