Re: The Apple II, 20 years later...

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford) writes...

>In article <19JUN199705515893@vax2.concordia.ca>,
>Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:
>>    Since everyone seems to have forgotten, this very month marks the
>>20th anniversary of the Apple II computer! June 1977 (not sure of the
>>exact day) was when Apple Computer began shipping the product. Apple
>>may no longer manufacture, sell, support or even remember it, but it's
>>nice to know there are still many of us still using the machine (in
>>some form or another) to this day.
> 
>The Apple II Guide (an Apple publication) says that the II first appeared
>in April '77 at the West Coast Computer Faire. 

    True, but remember this was just Woz and Jobs (and a few others who 
made up Apple) demonstrating a pre-production machine at an electronics
show. No one owned Apple II's then and you couldn't buy one to take home
with you, it was more like a "coming soon" type of thing to show off.

>It says June was when it became widely available. So I'd say April is 
>more like the anniversary myself.

    I read that Apple had shipped Apple II motherboards in April, but it
wasn't until June that they shipped the final thing all in one box. June
is closer to the official launch date, with April being the unofficial
release (I wonder how many people would have bought just a logic board,
and if the general public could even order them. Maybe it was just a few
selected bunch?).

    By the same token, I consider January 1984 the anniversary of the Mac,
even though I know there were prototypes boards and pre-production boxes 
floating around months before then.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca