The original retail price of the computer was US$1298 (with 4 KB of RAM) and US$2638 (with the maximum 48 KB of RAM).
The video controller displayed 40 columns by 24 lines of monochrome, upper-case-only (the original character set matches ASCII characters 0x20 to 0x5F) text on the screen, with NTSC composite video output suitable for display on a TV monitor, or on a regular TV set by way of a separate RF modulator. The first Apple II computers went on sale on J with a MOS Technology 6502 (later Synertek) microprocessor running at 1.023 MHz, 4 KB of RAM, an audio cassette interface for loading programs and storing data, and the Integer BASIC programming language built into the ROMs.
This discouraged the copying or modifying of the software on the disks, and improved loading speed.Īn Apple II computer with an internal modem and external DAA Some commercial Apple II software booted directly and did not use standard DOS disk formats. With the release of MousePaint in 1984 and the Apple II GS in 1986, the platform took on the look of the Macintosh user interface, including a mouse.Īpple eventually released Applesoft BASIC, a more advanced variant of the language which users could run instead of Integer BASIC for more capabilities. With an optional third-party Z80-based expansion card, the Apple II could boot into the CP/M operating system and run WordStar, dBase II, and other CP/M software. The final and most popular version of this software was Apple DOS 3.3.Īpple DOS was superseded by ProDOS, which supported a hierarchical filesystem and larger storage devices. When the Disk II floppy disk drive was released in 1978, a new operating system, Apple DOS, was commissioned from Shepardson Microsystems and developed by Paul Laughton, adding support for the disk drive. The only form of storage available was cassette tape. The original Apple II provided an operating system in ROM along with a BASIC variant called Integer BASIC.
The Apple II series eventually supported over 1,500 software programs.Īpple marketed the machine as a durable product, including a 1981 ad in which an Apple II survived a fire started when a cat belonging to one early user knocked over a lamp. Unlike preceding home microcomputers, it was sold as a finished consumer appliance rather than as a kit (unassembled or preassembled). The Apple II was targeted for the masses rather than just hobbyists and engineers, and influenced many of the microcomputers that followed it.
The //c was designed as a compact, portable unit, not intended to be disassembled, and could not use most of the expansion hardware sold for the other machines in the series.Īll machines in the Apple II series had a built-in keyboard, with the exception of the IIgs which had a separate keyboard.Īpple IIs had color and high-resolution graphics modes, sound capabilities and a built-in BASIC programming language. Over the course of the Apple II series' life, an enormous amount of first- and third-party hardware was made available to extend the capabilities of the machine.
The motherboard held eight expansion slots and an array of random access memory (RAM) sockets that could hold up to 48 kilobytes. While compatible with earlier Apple II systems, the II GS had significantly different hardware, more in league with the Atari ST and Amiga. Through 1988, a number of models were introduced, with the most popular, the Apple IIe, remaining relatively unchanged into the 1990s.Ī 16-bit model with much more advanced graphics and sound, the Apple II GS, was added in 1986. In terms of ease of use, features, and expandability, the Apple II was a major advancement over its predecessor, the Apple I, a limited-production bare circuit board computer for electronics hobbyists. The Apple II series (trademarked with square brackets as " Apple ] designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.), and launched in 1977 with the original Apple II. The 1977 Apple II, shown here with two Disk II floppy disk drives and a 1980s-era Apple Monitor II.