The post (linked below) was written by Andy Hertzfeld, a member of the team that built the original Macintosh. In it he discusses the spirit and culture of the team behind the Macintosh. The website has a lot of interesting stories from Apple’s early days.

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_Macintosh_Spirit.txt&sortOrder=Sort+by+Date&characters=Steve+Jobs

For some insights into the very beginning, here’s a long interview with Steve Wozniak:
http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html

From what I can tell, Apple started out by building something that computer enthusiasts really wanted: an affordable computer that they could write programs on. Then two of those enthusiasts went and built a killer app (VisiCalc) that made the Apple II desirable to “mere mortals”. That was the critical point – it went from technical novelty to must have because VisiCalc made it useful – not fun, not interesting but useful – to a very large number of people (subsequent apps and the introduction of the GUI made Apple’s computers useful and appealing to even more people).

Here’s an excerpt from the link above: “[Woz] In the Homebrew Computer Club, we felt it was going to affect every home in the country. But we felt it for the wrong reasons. We felt that everybody was technical enough to really use it and write their own programs and solve their problems that way. Even when we started Apple, we had very mistaken ideas about where the market was going to be to be that big. We didn’t foresee the VisiCalc spreadsheet. “

And here’s a video clip of Steve Jobs stating that VisiCalc helped propel the Apple II computer to success: http://www.bricklin.com/jobs96.htm