The Apple II At 30

turnitover sends us to eWEEK for an appreciation of the Apple II on the 30th anniversary of its shipping. An overview of the history of the Apple II puts it in context. A nice tidbit: how important the floppy drive was to sales. The article quotes Sellam Ismail, the proprietor of VintageTech, which maintains archives of computers, documents, and software: "You could think of the Apple II's importance on two levels — the Woz level and the Steve Jobs level." The former refers to its allure to hackers, and the latter to its appliance-like polish, a first for its time, There is also an interview with Woz, who says, "[A]t the start there were no computers in the home — we had to make the word computer compatible with homes."

Comments

What's changed in 30 years?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

What's the big thing that seems to have changed at Apple over 30 years?

In 1977, Apple Computer included the schematics for all of the motherboard and CPU design for the Apple ][.

In 2006, Apple Ceased & Desisted a site for merely linking to a service manual.

Please come back Woz, we miss you.