A look at Apple's most important computer (it's not the Mac)

Comments · 839

• ZT

  @ZTenski · 2 years ago

  Woz never got enough credit really. I respect Steve as a marketer and for his ability to see what users wanted feature-wise, but if Woz had his way in the 80s and each apple was backwards compatible we'd all be using them today.

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• AB

  @ab9zd73 · 7 years ago

  Selling the Apple II to schools was a brilliant move. When the schools started dumping them, they were available around here for about $15 each - just the computer, no drives or monitors, and they looked like they had been through a war. Watched a video of kids today being given an Apple II to use. Funny.

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• TI

  @Tibbs90 · 3 years ago

  The C64 was replaced with the C128, not the Amiga. The Amiga was a business that Commodore bought.

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• GE

  @GeorgeRTurner · 7 years ago

  Wow!  So much fun to watch this video! :-)  It takes me back... I was hired by Apple in 1986 and was a developer on GS/OS.  I wrote the file system portion of GS/OS (ProDOS) and was particularly happy that full floppy copy was faster than the Mac could do. ;-)  The system/application loader and the little progress bar when GS/OS starts were also mine.  The progress bar actually times how long it takes to boot and will use the number to adjust the duration of the progress bar on the next boot.  This was pretty cool when you moved GS/OS to a ram disk and the progress bar would just fly across the screen.  On the hardware side, I use to hang out with the guy who did the Apple IIgs accelerator card.  I remember him letting me use a wire wrap tool to make connections on the prototype board. :-D  Thanks again for all the great memories! :-D

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• JO

  @johnhermann762 · 7 years ago

  I bought a used Apple II+ in 1983 when I was still in high school. I used it all the way through my undergraduate degree and finally replaced it with a next-station because I needed a workstation to capture a CMOS layout for my Masters Thesis work. I used the Apple II+ in my senior engineering project; I designed and built a card that plugged into the II+ that interfaced with a stepper motor and sonar module like was used to auto focus cameras. I wrote a program that controlled the stepper motor and sonar unit to graph out the layout of a room and display it on the screen. The program would also measure the distance of a given angle and report the distance in feet and inches. The program was written in AppleSoft and used PEEKs and POKEs to control the hardware. I still have the Apple II+ somewhere boxed up; I don't know if it works anymore.

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• TU

  @TubeHeader · 6 years ago

  wozniak was a reserved genius who knew how to run a buisness, jobs was an arrogant visionary who knew how to persuade people to his side. if only they got along

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• NO

  @not_riley · 9 years ago

  i thought the 8-bit guy was the only person on the internet whom i could listen to for countless hours without getting bored...and now i found you.

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• SC

  @ScholRLea · 7 years ago (edited)

  "Jobs' demand that the [Apple ///] have no fans." Given the harsh critical reception of the ///, I would say, "mission accomplished". :-p

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• SH

  @Shlooomth · 6 years ago

  Using new computers to be able to use older computers. It might seem ridiculous to some but I see the beauty in it

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• LU

  @lukpac · 2 years ago

  I realize this is now over 7 years old, but it&apos;s worth noting that the CPU speed wasn&apos;t crippled by Jobs. The problem was actually poor yield with faster 65C816 chips. And Jobs couldn&apos;t have crippled the IIGS if he had wanted to: he left Apple a year before it was released.<br><br>All covered (in great detail) in &quot;The Apple IIGS Megahertz Myth&quot;.

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• AD

  @adiblasi · 8 years ago

  I was selling Apple ][&apos;s back in 1978. This was very well done! Bravo!

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• CR

  @craigsearching · 3 years ago

  This is dang interesting. &nbsp;I&apos;ve never asked myself: &quot;Why didn&apos;t the Apple 2 become what the IBM PC was?&quot; &nbsp;My guess is that it was because the IBM PC had 80-column text mode and lowercase letters.

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