Re: Apple ///?

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

In article Marvin Jason Gallop <mgallop@ebicom.net> writes...

>A few months ago, I heard of an Apple 3.  What is it?

     It was Apple's attempt at a business machine (along the lines of
the original IBM PC, which surfaced a year later) and intended to be
the replacement for the Apple II. The Apple III was also created to
keep the company profitable until the "future" of the company was to
be introduced -- the Apple Lisa.

     As things turned out, the Apple III was a miserable failure and
so was the Apple Lisa. Despite that, the Apple II not only kept the
company afloat, but highly profitable too (which came as a surprise
to management at the Apple Computer). Oddly enough, Apple once again
decided to try and replace the Apple II, this time with the Macintosh,
but yet again their new computer didn't do to well and _again_ it was
the Apple II that kept the company afloat and profitable. By the late
80's the Mac was strong enough to stand on it's own though, so this
3rd replacement had worked out. Ironically though, now that Apple has
finally killed off the Apple II, it doesn't look like the company will
have any future. :)

>When did it happen?

    May 1980, although due to many technical glitches, it was officially
re-introduced in December 1981 (chips would literally pop out of the
motherboard, due to excessive heat, one reason for the re-introduction
and it's eventual failure).

>Why haven't I seen it anywhere?

    Mainly because it was a such flop and a short lived computer. They
were only produced for about 3 or 4 years, and quite expensively, so few
people bought them overall. The last model introduced, the Apple III Plus,
came out in December 1983, which was then discontinued in April of 1984.

>What can it do?

    Well it had some nice features built-in. Various ports in back (like
the Apple IIc, IIgs and Macintosh) along with 4 internal expansion slots.
A full ASCII keyboard, internal 5.25" floppy drive, 5-bit sound DAC, color
text, DoubleHiRes-like graphic mode, 256K RAM (expandable to 4 MB, although
only up to 512K was made available), ~2 MHz speed operation, clock/calendar,
RGB video output, etc. It had a _very_ advanced 8-bit OS called "SOS" too,
at least for it's time. It could even emulate an Apple II computer.

    More important was what it can't do. Apple purposely added extra logic
to the motherboard to _prevent_ it's Apple II emulation mode from accessing
the advanced features of the machine. By purposely crippling the product,
this shows just what kind of company Apple Computer is (things didn't change
years later when the Apple IIgs was introduced, it too had things purposely
crippled or left out so to force you to buy them as extras). As for software,
little was really written, other than business applications and productivity
software.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca