A primogenitor was a Apple I, which was a hand-built machine sold to hobbyists. It was never produced inside quantity, however pioneered numerous of the features that would produce the Apple Deuce a profits. A foremost prominent-shell production computer was a Apple Deuce. It became popular sustaining page users, too when now and again existence sold to business users, particularly when a release of the 1st ever spreadsheet on any computer, VisiCalc. Watch a computing timeline for dates of Apple II family model releases – a 1977 Apple Two & its immature sib, a Two +, IIe, IIc & IIGS.

A "II" part of the title was alternately rendered within the kind of originative ways applying punctuation symbols. E.g., a Two & a "unenhanced" IIe was virtually all unremarkably written ][ and ][e, and the IIc and enhanced, platinum IIe models were written as //c, and //e. Eventually, a IIgs & IIc + were rendered in the form when utilized therein article.

History

The original Apple II

A 1st Apple II computers went in low starting in June 5, 1977 with a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor running at Unity MHz, Quadruplet KB of RAM, an audio cassette interface, and a Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs. A streaming video controller displayed Two dozen lines by Forty columns of upper-experience-lone text on the screen, sustaining NTSC composite video output for even display in the monitor, or on the TV placed by way of an RF modulator. Third-persin add-on cards were available for 80-column & lower-example trend lines. Users may save & retrieve software system & informatiin in audio cassettes; more programing language, games, applications & more software were available on cassette as well. A original retail price was $1298 by having 4KB of RAM & $2638 using 48KB of RAM.

Late, an external Five¼-inch floppy disk drive, the Disk 2, using controller card that plugged into one of a computer's slots (ordinarily slot #6), enabled tremendously further ready to h& information storage and retrieval. This disk cause interface created by Steve Wozniak is still look upon an engineering project wonder. the controller card experienced super little devices trend lines, relying in computer software timing loops instead to provide a necessary encryption; a controller too utilized a form of Group Code Recording, which was simpler and extra easygoing to implement inside software program than a more green MFM. That reduced a overall dollars and cents significantly, allowing a number rules price moo plenty for personal users. It as well processed it real life for proprietary software developers to make a media in which their applications shipped strong to copy by utilizing tricks like changing a sale-subordinate sector format or stepping a cause's head between a tracks; all the same, more groups at length sold package like Copy II Plus and Locksmith that could foil such restrictions.

Wozniak's open project & a Apple's multiple slot permitted a wide kind of third-person equipment to expand the capabilities of the machine. Serial controllers, improved display controllers, memory, protective disks, & networking components were available for this formulas within its day. There were as well ape cards, like a Z80 card which permitted the Apple to switch to the Z80 processor and redo a people of software online developed under the CP/M operating system such as the dBase II database and a WordStar word processing program. There was besides the third-person 6809 card with which can dog OS-9 Level One. A Mockingboard sound card greatly improved the audio capabilities of the Apple. Notwithstanding-alleged accelerator boards were yet created which would double or even quadruple a computer's speed.

The family grows

A Apple 2 was sooner or later superseded per Apple II +, which involved a Applesoft BASIC programming language (which added support for swimming-point arithmetic however sacrificed whole number performance around the run) in ROM (antecedently available as an update) & experienced the sum of 48 kilobytes of RAM, expandable to 64 KB across the "language card" that let users quickly switch between "INT" (Integer) & "FP" (Applesoft) idiom of BASIC (however destroying any cursed program in the run). Addition of a language card too enabled the apply of UCSD Pascal and FORTRAN 77 compilers, released for the Apple at that period.

This was followed per Apple IIe around 1982, a dollars and cents-reduced version, that utilized recently chips to reduce a overall component count. It likewise displayed two upper & lowercase letters & got 64 KB of RAM expandable to 128 KB. A IIe may besides display high guide text (Eighty columns) by owning an add-board Lxxx column card. A IIe was probably a virtually all popular Apple Deuce & was widely considered a "workhorse" of the line.

All about a equivalent instance, a computer known as the Apple III was produced. This was marketed to business users & was never successful. Steve Wozniak hwhen been quoted as saying that the Apple Trey got a 100% failure rate.

Apple freed a Apple IIc within Will 1984 billing it as a 1st personal Apple Deuce. It used a updated 65C02 processor & featured built-in trend lines for disk causes, modem, printer, and an 80-column display that mandatory individually sold adapter cards in earliest system. Notwithstanding, due to its compact project, a Apple IIc got limited expandability. A Apple IIc was codenamed a "Lolly" inside certain internal & prerelease documents.

Shortly fallowing introducing a Apple IIc, Apple produced an Enhanced Apple IIe that utilized a 65C02 processor. a final version of the IIe called the Platinum Apple IIe was introduced late; it added the numeral computer keyboard, built within Fourscore column support and utilized the different color of experience from either earliest IIe versions.

A next (& virtually all right) member of a line was the Apple IIGS computer, released in 1986. A DeuceGS featured the Two.Eighter from decatur MHz 65C816 processor with 16-bit registers & Twenty-four-bit addressing, further memory, better color, supplementary computer peripheral (switchable between IIe-style card slots & IIc-style onboard controllers), and the interface from either Mac OS.

A previous Apple Two was a Apple IIc +, introduced around 1988. It wwhen just about a equivalent size as a IIc that precede it, however a Pentad¼" floppy drive was replaced with a 3½" drive, a power supply was moved around (by having a IIc, virtually all of the supply was in an external "brick-on-a-leash"), & sported the convenient 4MHz 65c02 processor. A latter manufactured a IIc + a fastest Apple Deuce out-of-a-pack (add-circuit card accelerators for even earliest system would oftentimes exceed this speed; a IIe & IIc can last when convenient when 10MHz by using a RocketChip accelerator, when a ZipGS may choose a IIGS to 12MHz or sooner).

Inside 1990 the Apple IIe Card, an expansion card for the LC line of Macintosh computers was released. the card was basically a miniaturized, fully expanded Apple IIe. This enabled a Macintosh to redo Octonary-bit Apple II package while forgoing any conflicts, so aiding a dying of the Apple II line.

Apple's Macintosh line of products eclipsed Apple Deuce sales in 1986. Apple continued to sell & trend lines a DeuceGS until 1992-1993, largely due to their have within schools. Apple did trend lines a IIe into 1996 however, due to many cd game systems existence according to a equivalent chip when a IIe, virtually all notably a NES, allowing for even more comfortable researching of gage code in the IIe than on the PC or Mack.

Clones
Rather a IBM PC, a Apple Two was oftentimes cloned, each in the United States and abroad. Based on data from a internet site http://www.Apple2Clones.com, there are 181 known clones inside being.

All a same, the Ace series of Apple II clones from either Franklin Computer Corporation are a better known & experienced the virtually all lasting impact, when Franklin copied Apple's ROMs & software package & freely admitted to doing thus. Franklin's argument: the computer's ROM was only the pattern of switches fast into the fixed position, & of these just can not copyright the pattern of switches. Apple fought Franklin for astir 5 years for its clones off a market, & was in the end successful. A company later on freed non-infringing however less-compatible clones.

Apple besides challenged VTech's Laser 128, an enhanced clone of the Apple IIc first freed inside 1984. This legal challenge proved abortive, because VTech got reverse-engineered a Monitor ROMs like than copying the babies, & experienced licensed the Applesoft ROM from either its author, Microsoft. Implausibly, Apple experienced neglected to obtain privilege to the Applesoft accent of BASIC from either Microsoft. A Laser 128 proved popular & remained on the market for numbers of years, two inside its original form & within enhanced versions that ran sooner than I MHz. Although it wasn't fully compatible using a Apple 2, it was popular sufficiency that virtually all developers make a point their software package ran on the Optical maser. Because it was oft sold via mail choose & mass-merchant retail merchant like Sears, the Optical maser 128 might stand affected on line-low-priced contender like Commodore Business Machines as much as it did Apple.

When a 1st Apple II clones were usually accurate copies of their Apple counterparts, late clones tended to use at times more capabilities additionally to undercutting Apple's price. An early Franklin model, the Ace Yard, sported a numeral computer keyboard & lower-outbreak yearn prior to these features were added to the Apple IIe. A Laser 128 series is periodically credited by using forcing Apple to release a Apple IIc + (a built-constitutional Threesome.Five" drive and accelerated processor were features Laser had pioneered).

Apple II media
The Disk II floppy drive used 5¼-inch floppy disks. The first disk operating systems for the Apple II were DOS 3.1 and DOS 3.2, which stored 113.75 KiB on each disk. After about two years, DOS 3.3 was introduced, storing 140 KiB thanks to a minor hardware change on the disk controller. The user community discontinued use of DOS 3.2 except for running legacy software. A program called MUFFIN was provided with DOS 3.3 to allow users to copy files from DOS 3.2 disks to DOS 3.3 disks.

A DOS 3.3 disk was formatted with 35 tracks of data; each track contained 16 sectors (DOS 3.2 only had 13 sectors), and each sector stored 256 bytes of data. Tracks 0, 1, and most of track 2 were reserved to store DOS 3.3 itself, and track 17 was reserved for the directory (track 17 was chosen because it was located in the middle of the 35-track disk to reduce the average seek time to the frequently-used directory track.)

Most game publishers did not include DOS 3.3 on their floppy disks; they wrote their own boot loaders and read-only file systems to consume a minimum amount of space on disk.

Some manufacturers shipped floppy drives that could write 40 tracks to most 5¼-inch disks, yielding 160 KiB of storage per disk, but the format did not catch on widely, and no known software was published on 40-track media.

Later Apple IIs could use 3½-inch disks with a total capacity of 800 KB. DOS 3.3 did not support these drives natively; third-party software was required, and disks larger than about 400 KB had to be split up into multiple "virtual disk volumes." ProDOS, a 1983 descendent of the Apple ///'s SOS, quickly became the Apple II operating system of choice thanks to its native support of volumes up to 32 MB in size (and the fact that AppleWorks required it). Less common in the early days were Apple II computers outfitted with an Apple Profile hard drive, which had a total capacity of 5 MiB. Later, Apple and other companies introduced SCSI and IDE interface cards and larger hard drives; a popular early third-party model was the Sider, from First Class Peripherals, which offered 10 MB for a then-incredible $695.

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.

One unusual homage to the Apple II is an XScreenSaver "hack" named "bsod". The bsod screensaver duplicates the appearance of computer crash screens for various operating systems (including the Windows blue screen of death, for which it is named). In the case of the Apple II, the screensaver actually emulates the CRT display used back then, so the screen will appear to twitch as text blocks turn on and off. Another module, called "Apple2" shows a working Apple II being used to type and run three different BASIC programs, also with CRT emulation and even typos (or "syntax errors").

Industry impact

It is difficult to estimate the enormous 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 many 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 computer platform. The Apple II'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 hardware products that let users build systems that were far more powerful and useful (at a lower cost) than would have occurred if Apple had kept its system fully proprietary. Apple decided not to create an open architecture with the initial Macintosh models, and this is widely seen as having hobbled its potential success. Meanwhile, IBM had created its IBM PC with an open architecture, which spurred it to success, though in the end its off-the-shelf, open architecture allowed clones to be manufactured by startup competitors such as Compaq, Dell, Gateway, and countless others, leading eventually to IBM's abandonment of the personal computer business (selling its PC division) in 2005.