Re: What killed the Apple III

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

In article bobm@solaris-2.Armstrong.EDU (Bob Matthews) writes...
> 
>	I assume they don't mean that nearly 100% failed to work!  What
>(or who) killed the Apple III?  Was it the introduction of the 
>PC?  A wretched design?

	Yes, _nearly all_ Apple III computers shipped were plagued with
some kind of problem! Some suffered from non-working keyboards, others
had DRAMs that would literally pop-out of their sockets when things
got hot. Motherboards had defects, etc, etc. It was Apple Computer's
first attempt at designing a totally new machine since the Apple ][;
obviously they stumbled trying to get the Apple III out the door. All
these flaws forced Apple to re-introduce the Apple III a year or so 
later, though by that time IBM had gotten a head-start on Apple. This 
was the first nail in it's coffin.

	Also the Apple III was made to be backwards compatible with the
Apple II, so it's design had limitions (140k drives, 8-bit proccessor).
The biggest mistake was Apple's dislike of the II...even back then! 
They purposely crippled Apple II emulation so it couldn't take advantage
of the advanced features of the ///. For this reason, much of the great
business software available for the II would not run on the /// -- and
it was a while before useful III-specific business software was released.

..The Apple III line was discontinued in the Spring of 1984 FYI. Don't 
think it did too well in sales, I know the Apple II and Macintosh certainly
outsold it a decade ago.

Mitchell Spector
m_spect@pavo.concordia.ca / spector@vax2.concordia.ca