June 10, 1977: Apple Laptop Inc. ships its first Apple II pc.
A hulking beige behemoth with 4KB of RAM (upgradeable to a whopping 48KB), the Apple II is the pc that can outline Apple for a technology of followers. Retailing at $1,298, it price the equal of a handful of MacBook Execs right this moment — although it appeared a complete discount on the time.
First Apple II ships
Not like its Apple-1 predecessor, the Apple II was polished and prepared for the mass market. It featured a keyboard, BASIC compatibility and, most notable of all, coloration graphics. Regardless of being the corporate’s second pc, the Apple II was accountable for various firsts at Apple.
It additionally was the machine that turned Apple right into a million-dollar firm (sure, million — not billion). The 12 months the Apple II debuted, Apple turned over $770,000 in income. The 12 months after that, the pc’s success introduced in $7.9 million, and the 12 months after that $49 million.
That’s not all.
VisiCalc, a ‘killer app’ for the Apple II
Screenshot: Steven Weyhrich/Apple2History
It was additionally the pc that created Apple’s (and arguably private computing’s) first “killer app” within the type of VisiCalc. The world’s inaugural spreadsheet, VisiCalc turned private computer systems from cool-to-have toy into must-have enterprise accent. (And so they say it’s solely now that Apple’s actually entering into the enterprise market.)
The Apple II turned the primary pc of many influential folks in tech. Amongst them was Mitch Kapor, founding father of Lotus Improvement Company, co-founder of the Digital Frontier Basis, and the primary chair of the Mozilla Basis. Talking in regards to the Apple II within the sort of reverent tones an individual solely makes use of for his or her old flame, Kapor instructed me for my e book The Apple Revolution about promoting his stereo for money and driving to New Hampshire, the place there was no gross sales tax, to purchase one in every of Apple’s scorching new computer systems.
It moreover fueled Apple’s concentrate on industrial design. Apple designer Jerry Manock instructed me he was employed to create “a pleasant steadiness between manufacturability and human elements.” Manock later went on to design the first Macintosh pc. However the Apple II is in some ways an equally iconic machine. It paved the best way for the feel and appear of later Apple creations.
Apple advertising comes of age
!["Within just a few weeks, Steve [Jobs] received a letter from a woman in Oregon, complaining that the ad was sexist -- which it very clearly was," says original copywriter Bill Kelley.](https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/a2original.jpg "A2original")
Lastly, the Apple II that shipped on at the present time in 1977 was the machine on which Apple lower its advertising tooth. To promote it, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs sought out promoting copywriters who hadn’t beforehand labored on pc campaigns as a means of doing one thing completely different.
“It was fascinating to look at, however it wasn’t actually clear to us what we had been seeing,” says Invoice Kelley, the copywriter behind the primary Apple II adverts, recalling his first demo of the machine.
After the preliminary advertisements confirmed a sexist state of affairs through which a girl slaved within the kitchen whereas her husband typed on the Apple II, Jobs acquired a livid letter from a girl in Oregon, complaining about it. Future commercials for the machine reversed the equation, and began a pattern for Apple advertisements that subvert viewer expectations.
First Apple II ships … and subsequent fashions maintain transport!
Finally, the Apple II was an excellent machine. It stands as a triumph of collaboration between Apple co-founders Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who would by no means once more work so properly collectively. The pc benefited from nice peripherals just like the Disk II 5 1/4-inch floppy drive and very good software program starting from video games to productiveness instruments. The Apple II modified the face of computing years earlier than the Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch had been gleams within the eye of anybody in Cupertino.
The product line continued till 1993 — greater than 15 years after the primary Apple II shipped on at the present time in 1977, and practically a decade after the primary Mac arrived. Cupertino bought between 5 million and 6 million Apple II computer systems within the course of.
Comfortable birthday, Apple II!
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