Apple II family

The Apple II family was the first series of microcomputers made by Apple Computer, in the late 1970s and early-to-mid 1980s. Completely different from Apple's later Macintosh computers, the Apple II was a predominantly 8-bit architecture.

The progenitor was the Apple I, which was a hand-built machine sold to hobbyists. It was never produced in quantity, but pioneered many of the features making the Apple II a success. The first large-scale production computer was the Apple II. It became popular with home users, as well as occasionally being sold to business users, particularly after the release of the first ever spreadsheet on any computer, VisiCalc. See the computing timeline for dates of Apple II family model releases: the 1977 Apple II, and its younger siblings, the II Plus, IIe, IIc and IIGS.

Table of contents

1 History

1.1 The original Apple II
1.2 The Family Grows
1.3 Life After Death

2 Impact
3 See also
4 External links

History

The original Apple II

The first Apple II came with a MOS Technologies 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, an audio cassette interface, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. The video controller displayed 24 lines by 40 columns of upper-case-only text on the screen, with NTSC composite video output for display on a monitor, or on a TV set by way of an RF modulator. Users could save and retrieve programs and data on audio cassettes; other programming languages, games, applications and other software were available on cassette too.

Later, an external 5¼" floppy disk drive, the Disk II, with controller card that plugged into one of the computer's slots, enabled much more convenient data storage and retrieval. This disk drive interface created by Steve Wozniak is still regarded as an engineering design marvel. The controller card had very little hardware support, relying on software timing loops instead to provide the necessary encoding; the controller also used a form of Group Code Recording, which was simpler and easier to implement in software than the more common MFM. That reduced the overall cost significantly, leaving the total system price low enough for home users. It also made it easy for proprietary software developers to make the media on which their applications shipped hard to copy by using tricks such as changing the low-level sector format or even stepping the drive's head between the tracks; however, other groups eventually sold software such as Copy II Plus and Locksmith that could foil such restrictions.

Wozniak's open design and the Apple's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices to expand the capabilities of the machine. Serial controllers, improved display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, and networking components were available for this system in its day. There were also emulator cards, such as the Z80 card which permitted the Apple to switch to the Z80 processor and run a multitude of programs developed under the CP/M operating system such as the dBase II database and the WordStar word processing program. There was also a third-party 6809 card with which one could run OS-9 Level One. The Mockingboard sound card greatly improved the audio capabilities of the Apple. Even so-called accelerator boards were eventually created which would double or quadruple the computer's speed.

The Family Grows

The Apple II was eventually superseded by the Apple II Plus, that included the Applesoft BASIC programming language (which added support for floating-point arithmetic but sacrificed integer performance in the process) in ROM (previously available as an upgrade) and had a total of 48 kilobytes of RAM, expandable to 64 KB through a "language card" that let users quickly switch between "INT" (Integer) and "FP" (Applesoft) dialects of BASIC (but destroying any unsaved program in the process). Addition of the language card also enabled the use of UCSD Pascal and FORTRAN 77 compilers, released for the Apple at that time.

This was followed by the Apple IIe, a cost-reduced version, that used newer chips to reduce the overall component count. It also displayed both upper and lowercase letters and had 64 KB of RAM expandable to 128 KB. The IIe could also display high resolution text (80 columns) with an add-in 80 column card. The IIe was probably the most popular Apple II and was widely considered the "workhorse" of the line.

About the same time, a computer called the Apple III was produced. This was marketed to business users and was never successful. Steve Wozniak has been quoted as saying that the Apple III had a 100% failure rate.

Apple later produced their first portable Apple II called the Apple IIc. It used the updated 65C02 processor and featured onboard controllers for common devices such as disk drives, modems, etc., that previously required adapter cards. However, due to its compact design, the Apple IIc had limited expandability. Apple later licensed accelerator technology from Zip Technologies to produce the 4 MHz Apple IIc+, which also had a built-in 3.5" floppy drive in place of the older 5.25". The Apple IIc was codenamed the "Lolly" in certain internal and prerelease documents.

Apple IIc

Shortly after introducing the Apple IIc, Apple produced an Enhanced Apple IIe that used the 65C02 processor. A final version of the IIe known as the Platinum Apple IIe was introduced later; it added a numeric keypad and used a different color of case from earlier IIe versions.

The final member of the line was the Apple IIGS computer, released in 1986. The IIGS featured a 2.8 MHz 65C816 processor with 16-bit registers, larger address space with more memory, better color, more peripherals (switchable between IIe-style card slots and IIc-style onboard controllers), and a user interface derived from Mac OS.

Apple's Macintosh product line eclipsed Apple II sales around 1986. Apple did continue to sell and support the IIe and IIGS until 1992-1993, largely due to their use in schools.

Life After Death

Nowadays, even a PC running Microsoft Windows can emulate the important Apple II models with emulator software such as AppleWin by copying the disk through a serial line. However emulators cannot run software on copy-restricted media unless somebody "cracks," or removes the copy restrictions from, the software. Numerous disk images for Apple II software are available free over the Internet. There is a movement afoot to convince the copyright holders of classic Apple II software to officially allow unrestricted free distribution of their software.

Impact

It is difficult to estimate the gigantic impact that the Apple II family of computers has had on world business and, especially, the technology industry. The Apple II was the first computer that most people had ever seen, and it was affordable for middle-class families. Its popularity enabled the entire computer game market; the educational software market; a boom in the word processor and computer printer market; and the absolute "killer app" for business: VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet. VisiCalc alone sold many Apple II's to all kinds of business people. On the other hand, the success in the home market inspired the creation of many other inexpensive home computers such as the VIC-20 (1980) and Commodore 64 (1982), which through their significantly lower price point introduced computers to several million more home users (grabbing some of Apple's market share in the process).

The success of the Apple II also goaded IBM to create the IBM PC, which was then purchased by middle managers in all lines of business in order to run spreadsheet and word processor software (which at first was ported from the Apple II versions, and later inspired whole new application software franchises). The strong popularity of these PCs and their clones then transformed business again with LAN applications such as e-mail and the later use of PCs to access the USENET and the WWW.

One valuable lesson from the first Apple II computers was the importance of an open architecture to a particular platform. The computer's slots, allowing any peripheral card to take control of the bus, enabled an independent industry of card manufacturers who together created a flood of products that let users build systems that were far more powerful and useful (at a lower cost) than could possibly have occurred if Apple had kept its system proprietary. Apple failed to create an open architecture with the initial Macintosh models, and this is widely seen as having hobbled its potential success. IBM did create its IBM PC with an open architecture, which helped its wild success, though in the end IBM was unable to control the creation of clones, and has been eclipsed by competitors such as Dell, Compaq/Hewlett-Packard, and Gateway.