First Light

First Light is a living Apple-1 for Apple’s 50th anniversary — a native Mac app where the 1976 machine’s circuit board is visible chip-by-chip, peripherals connect by drag-and-drop, and a real cycle-counted 6502 emulation runs the original software: the Woz Monitor, Integer BASIC, and the era cassette catalog.
Github

Features

• The board rendered from the original fabrication gerbers — every chip socketed, pullable, and failing the way real hardware fails
• Real cycle-counted 6502 emulation (fake6502) with the authentic 60-cps terminal
• A cassette deck that plays each tape’s actual bytes as bit-true ACI audio — flip on real-time loads to live the full 1976 wait
• The era software library: Integer BASIC, Hamurabi, Mini-Startrek, Lunar Lander, Mastermind, Blackjack (recovered from an original 1976 tape), Microchess, the Dis-Assembler, Extended Monitor — plus modern homebrew (15 Puzzle, 2048, APPLE 30TH, Mandelbrot 65, and our own APPLE 50TH)
• A Sanyo-style monitor with working knobs (V-HOLD included), Metal CRT shader, phosphor persistence, detachable into its own window
• Drag-and-drop assembly: power, keyboard, display, and the Apple Cassette Interface — the machine only runs with what you’ve connected
• The 6800 “what-if” processor swap, a ⌘K command palette that types 1976 syntax for you, guided tutorials, and a gallery of real surviving Apple-1s
• Record your own cassettes: wozmon-format text plus a bit-true .wav a real Apple-1 could load

Download

Requires macOS 15 or later.

brew install --cask d4rkwyng/tap/first-light

Or grab the notarized app from Releases.

Media

Release Notes

• 1.0.0 (6 July 2026)
  • First public release (developed June–July 2026): the full bench — board, monitor, keyboard, cassette deck
  • Era cassette catalog machine-verified end-to-end, incl. Blackjack recovered from an original 1976 tape
  • Signed, notarized, and on Homebrew