Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 92% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Wozniak: Memory to store a single song cost nearly $1M initially

Steve Wozniak · a16z Podcast: Best Clips of 2022 · Dec 27, 2022 · at 27:03

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak discusses memory cost constraints in early computing compared to modern handheld devices with thousands of stored songs.

0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 9.0s

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“The amount of memory that would hold a song Haas. You know, we were back in the days of tape. It cost about a million dollars, a good fraction of a million dollars.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

When Apple was founded in the late 1970s, the amount of digital computer memory required to store a single song cost roughly one million dollars.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Steve Wozniak claimed that when Apple was founded in 1976, the digital computer memory required to store a single song cost roughly a million dollars or a good fraction of a million dollars. Historical hardware pricing data from 1976 indicates that static RAM cost between $23,040 and $48,960 per megabyte. Storing a standard uncompressed audio track (30 MB to 40 MB) in RAM in 1976 would have cost between $690,000 and $1,958,400, directly straddling the $1 million mark. Even compressed audio files (3 MB to 10 MB) would have cost between $69,000 and $489,600, satisfying his phrasing of 'a good fraction of a million dollars'.

Apple was founded on April 1, 1976.
In 1976, RAM pricing ranged from $23,040 to $48,960 per MB according to historical hardware datasets compiled by John C. McCallum.
Storing a 30 MB to 40 MB uncompressed song in 1976 RAM cost between $690,000 and $1,958,400.

Checked against

[1] mac-history.net [2] wikimedia.org [3] uspto.gov [4] uspto.gov [5] codeguppy.com

cost of RAM per megabyte late 1970s 1976 1977 1978 "Steve Wozniak" "million dollars" song memory Apple founded historical cost of computer memory per megabyte 1976 1977 1978 "cost of memory" OR "cost per megabyte" 1976 OR 1977 OR 1978 OR "1970s" RAM OR memory

assessed as of 2026-07-31

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Mentioned

Apple memory

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