In 1977, the Cupertino, California, company released its first consumer computer, the Apple II, a glorious wedge of beige plastic designed by Steve Wozniak. The first print ad for the Apple II ran in a December issue of Byte magazine, which featured a fantastic Star Trek cover, by the way.

This is the first page of advertising ever pumped out by Steve Jobs' nascent tech giant:

Note the photo of an apple hanging on the kitchen wall, and the woman who appears to be making a fruit salad with apples. Apple introduced itself with the slogan "A is for Apple."

And very early on, the company was savvy about developing a culture, a lifestyle, a look. This guy could pass for an Apple hipster today.

Other ads touted the specs. Up to 48K bytes of RAM! Fifteen colors! This was rather mind blowing at the time. Note the cassette tapes.

As Apple was not quite ready for celebrities like U2 and Coldplay to push its products, it instead relied on some founding fathers.

Big takeaway from this ad: The Apple II cost about $2,500. That's approximately $9,500 in today's cash. And some think $749 for a smartphone thousands of times more powerful in your pocket is steep. Apple also played with its name, as in this Adam in Eden ad.

Six years after this, Apple would make its revolutionary leap with the Macintosh.

Of course, it wasn't all gold and glory. The less said about the Newton…

…and the Lisa, the better.