The Apple II: The Machine That Started It All

Thomas Hormby writes "The first Apple II was sold on June 5, 1977. It was outfitted with a 1 mhz processor, 4 KB of RAM, a keyboard and a cassette interface. Despite the seemingly paltry specs, the machine made Apple, and bankrolled the LISA, Macintosh and LaserWriter. Besides building Apple, the machine revolutionized the entire microcomputer business, pulling it way from the hobbyist kits and closer to todays PC. Read about it at MLAgazine."

Comments

It's tragic and bad they weren't more open.

[2TecTom]

Ah, the golden years, eh. What an opportunity they had! It's just too bad they blew it. I've always admired Apple, however, I've never owned one. I just can't get past the lack of open standards. It's really a shame when you consider the influence they could have had. Personally, I'm just glad that IBM was smart enough to see an industry instead of a market.

Sadly, Mr. Jobs still needs to work this.

Re:It's tragic and bad they weren't more open.

[2TecTom]

and then there's the whole story ...

Second they decided on an open architecture so that other manufacturers could produce and sell compatible machines -- the IBM PC compatibles, so the specification of the ROM BIOS was published. IBM hoped to maintain their position in the market by royalties from licensing the BIOS, and by keeping ahead of the competition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC (italics are mine)

My point still stands. I'd probably have owned a Mac or be using a Mac OS if Steve Jobs wasn't so much like Bill Gates. I'm just glad there wasn't a similiar egotist running IBM at the time.

Of course, anyone who dares to question Apple is always labelled. Why is that? Insecurity, perhaps?