What KILLED the Apple II

"The Apple /// was designed to be, among other things,

the Apple II killer. Although our customer base loved

the Apple II, and sales accellerated for years as we

expanded with the growing computer market, everyone

in Apple worked for one product only, the Apple ///.

Such a shame for a company to distance itself fromthe real world."

- Steve Wozniak, July, 1997

I guess the answer to this is given below from within Woz's 'Apple II 20th Birthday Greetings' and also from the 1000's of Internet users that still use, post about on the Apple II Usenet group, who develop on and in general, throughly enjoy their Apple II line of computers, each and every day!

comp.sys.apple2

---

Subject: Re: Apple II 20th Birthday Greetings

From: Steve Wozniak<steve@woz.org>

To: "Charles T. Turley" <cturley@grin.net>

 

It's been 20 years since we saw a new life. The Apple II told us that we'd from

then on have the power that Kings never dreamed of. That we'd forever be more

independent than ever before. That computers would be fun as well as exiting and

interesting. That science fiction was fiction no more.

 

The Apple II was designed by hand using self taught hardware design techniques. I

even did a better design with the aid of programs that I ran on the Apple I. I

wrote all the code by hand and assembled it myself with the aid of the 6502

instruction set card. I wrote a BASIC interpreter, something I'd always dreamed

of doing but had never studied, which was most of the work of designing the

computer. Actually, I'd dreamed of writing a Fortran compiler and had never

before used BASIC. But I could sense the direction that things were going.

 

My goals were to build a machine that didn't have to be a "computer" in the sense

of previous computers. It merely had to permit me to program solutions to

engineering problems in my job at Hewlett Packard and to play games. I had

previously designed hardware video arcade games, before games were programs. One

of them was "Breakout" for Atari. I decided that it would be great to be able to

'program' the game of Breakout on my Apple II, in BASIC! I simply added commands

to draw colors and sense a paddle (which I designed in for this). I added a

speaker. One evening in my apartment I programmed the whole game in about 15

minutes (BASIC is a very easy language to develope and test in). No big deal, I

had expected this. But then I spent a half hour changing position of things (like

the score) and shapes of things (like the paddles) and motion of things (the

ball) and sounds and colors. The variations that I played with would have taken

months, at least, to try in a hardware design. I was shaking as I called Steve

Jobs to tell him that the world of game design was going to change forever. My

life changed a lot that evening.

 

We learned a little about what we could do with this machine, largely to amuse

our friends with programs that we wrote. We explored the future of hi-res video

game programs too. We were a part of the emerging world of applications software

for games, word processors, data bases and the like. And then we got the floppy

disk!

 

Visicalc taught us all that a computer like the Apple II, which had been our

whole world just by itself, wasn't enough. A huger buying community was looking

for solutions to problems. A solution was an application plus a computer.

 

We owned the world of personal computing with the Apple II. This company which

had been started in cramped apartments full of wires and tools, and on a lab

bench in a garage, went public. The company was worth more after 3 years than it

is even today. Personal computing was a field open to hit products as never

dreamed of in our lifetime.

 

In a couple of years the Apple II "way" of color, hi-res, massive memory,

paddles, sound, built-in BASIC, plastic case, typewriter look, I/O, floppy, and

more were being adapted in every cheap knock off attempt. But never as well as we

had done. We came to see that the big difference in computers had to do with

software, not hardware. The elegant design of the Apple II, and its importance in

the wonderful feel of this machine, lost value in the eyes of many who preferred

to see cold specs of a product and miss the forest.

 

The Apple /// was designed to be, among other things, the Apple II killer.

Although our customer base loved the Apple II, and sales accellerated for years

as we expanded with the growing computer market, everyone in Apple worked for one

product only, the Apple ///. Such a shame for a company to distance itself from

the real world.

 

The LISA/Mac technology came along and it was obvious that once switching, you'd

never go back. People in Apple, the entrepreneurial campany of all time, thought

in terms of building new things and forgot to expand the Apple II into this GUI

software. The Apple IIx, early precursor of the Apple II GS, was killed because

we didn't expect to sell 20,000 units per month. Thankfully, the GS was revived

by a small group who truly believed in it. And thankfully, they were unhindered

for enough years that the OS evolved as much more stable and superior to the Mac

platform in many ways, on just a fraction of the machine.

 

Thinking back, I can't remember a single time when I was truly frustrated with my

Apple IIs. The II and II Plus started us off. The IIe was perhaps the most solid

machine ever to get started with. It came along as schools started buying

computers. Even the first HD's came out for it. My IIc is a memory that is only

slightly improved on by today's laptops. The GS and it's various op sys

incantations gave meaning to many of today's enthusiasts like yourselves.

 

The Apple II will live forever, in the hearts of people who can smile while they

work, and in the heart of every computer that is a joy to use.

---------------------------------------------------

Steve Wozniak

Los Gatos, CA 95032

(408) 354-5000

http://woz.org

---------------------------------------------------

*

* Yes, it works as an Apple II and also for the needs of Apple II users.