Re: Apple model history?

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

wcbland@pacifier.com (Bill Bland) wrote:

>I've found many Macintosh books that list the various Models, but I
>haven't seen a chronological listing of the Apple series. As a newbie,
>I'd like to know where my IIGS fits in the Apple lineage. Is there
>such a listing anywhere on the Web?

The IIGS came out after the Mac Plus and before the Mac II.

At that time, the IIGS had a color GUI while the Mac did not.
The IIGS had an Apple desktop bus for keyboard and mice
while the Mac did not.  The IIGS had more memory expansion
capability that the Mac.  The IIGS had a real synthesizer
sound chip.  It had slots.

Many of these features made their way into the Mac later
starting with the Mac II which had slots, a color GUI, and
ADB for keyboard and mice.  But the Mac Plus looked
pretty bland compared to the IIGS for a time and even
after the Mac II came out, it was also ten times more
expensive than the IIGS.  While the Mac II was powerful
for its time and did much of what the IIGS did but did it
on steroids, there was one thing it still did not have.  The
IIGS still had better sound.  In fact, for several years the
IIGS had the best sound of any personal computer thanks
to the Ensoniq wavetable synthesizer chip.

Chronological listing:

1977
Apple I
Apple II
Apple II+
1983
Apple IIe
1984
Apple IIc
Apple IIe Enhanced
1986
Apple IIGS ROM 0
Apple IIGS ROM 1
Apple IIe Platinum
1989
Apple IIGS ROM 3
Apple IIc Plus