Apple II (1977)
In 1977, Apple made a splash on the world stage by ushering in the Apple II, one of the world's first personal computers. In the period between the Apple II's release and IBM's debut of the first IBM PC in 1981, Apple ruled the personal computer industry.
After Wozniak had finished the design on the Apple-1, he had already conceived of enhancements that would make his computer faster and more useful. He desired to make it display in color. He acted to unite the terminal and memory functions of the Apple-1 by transferring the display into main memory, permitting fast screen changes. Wozniak added additional features that he felt were meaningful for a computer that was functional, one that he would want to have.
Since the 6502 processor could handle a total of 64K of memory, he configured the computer with the power to use either 4K RAM chips, or the newer 16K RAM chips. The first Apple II's came standard with 4K of memory, and additional could be added, to a maximum of 48K (if using the 16K chips). Specially wired strapping blocks connected to the motherboard told the Apple II how much memory was available and where it was.
Introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977, the Apple II was one of the first successful personal computers and responsible for building the Apple company into a prosperous business. The Apple II was fashioned to look more like a home appliance than a piece of electronic equipment. This was a computer that wouldn't look out of place in the home, on a manager's desk or in a schoolroom. The lid popped easily off the beige plastic case without the use of tools, permitting access to the computer's internals, including the motherboard with eight expansion slots, and a lay out of random access memory (RAM) sockets.
The original Apple II operating system was simply the built-in BASIC interpreter contained in ROM; In terms of ease of use, features and expandability the Apple II was a better technological advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I, a limited production bare circuit board computer for electronics hobbyists which initiated many features that made the Apple II a commercial success.
Throughout the 1980s and a good deal of the 1990s, the Apple II was the common computer in American education. A few of them are still operating in classrooms today. The Apple II was also popular with business users in addition to families, especially after the 1979 release of the popular spreadsheet, VisiCalc, which initially ran only on the Apple II. Throughout the years several different models were introduced and sold, with the most popular model fabricated having comparatively minor changes even into the 1990s. By the end of its production in 1993, somewhere between five and six million Apple II series computers (including approximately 1.25 million Apple IIGS models) had been produced.
Velocity Guide is a site covering advances in High Speed Internet technology, as well as advances in modern computers -- both Microsoft and Apple.