This is the kind of thing that doesn't exist any more in today's world.
These days, you'd have all sorts of regulatory and legal hurdles: you'd need certification for wireless parts, you'd need to invest a significant amount of time in protecting your IP (trademarks), and you'd probably get a fair number of aggressive patent challenges.
You can't just make something and take it to a shop and get it sold to people any more.
First of all, this "unregulated nirvana" you speak of has not existed for over 100 years. There are lots of garage start-ups to this day that have turned out a few millionaires. This I know first hand.
When you become successful, the bullies that run the playground show up to see if you can fight back and be part of the club. This is just another part of business and why tech wusses grow old in coffee shops saying they were cheated while they never had the fight to keep their ground. This is good old survival of the fittest and not smartest.
There were plenty of regulations and legal issues back in the 1976-era electronics industry. It took a decade or so for the rest of the world to catch up with boy wonders turned millionaires making personal computers. One reason why Steve and Steve originally sold the Apple I as a kit was to bypass existing regulations and the cost of test and certification.
While everyone celebrates Steve and Steve, Mike Markkula (an established millionaire) really put fuel into the Apple machine taking care of overhead such as regulatory compliance, accounting, taxes and other legal rudiments. 'Til Mike showed, up Steve and Steve were just another pair of techie hippies that had a good idea for a personal computer along with hundreds of other similar ventures all over the country. Steve and Steve had the classic right place, right time where everyone else was underfunded and forgotten about in the pages of history.
In 1976, Underwriters Laboratory had carte blanche as the de facto consumer electronics safety certification recognized by the Fed and other government bodies. Issue was that in 1976, UL did not have a classification for personal computers. One reason why monitors and the CPU with keyboard were sold separately in the Apple ][ was one passed UL test as a "television" and the other as a "electric typewriter".
Then the money came in. Steve Jobs investors got him on the cover it Time and the rest is history.