The original Apple computer was invented by Steve Wozniak, who was an engineer at Hewlett-Packard. In 1975, he offered the plans to his boss at Hewlett-Packard, but his boss said Steve's computer didn't fit into Hewlett-Packard's marketing plan. His boss suggested that Steve start his own company. Steve did.
He worked with his friend, Steve Jobs. Steve Wozniak was the engineer; Steve Jobs was the businessman. Both were young: Steve Wozniak was 22; Steve Jobs was 19. Both were college drop-outs. They'd worked together before: when high-school students, they'd built and sold blue boxes (boxes that people attached to telephones to illegally make long-distance calls free). Steve & Steve had sold 200 blue boxes at $80 each, giving them a total of $16,000 in illegal money.
To begin Apple Computer Company, Steve & Steve invested just $1300, which they got by selling a used Volkswagen Micro Bus and a used calculator.
They built the first Apple computer in their garage. They sold it by word of mouth, then later by ads. The advertised price was just $666.60. The original Apple computer looked pathetic. But in 1977, Steve & Steve invented a slicker version, called the Apple 2. Unlike the original Apple, the Apple 2 included a keyboard and displayed graphics in color. It cost $970.
The Apple 2 became a smashing success, because it was the first computer for under $1000 that could display colors on a TV. It was the only such computer for many years, until Commodore finally invented the Vic, which was even cheaper (under $300).
At first, people used the Apple 2 to play games and didn't take the computer seriously. But two surprise events changed the world's feelings about Apple.
MECC
The first surprise was that the Minnesota state government decided to buy lots of Apple 2 computers, put them in Minnesota schools, and write programs for them. That state agency, called the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), then distributed the programs free to other schools across America.
Soon, schools across America discovered that personal computers could be useful in education, and that the only programs available came from Minnesota and required Apples. So schools across America bought Apples ___ and then wrote more programs for the Apples they'd bought. Apple became the ``standard'' computer for education ___ just because of the chain reaction that started with a chance event in Minnesota. The chain reaction spread rapidly, as teachers fell in love with the Apple's color graphics.
Visicalc
The next surprise was that a graduate student at the Harvard Business School and his friend at M.I.T. got together and wrote an amazing accounting program called Visicalc. They wrote it for the Apple 2 computer, because it was the only low-cost computer that had a reliable disk operating system.
(Commodore's computers didn't have disks yet, and Radio Shack's disk operating system was buggy until the following year. Apple's success was due to Steve Wozniak's brilliance: he invented a disk-controller card that was amazingly cheap and reliable.)
The Visicalc accounting program was so wonderful that accountants and business managers all over the country bought it ___ and therefore had to buy Apple computers to run it on.
Visicalc was better than any accounting program that had been invented on even the largest IBM maxicomputers. Visicalc proved that little Apples could be more convenient than even the most gigantic IBM.
Later, Visicalc became available for other computers; but at first, Visicalc required an Apple, and Visicalc's success led to the success of Apple.
In a typical large corporation, the corporate accountant wanted to buy an Apple with Visicalc. Since the corporation's data-processing director liked big computers and refused to buy microcomputers, the accountant who wanted Visicalc resorted to an old business trick: he lied. He pretended to spend $2000 for ``typewriters'' but bought an Apple instead. He snuck it into the company and plopped it on his desk. That happened all across America, so all large corporations had thousands of Apples sitting on the desks of accountants and managers but disguised as ``typewriters'' or ``word processors''.
Yes, Apple computers infiltrated American corporations by subversion. It was an underground movement that annoyed IBM so much that IBM eventually decided to invent a personal computer of its own. Apple 2+
In 1979, Apple Computer Corporation began shipping an improved Apple 2, called the Apple 2+.
Its main improvement was that its ROM chips contained a better version of BASIC, called Applesoft BASIC, which could handle decimals. (The version of BASIC in the old Apple 2's ROM chips handled just integers.)
Another improvement was how the RESET key acted. On the old Apple 2, pressing the RESET key would abort a program, so the program would stop running. Too many consumers pressed the RESET key accidentally and got upset. On the Apple 2+, pressing the RESET key aborted a program just if you simultaneously held down the CONTROL key.
Slots
In the Apple 2+ and its predecessors, the motherboard contained eight slots, numbered from 0 to 7. Each slot could hold a printed-circuit card.
Slot 0 was for a memory card (containing extra RAM). Slot 1 was for a printer card (containing a parallel printer port). Slot 2 was for an internal modem (for attaching to a phone). Slot 3 was for an 80-column card (to make the screen display 80 characters per line instead of 40). Slot 6 was for a disk controller. Cards in slots 4, 5, and 7 were more exotic.
Apple 2e
In 1983, Apple began shipping a further improvement, called the Apple 2 extended, expanded, enhanced (Apple 2e). Most programs written for the Apple 1, 2, and 2+ also run on the Apple 2e.
Keyboard Whereas the Apple 2+ keyboard contained just 52 keys, the Apple 2e keyboard contains 63 keys. The 11 extra keys help you type lowercase letters, type special symbols, edit your writing, and control your programs.
For example, the Apple 2e keyboard contains all four arrow keys (, , , and ), so you can easily move around the screen in all four directions. (The and keys were missing from the Apple 2+ keyboard.)
The Apple 2e keyboard contains a DELETE key, so you can easily delete an error from the middle of your writing. (The DELETE key was missing from the Apple 2+ keyboard.)
Slot 0 Unlike its predecessors, the Apple 2e omits slot 0, because the Apple 2e doesn't need a RAM card: the Apple 2e's motherboard already contains lots of RAM (64K).
Slot 3A The Apple 2e contains an extra slot. It's called slot 3A. It resembles slot 3 but holds a more modern kind of video card that comes in two versions: the plain version lets your Apple display 80 characters per line; the fancy version does the same but also includes a row of 64K RAM chips, so that your Apple contains 128K of RAM altogether.
Apple 2e versus IBM clones An Apple 2e system costs more than an IBM XT clone and in almost every way is worse: for example, the Apple 2e system has less RAM (128K instead of 640K), fewer keys on the keyboard (63 instead of 83), inferior disk drives (writing just 140K on the disk instead of 360K), and a crippled version of BASIC (understanding just 114 words instead of 178). Nevertheless, the Apple 2e became quite popular, because more educational programs and games are available for the Apple 2e than for any other computer. That's because the Apple 2e still runs thousands of programs that were invented years ago for its predecessors: the Apple 1, 2, and 2+. Fewer educational programs and games have been written for the IBM PC and clones, because the IBM PC costs more than schools and kids can afford. Although the IBM PC has become the standard computer for business, the Apple 2e is still the standard comput
