Alex Jason’s Apple Orchard
Alex Jason used money from lawn mowing to build an
impressive collection of rare and historical Apple devices—
all before his freshman year in high school. He dreamed
of filling his basement with personal computing artifacts,
which he called Alex’s Apple Orchard, a cornerstone of
a technology museum about 20 miles north of Augusta,
Maine, the state capital.
He formed a 501(c) nonprofit, gathered an impres-
sive board of directors that included Mac designer Jerry
Manock, and even had the building all picked out. With
Alex’s story attracting global attention, raising the capital
to start a museum seemed easy.
But fund-raising in sparsely populated Maine
proved harder than imagined. Bill Jason, Alex’s father,
had quit his job to help his son pursue his dream, but
the loss of income was starting to wear on the family. In
November 2016, Alex packed a 26-foot truck and made
the heartbreaking trip to deliver his collection to its new
owner, Lonnie Mimms, who had agreed to purchase it.
That could have been the end of the story for Alex’s
Apple Orchard. Yet, the seeds for a new orchard have been
planted, and the dream of a museum is far from dead.
The First Seed
The story began for Alex when he was searching for his
first computer and came across an iMac G5 on Craigslist.
The computer was supposed to be for homework and
playing games. He arranged to trade his minibike and
snowblower for the Mac.
Alex is a tinkerer who helped his dad change oil
in the family tractor and took apart mechanical pencils
to study how the graphite was fed through the shaft. He
wanted to see how his new Mac computer worked and
whether he could make it more powerful.
The Mac’s closed architecture made it hard to tinker
with, however, so Alex began seeking out older Apple
computers to pull apart. “I just wanted a nice computer,”
Alex said. “But I realized these computers are being
thrown away. That’s kind of how it snowballed. I wanted to
build a collection, share it online, and create a museum.”
Most of his initial acquisitions came from his home
state. One purchase of 10 computers included an Apple III
and an unusual joystick that turned out to be a prototype.
Intrigued by the rarity of some of these items, Alex began
to research them. For one birthday, his father gave Alex a
clear plastic prototype mouse he found on eBay.
Soon father and son were attending vintage
computer shows where they met other collectors and
ex-Apple engineers, who appreciated Alex’s passion and
were willing to give him Apple mementos that were just
collecting dust in their basements.
By the time the Orchard had grown to 55 pieces,
Alex began thinking about opening a museum. “I didn’t
really know where this was going at first,” Bill said.
“He started mowing lawns in the neighborhood to buy
more computers and then more computers. I [am]
proud he found a passion and ran with it. My job is to
be copilot. Now, I’ve given up my passion, cycling, to
do this with him.”
The collection began to fill out the 1,000-square-
foot basement of the family home. Alex found more
and more prototypes, many encased in clear plastic,
including a Color Classic, Powerbooks, and Newtons. He
even acquired a bound original copy of Steve Wozniak’s
WOZPAK, the coding notes for the Apple II — Apple’s first
mass-produced computer that put the brand on the map.
Some items of the collection were so rare that
the Jasons couldn’t safely keep them with the rest of the
collection. For example, Alex possessed an Apple I,
the computer that founders Jobs and Wozniak built by
hand. Fewer than 200 sold, and only about 60 have
surfaced, some recently selling at auction for as much as
$800,000. The Jasons bought it from another collector
for an undisclosed amount, though Bill Jason said they
insured it for $700,000. Alex’s unit, a keyboard adapted
to a briefcase, had all original chips that still worked.
Museum Momentum
A private school in Fairfield, Maine, contacted Bill Jason
in 2016 and donated a vacant building that was once a
Carnegie Library to serve as a home for the collection.
But Alex had a bigger vision than just putting his items
on display. He and his father drew up plans for a Maine
Technology Museum, which would be home to Alex’s
Apple Orchard but would also have wings that featured
virtual reality, robotics, and interactive STEM (science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics) activities.
They secured nonprofit status and a board of
directors that included Manock and inventor Chuck
Colby, the founder of a third-party vendor that manu-
factured Macintosh-compatible portables. Manock lived
in nearby Vermont but frequently traveled to Maine to
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