Re: What is the quintessential Apple II?

["Tempest" <tempest@atariprotos.com>]

Personally I think it's the Enhanced IIe.  Not only is it capable of
running all the software out there (including the IIe only games), but
it looks great with a DuoDisk and AppleColor Composite Monitor on top
of it.  Of course I'm a little biased since the IIe was my first Apple
II (I still run my original system to this day).

I never liked the way the II+ looked.  Maybe it's that big ugly power
light on the keyboard?  I also never liked the Platinum IIe since it
didn't match the other Apple II peripherals (it always looked "funny"
to me).



On Jan 8, 2:28 pm, "N.N. Thayer" <nntha...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I ran across a photo set of someone's platinum IIe, and they had
> referred to it as "the quintessential Apple II."  The platinum //e
> epitomizes Wozniak's creed of chip reduction - it has the fewest chips
> of any Apple II, although some of them are custom, not-off-the-shelf
> units.  It has a built-in numeric keypad, which some might say the II
> should've had from the start, but at the same time, not everyone used
> their computers for programming or heavy data input, and it raised
> production costs (granted, not so much by 1987, when Apple had
> economies of scale).  Seems to me the chief idea behind the II was to
> build as you like.  The platinum IIe was also introduced during the
> latter half of the II line's life cycle.
>
> Personally I think the Apple II+, while not the seller in sheer numbers
> that the IIe was, fits the bill a little better.  It came at the height
> of Apple's influence over the computer industry as a whole, not just in
> educational or desktop publishing markets.  According to Woz, from
> 1980-1982 it was the best-selling personal computer worldwide; games
> and many apps were written first and foremost for the Apple II
> platform.  Any microcomputer mag from that period reinforces this,
> especially Computer Gaming World.  It had the basics that you'd expect
> from a modern II - Autostart, the full color palette in hi-res, plus
> plenty of ways to bring it close to IIe-level functionality if you
> wanted to.
>
> Discuss!  It's a fun exploratory question if nothing else, I'm sure we
> all have different criteria.