Facts - Mac History

Apple I at the Computer History Museum

Apple I

The original Apple Computer, also known retroactively as the Apple I, or Apple-1, is a personal computer released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. They were designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak. Wozniak’s friend Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer. The Apple I was Apple’s first product, and to finance its creation, Jobs sold his only means of transportation, a VW van and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500. It was demonstrated in July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California.

The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 at a price of US$666.66, because Wozniak “liked repeating digits” and because they originally sold it to a local shop for $500 plus a one-third markup. About 200 units were produced. Unlike other hobbyist computers of its day, which were sold as kits, the Apple I was a fully assembled circuit board containing about 60+ chips. However, to make a working computer, users still had to add a case, power supply transformers, power switch, ASCII keyboard, and composite video display. An optional board providing a cassette interface for storage was later released at a cost of $75.

Introductory advertisement for the Apple I Computer

The Apple I’s built-in computer terminal circuitry was distinctive. All one needed was a keyboard and an inexpensive television set. Competing machines such as the Altair 8800 generally were programmed with front-mounted toggle switches and used indicator lights (red LEDs, most commonly) for output, and had to be extended with separate hardware to allow connection to a computer terminal or a teletypewriter machine. This made the Apple I an innovative machine for its day. In April 1977 the price was dropped to $475. It continued to be sold through August 1977, despite the introduction of the Apple II in April 1977, which began shipping in June of that year. Apple dropped the Apple I from its price list by October 1977, officially discontinuing it.

As Wozniak was the only person who could answer most customer support questions about the computer, the company offered Apple I owners discounts and trade-ins for Apple IIs to persuade them to return their computers, contributing to their scarcity. In 1976, Concord High School Junior Wai Lee assembled one of the first 12 Apple Is (no serial number), the first Apple Computer in an aluminum housing.

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Apple I – Collector’s item

As of 2012, less than 50 Apple I computers (with only six in working order) are believed to exist, making it a very rare collector’s item.

An Apple I reportedly sold for $50,000 USD at auction in 1999.
A unit was sold in September 2009 for $17,000 on eBay.
A unit was sold on March 23, 2010 for $42,766 on eBay.
In November 2010, an Apple I with serial number 82 sold for £133,250 ($210,000) at Christie’s auction house in London. The high price was likely due to the rare documents and packaging offered in the sale in addition to the computer, including the original packaging (with the return label showing Steve Jobs’ parents’ address, the original Apple Computer Inc ‘headquarters’ being their garage), a personally typed and signed letter from Jobs (answering technical questions about the computer), and the original invoice showing ‘Steven’ as the salesman. The computer was brought to Polytechnic University of Turin where it was fixed and used to run the BASIC programming language.
On June 15 2012, a working Apple I was sold at auction by Sotheby’s for a record $374,500, more than double the expected price.
In October 2012, another (very early – Serial number 22) Apple I in a Christie´s auction found no bidder who was willing to pay the starting price of 80.000 GBP.
On November 24, 2012, a working Apple I was sold at auction by Auction Team Breker for € 400,000

Auction Team Breker Original »Apple 1 Computer«, 1976
Source:

Apple I. (2012, June 26). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 02:21, July 9, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apple_I&oldid=499416018

This article is published under the GNU General Public License

Apple II

CPU

CPU: MOS Technology 6502

CPU Speed: 1 MHz

FPU: none

Bus Speed: 1 MHz

Data Path: 8 bit

ROM: 12 kB

RAM slots: 1st expansion slot can be used

Expansion Slots: 8 proprietary

Video

Max Resolution: 6 color at 280×192, 4-bit color at 40×48

Storage

Floppy Drive: optional

Input / Output

Serial: optional expansion card

Speaker: mono

Miscellaneous

Floppy Drive: optional

Codename: ?

Introduced: 1977

Terminated: 1980

The Apple II (often written as Apple ][ or Apple //) was the first mass produced microcomputer product, manufactured by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.). It was among the first home computers on the market, and became one of the most recognizable and successful. In terms of ease of use, features and expandability the Apple II was a major technological advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I, a limited production bare circuit board computer for electronics hobbyists which pioneered many features that made the Apple II a commercial success. Introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire in 1977, the Apple II was among the first successful personal computers and responsible for launching the Apple company into a successful business. Throughout the years a number of different models were introduced and sold, with the most popular model manufactured having relatively 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.

Throughout the 1980s and much of the 1990s, the Apple II was the de facto standard computer in American education; some of them are still operational in classrooms today. The Apple II was popular with business users as well as with families and schools, particularly after the release of the popular spreadsheet, VisiCalc, which initially ran only on the Apple II.

The original Apple II operating system was only the built-in BASIC interpreter contained in ROM. Apple DOS was added to support the diskette drive; the last version was “Apple DOS 3.3”. Apple DOS was superseded by ProDOS to support a hierarchical filesystem and larger storage devices. With an optional Z80 based expansion card the Apple II could even run the popular Wordstar and dBase software under the CP/M operating system. At the height of its evolution, towards the late 1980s, the platform had the graphical look of a hybrid of the Apple II and Macintosh with the introduction of the Apple IIGS. By 1992, the platform featured 16-bit processing capabilities, a mouse driven Graphical User Interface and graphic and sound capabilities far beyond the original.
After years of focus on Apple’s Macintosh product line, it finally eclipsed the Apple II series in the early 1990s. Even after the introduction of the Macintosh, the Apple II had remained Apple’s primary revenue source for years: the Apple II and its associated community of third-party developers and retailers were once a billion-dollar-a-year industry. The Apple IIGS model was sold through to the end of 1992. The Apple IIe model was removed from the product line on October 15, 1993, ending an era.

Source:
Apple II series. (2008, October 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11:54, October 12, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apple_II_series&oldid=244519623

This article is published under the GNU General Public License